What is a Grief Hole?

The beginning of my grief hole

A grief hole is what you make when the physical discomfort of stress collides with the emotional pain of situations you can't fix. I mean the times  when your shoulder muscles are wound so tight even the most determined massage therapist can't break the tension buried deep within your body. When your usual coping skills of eating fine ice cream and pastries makes your stomach hurt instead of soothing it. When you  know you definitely wouldn't give into the temptation to drink or smoke or pop some pills because you know you would become an instant addict, thereby screwing up your life even more than it already is.

My grief hole began as the solution to a simple problem. My kids had a backyard trampoline that was placed underneath electric power lines that connected our house to the rest of Denver's utility grid. Although it was probably fine, I worried that the kids might jump too high and come into contact with the lines. I decided the only option was to lower the trampoline into the ground. Getting rid of the tramp didn't occur to me as a possibility because it was their main form of entertainment and exercise. Whatever kept them under reasonable control was what were doing.

I started digging, not realizing what I was really doing. It was a simple hole in the backyard, dug with a cheap shovel from Ace Hardware. It was going to take a long time, but that was the one thing I had at my disposal. Time to worry, time to feel helpless, time to be furious at the people who seemed to have an easier life than me, which appeared to be everyone. I was trapped in a horrible place of watching my brother, whose life had already been one big pile of steaming injustice, suffer even more. Where was the fairness? What was the point? What kind of universe would create the evilness of cancer in such an innocent body? The whole thing sucked and I despised it.

I dug my hole for an hour a day while my youngest child was in morning preschool. After I put him on the bus, I fed my brother his breakfast and the handful of meds the hospice nurse had organized into a pill box. Then I cleaned up the kitchen, put laundry in the basement washing machine and did the routine chores of a housewife while working my way towards my backyard project. After an hour of hard core shoveling, wheelbarrowing and dumping, I was tired and needed to shower before my son got off the noon bus.

Over time I recognized my arms were getting stronger and the tightness in my shoulders was incrementally lessening. I started looking forward to the peace and quiet in the backyard, just me and my hole full of dirt. As I worked, my mind fell into the rhythm of the movement and I slowly noticed times of mental silence. It was nice and something I hadn't experienced since I ran cross-country in 6th grade gym class.

After 3 months of steady digging, my hole was done and I had renamed my project. It was no longer the trampoline hole, dedicated to my children's safety. It was the grief hole, where I excavated my lifetime of anxieties, hurt and confusion. It served an important role in my mental and physical health at the time and I reflect back on it now with nothing but 3 feet deep of gratitude.