Flourishing Today

Navigating the Grief Process

I’ve discovered that when someone like a parent, sibling, or spouse dies, during the grief process there is a period of time where your identity is shaken, your loss is bold, and that’s all there is. The rest of your life isn’t even parenthetical, even though you know it exists: They died…

It’s like a book, where the only subject is this one huge thing and everything else isn’t even a side theme. (BTW, people who haven’t gone through this may be able to sympathize, but not necessarily understand. It’s OK.) Your job, family, relationships, school, career, friends, social life all feel insignificant to this huge monster in the center of your heart and living room. It’s not even as cute as an elephant.

Depending on the individual, this slowly evolves. You’re still “not OK” and the loss is still the theme, but you start being able to have the rest of your life, if only parenthetically: They died… (and here is something else that is going on..)

This is challenging for some, depending on how close they were to the person who died and how much is unresolved. There can be guilt associated with having a happy life, even parenthetically, while this other person is dead. Intellectually you know that the world goes on, that your life still exists and they would want you to keep living it… but there can be the fear that moving forward somehow says the person’s death doesn’t mean as much. This is fear may feel true, but isn’t. At the same time, its perfectly normal if we feel guilty anyway.

When talking to my Great-Aunt Christine about her process, she said “I don’t think you ever learn to live with it, because you still miss them so much. You do start to live around it.” It doesn’t go away, it doesn’t disappear, because you’ll always miss them and it may still hurt, but it’s no longer quite so bold: (My boyfriend and I are going camping next weekend), my dad is dead, (and I’ve actually been getting some work done).

After a while, the loss becomes a thread in the overall paragraph. That thread may always hurt, but it’s less of the main theme. At that point, it’s not like every sentence contains the subject of your grief, but more the context of it… until one day, you look up and realize that you’ve woken up. As if in your grief you’ve imagined you were asleep, and now you’re awake again. This could be 3, 12, 17 years down the line, but it isn’t necessarily going to be tomorrow. Yes, you still miss them and there is still so much of the person with you that you can enjoy who they were in your life, even without them being physically there.

Breathe,
Kaye