Grief Following NDE
One thing I've been wondering about lately is grief after an NDE.
Not grief over dying. Not grief over coming back. Just... grief.
Since my NDE, I carry it with me almost every day. I wouldn't call it depression. I'm grateful to be alive. I enjoy life. I laugh. I still find joy in ordinary things.
But grief has become part of me. It's almost always there, just below the surface. It doesn't take much to bring it out. A song. A movie. An act of kindness. A husband putting his wife's dreams ahead of his own. Someone willingly sacrificing themselves for another.
I've spent months trying to make sense of it.
The best way I've found to describe it is this: I wonder if grief is simply another expression of love.
Or maybe grief is the shadow cast by love.
After all, we don't grieve what we never loved.
Before my NDE, I would have said love and grief were almost opposites. Now I don't think that's true anymore.
The more I think about it, the more they seem connected. Maybe grief isn't the absence of love at all. Maybe it's the continuation of love when it's separated from the thing it longs for.
I don't know.
I'm not presenting that as truth. It's simply the best words I've found for my own experience.
Since my NDE, I seem to feel both love and grief more deeply than I ever did before. They almost seem to travel together now.
I'm curious whether anyone else has experienced something similar.
Not fear.
Not depression.
A quiet grief that coexists with gratitude. A grief that seems tied to love rather than opposed to it.
Has anyone else experienced that after an NDE?