Grief and Google

Okay… so grief sucks. Not that I am revealing one of life’s greatest mysteries or anything, but I have come to the conclusion that grief sucks.

I went to one of my favorite websites… Google. Google has the answers to everything. Type in a word or question, and Google has the answer. Bad hair day? Google has hair tips. Need a new computer or the latest gadget? Google can show you where to get it, and the best price. Looking for an out-of-print book from your childhood? Google’s on it. Looking for a friend you’ve lost touch with? Google can give you addresses, phone numbers, and probably what they ate for breakfast that morning. But what does Google say about grief?

Well I typed in “grief” and it came back with 29,200,000 hits in 0.07 seconds. And even beyond that, it gives you separate searches related to grief; such as grief stages, grief cycle, grief symptoms, grieving, grief steps..
That’s a little daunting….

I tried some other phrases too:
2,240,000 hits for loss of sister in 0.27 seconds

3,720,000 hits for loss of child in 0.18 seconds

1,580,000 hits for loss of grandchild in 0.27 seconds

5,470,000 hits for loss of friend in 0.20 seconds

Okay, so far.. Google is living up to it’s reputation of having all the answers….

But back to grief…. since that’s the common theme among our loss. What does grief mean? According to Webster Online, courtesy of…. yep, Google… grief is defined as:
grief , noun.
Deep mental anguish, as that arising from bereavement.
[Middle English, from Old French, from grever, to harm, aggrieve. See grieve.]

A source of deep mental anguish.
Annoyance or frustration: Trying to follow their directions was nothing but grief.
Trouble or difficulty: the griefs of trying to meet a deadline.
Archaic. A grievance.

The Thesaurus lists…
grief , noun
Mental anguish or pain caused by loss or despair: heartache, heartbreak, sorrow.

That doesn’t really tell me anything. Sure, it explains what it is… but it doesn’t explain how to deal with it.
So I started looking through some of those 29,200,000 sites Google provided for me.
There are online grief support groups, free coping with grief pamphlets, articles on how to make it easier to cope, therapy and counseling websites, mental health websites, poems, articles, stories, books, links to create grief journals…. and so on and so on.

I did click on the related search “grief symptoms”. You know, thought I’d better check and see if I had any. (haha) So anyway, one site I clicked on was “Coping with Grief and Loss: Guide to Grieving and Bereavement”. And maybe this is just my caustic sense of humor, but I found this sentence on their site funny: “There is no right or wrong way to grieve — but there are ways to make your grieving more complete and more positive.”
More complete and more positive? Talk about an odd choice of words. Positive would be not having to go through this in the first place. But I digress. The website actually is very informative, and has a lot of good information on it.

Back to my search on grief. Google is failing me this time. Sure, it has thousands upon thousands of websites dealing with the subject of grief. More information than I could probably ever sort through. But maybe what I’m looking for is not the answer to what grief is, or how to deal with it, or what the symptoms are (which by the way, in case you are wondering… according to Google, I do have them). I think what I want to know is when does it stop hurting? When do I get through a day without tearing up? When does a sudden reminder of Emily stop making my heart stand still? I want to know why Emily wouldn’t take care of herself. I want to know why she got diabetes in the first place. I want to know why now? I want to know why she didn’t call me and tell me she wasn’t feeling well. I want to know why she battled depression. I want to know what the reason for all of this is. And unfortunately, Google can’t answer those questions for me. Now, I love God with all my heart, with all my soul. And I can honestly say that I am not angry at God- He has been the one thing that I can cling to in all of this. But I wish He could give me some answers. I wish He had His own search engine. Instead of “Ask Jeeves”, “Ask God”. I bet His results are more helpful than Google’s.