Examples of "The Rules of Grief"

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I’ve been thinking that I should expand and explain and give examples about the rules of grief.

It seems to me that grief is an evolutionary function that works like vomiting for illnesses.  It serves the purpose of getting rid of toxins so healing can occur.  Number 1 and 2 on my list of hated things to do are throwing up and grieving It is possible to control both with the result that recovery is compromised and relationships are damaged.

For example, The wife of one of my clients was diagnosed with rectal cancer, which is brutal in the treatment and the recovery.  They have four adult children and an elderly dog.  He is a in the insurance business as a salesman and manager. She is a busy housewife and mother.  She had the surgery followed by many rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. Everything seemed to be going fine.  She was recovering and his practice was thriving.  The kids were all a way at school and the dog brought great comfort and joy.  The problem was that his sinus problems kept getting worse and worse.  Does anybody see any connection?  Let me make a few.

1. They were both scared that she wouldn’t make it.  Loss of certainty

2. They didn’t want to upset each other.  Loss of honesty

3. They really had to depend on each other. Loss of independence

4. They couldn’t’ share their deepest feelings because they had no words. Loss of intimacy

5. They were both disappointed that their lives had been upended in more ways than they could count.  Loss of self esteem

6. They were ashamed of most of these feelings.  Loss of self

7. They both felt utterly helpless, and they were, to make things better.  Loss of power

It took a lot of talking and digging to surface these loses.  It is hard when for a lifetime we are taught to be stoic and never give in.  The hardest part was to help him with the deep shame that he should have these feelings when the stakes were so high, let alone if at all. After several weeks of pushing and prodding he began to make some of these connections on his own.

A major hurdle for my client was to even entertain the idea that, perhaps, just perhaps, his wife might have some of the same feelings and concerns that he had.   To be able to talk to each other about these unusual internal secrets was an act of great courage.  As they were slowly, painfully able to begin talking and sharing with each other, his sinus problem kept getting better and her recovery progressed more evenly. 

Reaction To Emotional Risks

If you take an emotional risk there are three phases you can expect to experience within hours, or days following that risk.

The first reaction is an implosion, meaning self-criticism, the opposite of an explosion.  However, you take yourself down is the first, often painful reaction to an emotional risk.

The second phase is a pervasive sense that something is wrong, or you have done something wrong.  People report looking around to figure out “what’s wrong”.

The final, and often most difficult phase is a sense of impending doom, you are convinced that something dreadful is about to happen.

As nothing dreadful happens the feeling will dissipate, but not before the process is complete.  Then you can take another risk, but not before.  What we call the child in you has to see that he has lived to tell the tale.

If you put a child’s thinking and words to the sequence, it would sound something like,

“oops”

“uh-oh”

“Now I’m really gonna get it”.

Many people have trouble enduring these phases because the feelings are so intense and disturbing that it is difficult to keep going.  That is because the person is experiencing what it was like as a child when they took that risk.

Arleah Shechtman

A Loss Too Many

I’ve recovered from a lot

From my only daughter’s death

My son’s choosing different paths from me

Many furry friends along the way

My own parents deaths, and both my in-laws

I am the one in eight woman with breast cancer

Those are the major losses

Many paper cuts on my journey

But this one is the one

That is a loss to many

The loss of my home, my dream, my identity of me.

I can’t find the solid ground I once stood on, so proudly

I can’t find the internal resources to bounce back, this time

There seems no point in going on

My place in life is behind me

I don’t fit in this new world, actually never did fit anywhere

I see no rainbows

        No pot o’ gold

                   No happy ending

                              I’ve gotten to old.

What do I do with that grim truth?

Withdraw from the world?

Lie down and die?

No

         No

                  No

I will let all the small signs of caring, comfort and support patch me up.  I am like a crazy quilt pieced together with the “ties that bind”.  The invisible strands of family, friends and life are stronger then my grief.

A Birthday

 Today is Sharon’s 55^th birthday, I lost her at 15, and it still hurts, even though I can’t even begin to imagine what she would be like today or what she would be doing.

Would she have been a career woman?  Or a mother, would I have more grandchildren?  Perhaps both? 

These are the eternal questions that stay unanswered and haunt my reveries.

I am continually surprised and confounded by how this grief over time has so profoundly changed me.  I doubt I could capture in words how, as it is still changing me, and is a process that I can’t predict or control.

At the core of my being there is this space that belongs to her and I am never very far from that grief, it is easy to slip into that sadness.  There has grown up around that space a garden of my life that is deep and rich because I so value what I have. I go back again and again to that crooked garden to renew and remind myself that life is still good.

Every year is hard in it’s own way.

But grief is always a walk alone

On The Other Side Of Grief (continued)

     This parallel process, between the bereft person and the helping person, is important not only to help the grieving person recover, but also to accommodate and create the inevitable new relationship with the bereft person.  Significant loss irrevocably changes people and therefore any and all relationships.  So part of the helping process is to accept the changed person and relationship along with their loss.

     There is so much to say about loss because the range of emotions and behaviors is so enormous.  Much has been written in recent years about the stages of grief that have become part of the common wisdom and seem pretty accurate.  However, the mourner

does not experience stages - just feelings.  Often these are strange, unfamiliar and very intense feelings that people have spent a lifetime learning to control.  So reassurance is one of the first responses anyone can give.  It is often helpful for people to at least understand what is happening to them.  Then they do not have the added burden of thinking something is wrong with them. What is "wrong," is that they have lost something or someone significant.

     It seems important to understand that any encounter with a grieving person is unsatisfying.  This is so because neither party can give the other what they want.  We do not have the power to give back what has been lost, and the grieving person cannot give us the smile and assurance that our help has made everything all right.  The greater the loss, the longer this will be true.  However, over time our help does help.  It is analogous to applying salve to a wound.  The salve will not magically heal, but over time the salve plus the healing power of the body, will at some point heal the wound.

Grief Changes Eerything

From the moment of “knowing”

           

            To the end of my life

                        Her death has turned me

                                    Upside downand inside out making me over

The changes are unseen

            As is the pain of her death

                        As the changes in my mind

                                    As the changes in relationships

                       

As is the earthworm turns the soil

            As it always has done

                        As it aerates the soil

                                    So grief changes everything