Monday 26 September 2011

Why Her? Why Him? Why not Me?

Sometimes we would give anything, even our own lives, to stop the dying of our beloved. Death never makes sense in the moment, even the death of the elderly. The death of a child or of a relatively young adult is especially unbearable. At these times we can be crushed by the feeling that “it should have been me.” Death brings us face to face with our own mortality, and raises deep questions about the meaning of life, our life.

When the anguish of early grief is past, a type of survivor guilt may possess us. We can’t understand why we are still alive while our loved one is gone. Trying to make sense of our life without our beloved is one of the toughest aspects of grief work. Sometimes, without our beloved it is difficult even to find meaning in our own existence. The work we have to do does not come easily or quickly. It takes months, even years, to find our way to affirming our own lives as significant and worthy. We have to live into our new realities and new names: widow, widower, child-less mother/father, orphan.

Survivor guilt is especially significant for those who have survived a trauma in which others have died. This is complicated grief, and may result in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Those suffering from this type of grief are strongly advised to seek professional help. Please know that you are not alone. There are others who can walk this road with you. If you are unable to seek help on your own, speak to someone who can direct you: your physician, your faith leader, a close friend.

Monday 19 September 2011

Grief and Therapy

I hope, by now, it is evident that I have a deep respect for therapists and for the therapeutic process. I have benefited many times throughout my life by spending time with wonderful, competent therapists. Yet, as I do more work in the area of grief and grieving, I become more convinced daily that a great deal of time and money is being spent on therapy when what is actually needed is simply somewhere to grieve. So many of us carry so much grief: we’ve lost lovers, friends, jobs, homes, pets. We’ve lost our youth, our energy, our faith. Add to that a significant death and we have a perfect storm of grief; with no where to express it, and no one to witness it. With no one to guide us, or help us feel like what we’re going through is normal. In this day and age it is easier to assume that we are losing our minds and that we need a therapist in order to “sort everything out.”

If this weren’t such a tragedy it would be amusing. Here we are, in North America, able to benefit from the insights of psychology and psychiatry, able to spout clichés about healing our inner child and getting free of co-dependency, yet unable to grasp the simple truth that grieving is a necessary part of living. We continually deny the depth of change and transformation that comes with death and loss. We don’t even have words to describe who we are without our sister, without our child, without our in-laws. It’s as if some types of grief can be recognized and affirmed, because they bestow names: widow, widower, orphan.

I wish that all of us who are carrying grief could simply be purple for a day, so that our grief could be witnessed and affirmed. I know that we like to have our protective walls up sometimes, especially at work. But, I think if we could meet our fellow travelers, the pathway of grief would not be so desolate. At the very least, we could be sharing our experience, strength and hope, as other self-help groups advocate. It seems to me that our grieving selves need to see the light of day if true healing is to happen. That light may be found in a therapist's office, but it might also be found in the eyes of a friend.

Can You Die of a Broken Heart?


            We probably know, or have heard of, spouses who die within a year of one another. We sometimes say, “He died of a broken heart.” What we mean is, people love one another so much that they literally die without each other. Or perhaps we mean that the weight of grief is too much for the surviving spouse to bear. Possibly, the work of grief is just too hard, and death is the way out. I do believe that people can die of a broken heart.      

     This begs the question, “Can someone die because of the hurt I have caused them?” When we have been the ones to inflict hurt on the dying person, we may find ourselves struggling with very difficult and conflicting feelings. I have known ex-spouses who endure overwhelming feelings of guilt if they were the ones who left the relationship. This is exacerbated when they left to follow an affair that began while they were still in relationship with the dying one.

     Sometimes, when we are in this situation, we don’t have access to the person who is dying. There is no chance to say goodbye, let alone to try to ask forgiveness for our behaviour in the past. Even when we do have access, when someone is dying is hardly the right time to say we are sorry. The one who is dying does not likely have the energy to make us feel better. Nor should this time in his or her life, be about us. The time for confessions, amends, and forgiveness is past. If we didn’t take it when our ex-partners were living, we cannot justify taking it now.

     The guilt that haunts us in these circumstances is ours, alone. It will complicate our grief work, and may linger much longer than the emotional pain of knowing that our former love has died. If we allow our pain to direct us to deepen our self-examination, and use the new insights we gain to avoid repeating painful patterns with others, this aspect of grief can be a gift. Again, this may be a situation in which therapy is called for.

Sunday 18 September 2011

I Feel Cheated.

Often when someone we love dies we have unfinished business with him or her. There are things we’ve never said, secrets we’ve never revealed, confessions we have not made or received. When the person is gone forever we suddenly realize how hopeless our situation is: we can never rectify or have rectified the wrongs that stood between us. The time for making amends, on both sides, is utterly gone. We cannot get even the hope, the possibility, of healing or forgiveness back.

When the dying person has hurt us, our need for them to confess their knowledge of what they did, even just in secret to us alone, may overwhelm us as we see them moving away from us. The death of an abuser will naturally trigger deep angers and fears. We may feel that we want to strike out, to wound, to exact revenge or justice, as if dying was not good enough. Indeed, dying is not good enough to heal the wounds the dying one has inflicted. But our release from the anger and hurt we carry will rarely come from the other, the one who caused the pain. Our release, our healing must come from within. Hearing the words, “I’m sorry,” before it’s too late, may help, but in the long run we must do the hard work of giving life to ourselves from the inside out. A wise therapist is called for to help with this process.

When the abuser is a parent or spouse, our feelings as they die are further complicated by the fact that we have also loved him or her. We may feel guilty for having loved this person, or guilty for wanting him or her to love us differently than they have. We may feel guilty for the times when we wished he or she would die, as if our wishing it were somehow powerful enough to make it happen. We may have feelings of guilt about our own worth, tormenting ourselves with all of the, “If only I had” s.
Again, work with a competent therapist is called for in order to sort through these conflicting and self-deprecating feelings.

In the absence of a therapist there are some things that may help. Finding a room where we can scream, punch pillows, or kick boxes can give us some of the physical release we need. Confronting our dying one by “talking to” an empty chair may also help us find relief. Writing letters, throwing stones into water, jumping on a trampoline, or just stomping lets some of our pent up anger find a place outside of our bodies. Letting the anger out is an essential part of the work of grief.
I will deal with the guilt that comes from feeling that we have somehow abused the dying one in my next posting.

Monday 12 September 2011

Grief Surfaces In Little Things

The other day I was speaking to a friend whose mother died this past summer. I was reminded again of how often our sadness finds us at unexpected moments, and often in the most ordinary of circumstances. When someone we have loved for many years dies, our minds have to grasp the reality on many different levels. The most obvious level is the cold hard facts of death: the last breath has been drawn, the last words spoken or left unsaid, the beloved's body has been taken from us. The physical aspects of death are difficult enough to comprehend. Yet even when we have coped with those stark realities, our brains are slow to grasp the full meaning of our loved one's eternal absence. Our minds still get caught in the, "Oh, I must talk to ... about that." We see a good movie or read a great book, and suddenly realize that we can't share our find with the one we loved. We begin to realize that pieces of our own history have died with our loved one. There is no longer one who can remember certain events with us, or tell us of our family history, or sing the family songs with us.
It is natural for our sadness to deepen over the first few months of bereavement, not lessen. Our initial searing pain gives way to a much deeper understanding of just how much we have lost, just which aspects of our lives will never be the same again. At the precise time when others are expecting us to be "getting over it," we are, in fact, just getting into it. It usually takes 6 months for us to fully grasp how life has changed, and to grieve all of the losses incurred with the death of our beloved.
My friend is no longer a mother's daughter. She can no longer call up for a recipe or share some news about her own daughters. She is on the journey of bereavement, and the waves of sadness will continue to arrive unexpectedly, for quite some time.