When I lost my dad, I had plenty of warning.
His decline over the preceding years. The hospitalizations, Assisted Living, his mental decline, and family dramas all clearly pointed to his exit. Yet when the time came, I felt hollow and bereft. The grieving process had begun, and I was starting at square one once again.
As emotional reactions go, grief is likely one of the strongest we are ever going to experience. Debilitating and liberating at the same time, grief takes us through several emotional responses but there is a certain amount of repetition of the experience with each loss. This doesn’t make things any easier, but it does make them familiar.
Familiarity helps.
Grief is a Natural Experience
Since we revisit grief on a regular basis throughout Life, learning to manage our grief is a good skill to develop. Management begins with understanding the experience.
Immersion in the grieving process is a natural experience. Learning to accept the feelings of loss and their aftermath gets us emotionally farther down the road and healing. Life does go on but while in the grieving process, give yourself a vacation. Life will be right where you left it when you return.
Talking with others helps a whole lot too. Grief is a common experience of being human that all share in. No one who lives a lifetime escapes loss. It equalizes all of us and it connects all of us no matter what dividing lines society or politics overlays on us.
The best connections I have had with other during the grieving process, whether theirs or mine, have been to just be present with the other person. This is not a time for platitudes of how the loved one is “now in a better place”, or advice as to how to “get back to living”, but to just be with the person and allow them to lead to time. Their talking about their loss or complete silence are both acceptable. The important thing is the nonverbal and nonjudgmental presence with the person.
Communication between people is more than just words.
Letting Go is Difficult
Denial of loss is a common response. Hoping against an unpleasant reality is a common human trait (look at many of our responses to the current pandemic) but the harsh truth is that reality wins out in the end. Always. Acceptance of loss means letting go of what we wanted – not an easy choice for any of us.
I had the luxury and the curse of losing Dad to dementia over time. We had some terrific heart-to-heart conversations at the beginning of the end. I got to say the things that I am grateful I did.
“No regrets” is the way to go.
By the end of his life, he had lost much of those conversations but that was okay. I was the caretaker now and those conversations were safe.
Family members who tried so hard to make the reality of those days conform to what they thought they should be, had a harder road to travel. Whether is was cultural machismo that was going to somehow save the day because they said so, or the one who had always been “Daddy’s Darling” wanting what she wanted, all were disappointed in their denial of the reality at hand.
Grief is expressed in any number of ways, but I have not yet seen denial as a healthy response that leads to healing and growing.
Then again, the comfort that denial brings may provide respite from the hurt and can be used as a step in a process of healing. Just don’t forget to move on.
Expect to Grow
Loss has given me so much.
Sounds strange, eh?
Coming out the back end of grief is a different person than went in the front. If you put in the work needed to process loss, profound and subtle changes occur. I like to think of it as growing up.
After such a gloomy time as grief, discovering and embracing joy becomes a new talent. I suspect that things that can provide such joy, from enjoying moments in Nature to interactions with other people, have always been available. We just needed to develop the ability to recognize the joy.
Seeing life through a more pragmatic lens provides greater satisfaction with our lives. Acknowledging that we can’t get everything we want, takes a burden off efforts to keep flying in the face of reality and trying to accomplish the truly impossible.
After seeing others make their way through life and transition to the other side (whatever that means to you), provides a great set of examples to learn from. I have seen those who railed against the inevitable and spared no expense in fighting the inevitable before the inevitable occurred. I have also seen those who accepted the circumstances and moved on in a much gentler fashion.
The grieving process was the same in both instances, but they have cued me into ways in which I would like leave. That preparation begins now. How I choose to live my life has been instructed by the way I have said goodbye to others who have left.
Growing up isn’t what I expected but I think this is better than I had imagined. Funny how that works out.
“Grief can destroy you –or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see that it wasn’t just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time, you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”
― Dean Koontz
Dad's Back 