Grieving is the price we pay for love
~ Queen Elizabeth II
Anyone who has lost a loved one knows just how heart-breaking this can be. It feels as if the rug has been pulled from under you, as if everything just stops, and moving forward seems pointless and impossible. Life no longer makes sense, and the void left behind seems unfillable, with the excruciating pain feeling as though it will never pass.
Losing a loved one also means losing a way of life, connections, habits and routines, a future, hopes, dreams, and expectations. Coping with such immense loss is incredibly difficult, and there is no handbook on how to do it right or how long it will take. However, there are similarities in people’s grieving processes and general stages that most go through.
Renowned psychiatrist Colin Murray-Parkes developed a model of grief that consists of four phases:
Stage 1 – Shock and Numbness: During this phase, acceptance of the loss seems impossible. Emotions can be so overwhelming that, unable to process everything, our defense is to go numb, like a form of denial.
Stage 2 – Yearning and Searching: In this stage, we try to fill the void left by our loved one by seeking comfort in memories, pictures, and holding on to shared habits and routines. We may become very preoccupied with the lost one.
Stage 3 – Despair and Disorganisation: At this point, the reality that the loved one is not returning sets in. It feels impossible to envision a future, leading to feelings of anger and despair. Some may withdraw from others to sit with their pain, causing their world to become very small for a time.
Stage 4 – Reorganisation and Recovery: Here, the hope of possible recovery begins to grow. It’s important to realise that the sadness and longing for the lost person will never completely disappear, but it will change and become less painful over time. New habits, routines, and normality start to establish on a daily basis, and the person begins to reach out and reconnect with others and the larger world.
When supporting someone who is grieving, it’s important to remember that there is no right or wrong way to mourn. What worked in our own experiences or in supporting someone else might not be helpful to another. Grieving is a very individual process, and acknowledging this helps us be more open to the needs of the grieving person.
Reach out, but don’t push. Let the grieving person know that you are there whenever they need you or are ready to talk or spend time with you. Let them know you are available to them however long it takes. In bereavement counselling, I often encounter people who feel that their social network has moved on, assuming the grieving person has moved on too or should have by now. Their network stops asking how they are coping with the loss or how they feel, sometimes out of fear of upsetting the grieving friend or reopening the wound. This leaves the grieving person wondering if they are wrong to still feel pain and sadness, potentially resulting in them not processing their grief and feeling unable to move on. They get stuck in the grieving process and feel isolated, as if their loved one dies a second time, not being mentioned or remembered anymore.
Keep asking and just listen, without offering solutions or trying to make them feel better, so they feel heard and understood. Validate their feelings by telling them that how they feel is normal and that it is totally okay to feel whatever they are feeling, for however long it takes. Don’t try to stop them from feeling grief; instead, help them feel through it. It is scary for them and sometimes for us too, to witness all that sadness and despair. When supporting someone going through this difficult time, remember that it is not the one crying and feeling all the pain, even for a prolonged period, who needs therapy, but the one who doesn’t might need support to start or unblock the process. Only through feeling the loss is growth possible. Only by feeling all those difficult and scary emotions can we start rebuilding and balancing out again.
Colin Murray-Parkes wrote (words later made famous by Queen Elizabeth II): “The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love; it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.”
Grieving can be very hard work; it can be exhausting, but grieving is loving, in a very painful way, but loving nonetheless.
Main – Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
