Mourning is the external part of loss. It is the actions we take, the rituals and the customs. Grief is the internal part of loss, how we feel. The internal work of grief is a process, a journey. It does not end on a certain day or date. It is as individual as each of us. In your first year you have mourned and grieved. Life and grief are made up of good days and bad days.
We don’t realize how many anniversaries there are in life until after a loss. We are aware that there will be anniversaries of the day our loved one died, but we forget the celebrations and/or remembrances of birth, marriages, that first date, and the millions of things in between. Whatever happiness they once brought, now they bring memories of deep loss. Every symbol of the anniversary of a death matters to us: the one-month anniversary, six months, a year.
People will not remind you of the date, as if you could forget, because they don’t know what to say. You don’t know what to say yourself, because after a death occurs, all those anniversaries take on new and heightened meanings. Now you have to spend them without the person who made them celebratory. Joy is replaced on those days now by the feeling of loss.
Friends often will avoid calling to say, “It’s thirty days (or three months or a year) and I wanted to give you a call, but I was too afraid of hurting you.” If you want others to feel comfortable talking about it, you’ll have to give them a signal that you are aware of the date. Silly as that is, it is one of those things in our society that we fear the most. It’s hard to call a widow and say, “I’m so sorry your husband has been gone for six months now.” A friend fears that if they called to console you, you might say, “I was having a good day. I actually forgot. But now you brought back the pain.”
It is not likely that anyone would get mad at a friend for calling to say they were thinking about your loss, but we have heard this concern over and over. Even if the person did forget, they usually haven’t forgotten subconsciously, because our bodies remember our feelings. We see this in children in foster homes. Social workers will tell you when a child will often have a problem: the same time of year they were put into the foster system or the same day their parents died. Children have a remarkably tough time on specific days. The shocking thing about this phenomenon is that it happens in children too young to know the calendar yet.
We are no different as adults. Roxanne was late for work. She hadn’t slept well, she was making lots of mistakes at work, and she was edgy and irritable. She was sure it was the lack of sleep. Then it hit her, when a coworker happened to ask the date. “It’s June twenty-first,” she said, stumbling over the words as she realized that had been her wedding anniversary.
There are many times we may remember the date of a friend’s loss because it was four days before our birthday, and we think we should call. If the person is not aware of the date, they will usually say, “No wonder I felt so sad today,” or “That’s why I was having such a hard day.” Most often will they thank their friend for remembering and caring.
Maria and Paul were looking for the right time in their schedules to spend two weeks together in France. They decided to take the trip just before the holiday season, but they would miss Maria’s mother’s birthday. One week before their trip, they took Patricia (Maria’s mother) out to celebrate her sixty-fourth birthday.
When they were in France on the actual day of Patricia’s birthday, they thought about her all day long. “Hey,” said Maria, “let’s a have birthday dinner tonight in my mom’s honor.” That night they had a great time telling stories about her and joking about how she probably wasn’t really sixty-four; she kept her real age a secret.
When they returned from the trip and told Patricia how they had celebrated her birthday, she loved the idea of the dinner in her absence. She joked with her friends about how her family had her birthday dinner in France, often leaving out the part that she wasn’t there. All the relatives knew, but they played along with the wonderful charade of the birthday dinner in France.
The next summer, Patricia was furious when she found out her house had been broken into. That evening she was at the police station recounting the story and suddenly had a massive heart attack. She did not survive.
When the next Christmas arrived, after Patricia’s death, Paul and Maria were at a loss as to how they would ever get through the holidays. Christmas might be okay, since their children would keep them busy, but how would they celebrate Patricia’s birthday, which came at the same time?
They thought back to the celebrations that they had in the past, which were all similar except for the preceding year when they had been in France, so they decided to have a party that year for Patricia’s birthday even though Patricia would be absent.
Just as they did the year before, they toasted her and told stories. “We would never have considered a birthday dinner after my mom had died,” Maria told her friends, “but I knew how much she loved us gathering in her honor and everyone talking about her.” The cousins came and they had a big dinner, which made it feel real to Maria. “All the relatives and siblings were there,” she recalls, “and so were the grandkids. We all had a wonderful night reminiscing and proposing toasts.”
She told her coworkers the next day, “It seemed like the perfect thing to do. It would have been a sad, empty event, but since we did it the year before, we knew Mom would love the idea of it.”
In Maria’s case, her family decided it was easier for them to celebrate her birthday than to not do anything. But everyone is different. What matters is that you spend anniversaries doing something that comforts you. For some, the pain is so great that working and keeping busy is best. Others will want to take some time with friends to talk about their feelings and their great loss. Some may want to reminisce privately on their own.
When the first year and other yearly anniversaries come, you may want to do more. On yearly anniversaries, especially the first, you may want to commemorate your loss. Find your own way to honor your loved one’s memory. It is an occasion that may bring up your greatest sadness along with some of your best memories. It deserves its spot in your heart. Just do what feels right for you. Attend a service, visit your loved one’s grave, or just talk to friends and family. Honor the love and the memories left behind.
Brenda was missing her husband, Douglas, terribly when the first anniversary of his death approached. She thought she would light a candle in his honor, but she knew she needed more, so she invited a few friends over on the anniversary of the night he died. She also sent an e-mail to friends who lived out of town and a few who were out of the country, asking for e-mails about memories of Douglas.
When the night arrived, she had four of Douglas’s close friends over, and one by one, each told a story about Douglas and then read three e-mails. Then they lit a candle and said, “I light this candle in remembrance of you, Douglas, and I give thanks for knowing you.” After they each had a turn, they went out to dinner at Douglas’s favorite restaurant.
Brenda said it was perfect. “It symbolized for me how his body is gone,” she said, “but the connection is never gone. It was everything: head, heart, and the eternal. Early in the night we were more serious in our sadness and gratitude, and after we had voiced our thoughts and read the e-mails we had a great night out. The dinner was light, fun, and unexpected.”
Brenda found a way to honor Douglas and remember his anniversary. Anniversaries may also be a time to honor yourself for having strength and courage. A year ago or years ago you were a different person. The person you were is forever changed.
A part of the old you died with your loved one. And a part of your loved one lives on in the new you.
Judith, a woman in her late sixties, said that her marriage had almost ended in divorce thirty-five years ago. She revealed how on the day her son died from cancer, seven hours later to be exact, her husband wanted to have sex with her.
“I was devastated by the loss and was extremely insulted by his selfishness and insensitivity. How could my husband think of something as enjoyable as sex, when I wasn’t sure life would ever be enjoyable again? It was beyond my comprehension. But luckily for us, we had a strong marriage that withstood my husband’s request, which I thought was completely inappropriate. I knew he loved our son as much as I did, so I could never quite comprehend his feeling sexual at a time like that.”
Years later her husband shared what he could not articulate at the time. “It wasn’t really sex I was after,” he told her. “I was lost after our son died. I felt not only the emptiness in our family but also an emptiness in my soul. I needed to be held so I could feel like I was connected, that we were joined together. Sex was the only way I knew how to tap into those feelings.”
Judith learned what we rarely speak about and usually do not put into print: daring to talk about sex in the context of grief has long been taboo—even with a person’s closest friends. If it comes up at all, it’s usually behind a counselor’s closed doors. Even then the discussion is almost always vague. But for us not to discuss it in this book would be to deny the real feelings and events that sometimes happen after a loss.
Men and women experience sex and grief differently, but we will speak in generalities. As in Judith’s case, men don’t always know how to say, “I feel alone and I need to be held.” Women are much more able to ask for tactile support than men, which made Judith’s husband’s request for sex seem like an insult to the memory of their deceased son. But it isn’t so.
Sex is a part of life, so it is also a part of grief. When a husband or wife or lover dies, there is a loss of sex as well. You may have wonderful memories of lovemaking, which are not so easily discussed with friends. Maybe you want to have sex right away, and maybe you’ll never want it again as long as you live. For some, the avoidance of sex may pass in time, and for others sex will remain a memory.
One thing is sure: if sex was part of the relationship, it will be part of the grief. When a partner dies, we tend to consciously or unconsciously assign their roles to other people or to ourselves. He handled the finances; now you do. He handled the house repairs; now you hire someone. She cared for the children; now you get help from Grandma and day care. But what is to be done with the natural desire for sex that may eventually reappear? It is a role that is not so easily reassigned.
In the early days or months—or years—of grief, the idea of sex may not even cross your mind. But when it does, how do you interpret it—as a natural desire returning? Do you see it for what it really is, or are you clouded with thoughts of betrayal and upset? Sex represented not only a physical act but an emotional intimacy that you two shared. It was most likely a very important part of your relationship. Because of this, you miss not only your lover but also the sexual part of yourself—the part that lives on after your lover has died. The part that still has a primal need for connection.
When sexual feelings arise after a death, it’s easy to judge yourself. How could you have these feelings without your loved one? How dare you? It’s as if everyone assumes that someone with a loss should never experience normal feelings and desires again. Nevertheless, you do, only this time without your loved one, which seems like a kind of posthumous infidelity. Recognize these feelings as healthy and normal. Do not denounce sex simply because you think you should. Do you denounce food because you always ate with your loved one?
When Jamie was in her junior year of college, her father fell ill. She told her boyfriend, Mark, that she needed to go back home to be with her family. They had been casually dating for about a year, and he supported her returning home. A week after she arrived at her family home, her father passed away, and after the funeral she returned to college. Mark dropped by her dorm with flowers to console her, but he was surprised to find that she wanted to have sex.
He hesitated, knowing she was a virgin. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You always said you wanted to wait till your wedding night.”
To her own amazement, she said, “I’m sure.” As they began to kiss, he was surprised at the depth of her intensity, but he went with it. When it was over, it hit him that their lovemaking had been driven by her grief.
They remained friends and years later, when they met for lunch to catch up, she brought up their encounter following her father’s death. “When I came back from the funeral,” she said, “I was covered in death. I needed to feel the intensity of life, and sex was the only way I thought I could get there.”
He was thoughtful for a moment. Then he said, “I always wonder if I should have tried harder to say no. I knew you had a romantic picture for your first time.”
“There was no way you could have talked me out of it,” she reassured him.
• • •
Barbara lost her husband to cancer after three years of radiation, chemo, and pain medication. All of her focus had been on her husband’s survival. When a friend called four months after his death to see if she wanted to attend their twentieth high school reunion, Barbara agreed to tag along. Her friend would arrange the logistics and do the driving; all Barbara needed to do was pack and get in the car. Barbara’s friend felt the distraction of her old friends would be a good thing.
Barbara was surprised when she ran into her old prom date, Ron, and even more surprised when they danced together and she felt sexually attracted to him once again. After a few glasses of wine at the bar, it was closing time, but she and Ron were enjoying reminiscing so much, they decided to continue in his room. The next thing they knew, they were kissing and making love.
In the morning when she returned to her room to shower and change, she felt enormously guilty. She judged herself, thinking it was too soon to feel sexual again, but then she realized that it had been close to four years since she’d had sex, because her husband had been so ill.
Whether it’s four years or four months, having sex again is complicated. The “right time” depends on the person, the relationship, and what feels okay inside. Like Barbara, many people forget to factor in the time they spent nursing their loved one as they recall the length of celibacy, and for everyone it’s different. For Barbara, the issue arose after her husband’s death. For others dealing with long-term illness, the temptation to have sex outside the relationship during the partner’s illness can be compelling and often very difficult to handle.
Joseph had been a loving husband for ten years when Kelly, his wife, was tragically killed in a car accident. An attorney who specialized in trusts, estates, and wills, Kelly had made certain that she and her husband had completed the advance directives. She had talked openly about what would happen if one of them died, saying she hoped he would use the life he had left. She mentioned a widow she knew, a coworker, whose husband had died prematurely. “If something ever happens to me,” she told Joseph, “I want you to remarry.” Joseph had agreed, but as he entered his second year of grief, although he could imagine someday marrying again, the idea of sex still felt like cheating.
For Joseph, as for many others, rejoining the living is a series of uncomfortable steps: dating, sex, and maybe love. Luckily he had his wife’s words to fall back on, and they tenderly reminded him that he was not betraying her. But more often than not, people don’t have that kind of reassurance. When we’re in love, we don’t want to think about loss.
Some people go back in their minds or hearts or even to their loved one’s grave and ask for permission to continue with life. That usually contains the unspoken permission to date again, have sex again, and love again.
You’ll have to trust yourself to know when and where to get back into a relationship again. But expect some difficulty and awkwardness at first. Hopefully your new partner will be understanding, or at the very least, you will understand your own journey and figure out how to maneuver it.
For example, if you and your loved one visited Hawaii often, going there with someone else will obviously trigger grief and guilt. So why do you ever imagine you could have sex again and not think about your lost love? It can’t happen without old thoughts, but with compassion and patience, you can begin again. You can finally understand this shadow of grief and the courage it takes to go on living and loving.
During grief, sex means different things to different people. Some need to have sex soon after the loss; some decide to do it much later; and some do it when it just feels like it is time. Some use sex early on to escape the feelings of pain, since it can be distracting and numbing and help us escape grieving. Others consider it the perfect antidote to death. After all, sex is about life, the opposite of death.
Simon came home exhausted after being with his sick mother, who, despite the best efforts of the doctors, had just died of pneumonia. “When you lose your last parent,” he said, “your current family becomes all you have in the world, and your spouse is even more important. When I arrived home I had a stronger than usual need to connect to Kim. The moment I walked in the door I fell into her arms. I brought my suitcase in the bedroom and she followed. I lay down on the bed and held her. Then when I kissed her she pulled back and said, ‘You want to have sex?’
“Yes,” I told her, “but not for the sake of sex. I feel like an orphan, like I don’t have anywhere in the world to go but to you. I need to be with you to feel like I’m a part of something.”
Kim did not understand and she said quite harshly, “You need to get your mind out of the gutter and do some crying.”
Simon said later that he did not feel she had rejected only sex. “I felt like she was not there for me,” he said. “She showed lack of sensitivity, and I couldn’t explain to her that I needed to feel oneness because I felt so alone.”
It can be hard to explain to your spouse that when a door closes, there’s a sense that you have no place to go. The bonding that happens in sex can be comforting at such times because for many people, closeness and sexuality are bound together. Sex can reaffirm a connection quickly, and when it does, it’s not about sex; it’s about the closeness that sex makes possible.
In Simon’s case it was not about fun and pleasure but rather about melting boundaries. After you experience the loss of a loved one, a solid boundary suddenly stands before you. It feels as if you’ve hit a hard wall, and you need to find some softness in your life. Death is the breaking of a connection, while sex can be the establishing of one.
We would suggest, however, that seeking counseling or a bereavement group is usually a better choice than seeking sex right away in order to sort out your feelings. Know that the grief will lie in wait until you are ready to deal with it. But we live in the real world, and we do not have grief counselors at our beck and call whenever the pain becomes unbearable. The bottom line is that we are human beings and we do the best we can.
Donna sat by her husband’s bed day in and day out as he lay in the hospital room on the oncology floor. She was consumed with making sure he had the best care, food if he was hungry, fresh water and ice chips and pain relief. She left his side only to go to the bathroom or go into the lobby to update relatives.
The nurses and her family were concerned, but not about Donna’s husband. He was comfortable. They were concerned about Donna, who was pale with dark circles under her red and swollen eyes. She often had a stiff neck from sleeping in the chair. Unless someone asked her when her last meal was, she easily forgot to eat. When she remembered, usually late at night, her meals often came from the vending machines in the hallways. But no one could find fault in her weariness or meals of cheddar cheese crackers and Cokes because they knew her presence meant the world to her husband—and to Donna.
When Byron died, Donna was in a shockingly haggard state. But she had to kick into high gear for the wake and funeral. Despite her exhaustion, she made all the decisions about the funeral, the reception, and Byron’s burial. She did her best to look good but even after she was freshly showered, with hair and makeup in place, everyone talked about how this loss had added ten years to Donna.
This is often the state we reach in grief. Remember, this is a very trying time. You have been through so much. Your body is worn down from all it has been through, all it has felt, and all you have seen. Now your body needs time to rest and rejuvenate, even though you may not want to or care. As much as your body may need your attention, it’s natural to feel the pointlessness of taking care of yourself. After all, the only person you really cared about is gone.
How do you enter this new world of loss in which you find yourself? How do you go from “no time for meals” to “all the time in the world to eat”—especially since your loved one is not there to share the meal with you? How do you begin to care about your own health when life and death are not at stake anymore? You’ve gotten used to not caring for yourself. In becoming an expert at reading your loved one’s health needs, you lost the read on your own. For the last months you let yourself live with hunger, weight gain (or loss), and exhaustion.
Your old state of health will usually return on its own, but in time. People may want you to make a sudden dramatic healing back to your old physical state of well-being, but do what feels right to you. Remind yourself to eat a bit better or do a little more. But don’t give in to everyone’s opinion that you have to jump right back in and have a makeover. This is your time to rest and get back in touch with yourself and see how you feel—now.
Go slowly. Do not take on more than you can handle. It’s okay to have distractions. Accomplishing those little things in life can take you away from the enormous pain, and some people need a time of doing nothing, while others need to keep busy. Feeling productive can be a welcome change at times.
For those left with little to do after a death, taking care of themselves may feel forced. You may not have the motivation to exercise or even take a walk around the block. You may not care about food. After all, food and exercise didn’t help keep your loved one alive.
Some may no longer care about eating anymore, while others may have the opposite reaction and overeat. Food can temporarily seem to help with the emptiness, but just like any temporary feeling of relief, overeating is not a long-term solution in dealing with loss. As you grieve and learn to live with this loss, those unhealthy solutions will usually fade.
Those left behind may have to return to work right away. Work too will feel different. You may be slower at work or not at your peak. You might not take on additional tasks. No one will expect you to go the extra mile at work during this time. Don’t try to do things exactly as you used to, because you are different now. Be your own guide. If work feels too much for you, slow down, take the time you need. If your business is a place of busyness that gives your mind and body a break from all that hurts you, use it.
Whether you are the type to eat less or more, exercise less or more, or move one step back from working a lot or diving in, you must take enough time to help your body repair. It’s a good idea to go to bed earlier, sleep a little later. If you’re out of balance, take little steps. Try to eat a little better, exercise a little, and be good to yourself, and don’t be surprised if you get sick more often than usual. Your body’s defenses have been weakened and your resistance is lowered. It is not unusual for people to get sick after a loved one has died; a cold or flu may come on suddenly and hang on a little longer than usual.
• • •
Daniel had been married for twenty-four years to Rachel, the love of his life. During her slow demise due to heart problems, he was utterly dedicated to her. When she died, he felt lost and went back to work right away. Before the first week was over he began feeling pain in his head that turned into the worst headache he’d ever had.
He went to the emergency room, where they were beginning to order tests for possible internal bleeding or something even worse, perhaps a tumor. He told them he had not hurt his head, and one doctor, after examining his scalp, said, “Cancel the tests. He has shingles.” The doctor went on to ask Daniel if he’d been under any unusual stress lately.
“The worst you can imagine,” he said.
Before long the shingles, caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox, was all over his body. It seems that the virus lies dormant in the body until severe stress activates it. Daniel had no idea that the pain could stop him in his tracks. There was no rushing back to work or even working from home. He literally had to do nothing while parts of his body became covered with a rash of red patches that blistered. They left behind crusts, which fell off eventually, exposing pink healing skin.
In subsequent appointments with his regular doctor, the physician remarked, “This doesn’t surprise me. I often see people get ill with something after a huge loss.”
Daniel’s body gave him no choice but to stop and grieve, a good demonstration that if you move fast before your body is ready, it will tell you. It’s much better to shift all that wonderful attention you had for your loved one back to your own body in a healthy way. It is what they would want, as many dying people worry about the living.
Take the time to take care of yourself. If you become ill, it may be the body’s way of saying, “slow down.” Maybe you need a weekend at home, a day in bed, or even a day of being pampered.
Take care of yourself.
There is so much to do: make the calls, make the plans, make the arrangements. To many, this sense of being busy is a blessing; what else could possibly seem worthy of your time? If we sat and felt the emptiness, it would be too much. So most of us dive in and do all that needs to be done. We want it done the way we think is best, the way that would honor our loved one. We need the rituals and all the tasks that go with them. Take comfort in the busyness; it is an integral part of the mourning process.
Some feel rushed, as if they rode the scariest roller coaster of their lives and now there is more to do. They feel pushed and hurried through the feelings and tasks. Sometimes the rituals themselves make them feel that way and sometimes it is just the circumstances: the transportation, the accommodations, the guests, the visitors, the meals. Whatever it is, slow down and take your time. There is a richness in such rituals that brings a framework to loss. Try not to rush through this process, since the rituals are designed to help you find meaning and a way to externalize and share your pain. To speed through it would cause you to miss the opportunity.
• • •
Judith wanted everything to be exactly right for Frank’s funeral. She made the plans, everything was in place, and on the day of the funeral Judith was rushing around double- and triple-checking everything. Was the reception room ready? Was the food coming on time? She even confirmed the caterers four times on her cell phone and all was ready. But when her sister, Eloise, arrived, she saw the state Judith was in. While the rituals can help us, we can also get lost in the planning. Eloise tried to get Judith away from all the completed tasks, but she couldn’t get her alone for a second.
“These maps for the guests need your immediate attention,” said Eloise in a final attempt to be alone with Judith. She didn’t want to discuss maps, she wanted to help Judith understand the uniqueness of this day in the mourning process and help her realize the planning part of the funeral was over.
Eloise grabbed her sister’s hand and said, “I know how much you want everything to be just right for Frank. And it will be fine, or if there are some glitches we will make it through. But more important, Judith, this is the one and only time that all these people will ever gather together for Frank . . . and for you. You will continue to see about thirty percent of these people, but the majority you will never see again. Today, though, they’re here to share their sorrow and yours. Today is the day they will openly and tenderly share their love for Frank, and you will grieve, for the rest of your life, mostly alone. Today, you have the opportunity to grieve with so many others, and I would hate to see you miss that.” Judith was then able to stop and be fully present for the funeral and the shared grief.
For many it may seem as if other people are moving too fast. Sometimes it seems as if everything feels rushed because the death seemed to come too soon. You may be trying to get to the next moment too quickly or to handle all the logistics in a rushed style. Or you may feel as if you’ve got to move through decisions too quickly. You need to do what you feel is right, not what you feel is quick. Rituals can be meaningful to you, and you have to take care of funeral arrangements, but it’s okay to say, I need a little time here to catch my breath. I need a moment.
Take time to feel your feelings and to experience them. Let your friends help, and do not turn down offers of support. And take a moment to be real. When someone asks how you are, don’t automatically say, “Fine.” Instead, you could say, “I’m having a tough time, so thank you for checking on me.” Or “I need help but I don’t know what to ask for.”
Very few of us are used to saying, “I’m okay, but check back with me in a month.” Let yourself receive the help, the support, the love. If you want to make a particular call personally or do a particular task yourself, fine. If you don’t, allow a friend or family member to help.
• • •
When Oliver’s wife, Lauren, died, he accepted every invitation from friends and family for dinner after work. If a friend offered golf on Saturday, he said yes. If his sister suggested brunch on Sunday, he was there. He kept busy, there seemed always to be a lot to do, and his friends were happy that Oliver remained active and involved in life. No one questioned it.
But one month later, Oliver started declining all the invites. A friend became concerned and asked Oliver, “Why are you suddenly turning us down? My wife says it’s important that you don’t isolate. We thought you were doing so well.”
Oliver replied, “I needed to keep busy all the time at first, but now I’m feeling strong enough to just stay home and do nothing. It may look like isolation, but it’s just time for me to slow down.”
When it’s time for you to start making plans with friends, do what feels right to you and what you feel your loved one would have wanted. If you need help, ask for guidance from family, friends, neighbors, the hospital staff, the mortuary, your church or synagogue. Listen to what they have to say, then take what works for you and leave the rest. You can’t please everybody. Do not let yourself be swayed by anyone or anything that does not feel right to you or does not honor your loved one’s memory.
Do the best you can and let that be enough. Be sure to take time alone if you need it, and ask for company if you need that.
Cry whenever and wherever you want.
While there is so much going on inside of you, a myriad of tasks await outside. One of these tasks is to pack up your loved one’s clothing. Another is to decide what to do with it. This often feels like the most difficult job of all, because to deal with a person’s possessions is to clearly face the fact they are gone. If they were still here, we would not be going through their things—it would be an intrusion on their privacy. The bottom line is that glasses, shoes, and coats force our acceptance of a harsh reality.
The emotions of going through someone’s things will be enormous, possibly overwhelming. With the smell or the touch of their fabric, clothes remind us of the one we love and the moments we spent together and their likes and dislikes. Their watches, rings, and other pieces of jewelry remind us of their style and personality. Most of all, their clothes and belongings emphasize their absence in our lives.
Start this task when you feel strong enough. Ask a friend or family member to do it with you if you feel that a loving presence will help. If you cannot face going through your loved one’s possessions, ask a family member or neighbor for help. Not everyone wants to go through a loved one’s clothes, and you may feel as if you have been through enough.
And then, even if you wanted to sort through your loved one’s possessions, you may not have the time. Work within your constraints and get help if you are pressured for time. Also feel free to keep a number of things that you may “just not feel sure of yet.”
After the death of her mother, a daughter came to town from out of state to pack up her mother’s apartment. When it came to the closets, she felt rushed, so she packed a couple of suitcases with her mother’s clothes. “It was too soon to give her clothes away,” she said, taking them back home with her. At a later date, when she was less emotional and rushed, she sorted through the clothing at her leisure. She discovered that the task before her was much more than organizing and redistributing personal belongings. It was more than going through a home, its contents, its closets, and its drawers. It was the physical and personal reminders of someone she deeply cared for and cherished. She was glad she could spend time with her mother’s things, perfect reminders of who her mother was in life.
Loved ones are often highly insulted when a friend or family member says, “Can I have their bicycle or cookbook, I need one,” not recognizing they are not asking for an item. The thing they now consider a leftover object was an important part of our loved one. The truth is that each physical possession has a story, a memory—some of them known, others unknown. Here is his favorite suit, which he wore a lot. Here is the chair she loved to sit in and watch TV. The nightstand by the bed even tells a story; how it went suddenly from the clutter of remotes and novels to medical necessities. Even going through the music they listened to can become a vivid personal glimpse into a loved one’s life, an emotional landscape that we may dread and want to put off. Or we may want to look forward to the reminiscing that comes with it. The process, usually some combination of the two, is as varied and personal as who we are and who our loved one was.
• • •
Betty was a loving grandma with big brown eyes and a smile that made you wish she were your grandmother. She never went to visit anyone’s home empty-handed, and when you visited her, you would also get a gift: nothing big, just something lying around that she thought was perfect for you. Betty had her rituals, like never giving away things to charity without washing and ironing them. If a pair of pants was missing a button, she would put one on. And she never gave away a wallet or purse without putting a penny in it for good luck.
Her son, Greg, and daughter-in-law, Nicole, joked that she had made many people rich by giving them a penny. Betty had become more of a mother to Nicole after Nicole’s mom died five years prior, telling her that whenever she found a penny someone in heaven was thinking of her. If you asked her about it, she was likely to start singing “Pennies from Heaven.” But if she was with Nicole and found a penny, she would say, “This is from your mom. She is thinking about you and watching over you like a good mother.”
After Betty died, Greg and Nicole had the job of going through her apartment and giving things away to charity, no small job since they felt the need to clean everything and make it look as good as possible before giving it away. Greg found it enormously difficult to go through his mother’s belongings and decide what things to keep and what to give away. In her closet, he found a crocodile purse that Nicole had given Betty for her birthday. He remembered how cute Nicole thought the purse was and how Betty loved it. Greg thought he would put it aside to give back to Nicole.
After they had finished taking care of Betty’s belongings, Greg meticulously cleaned the crocodile purse. He turned the bag upside down and wiped the inside out thoroughly. When he was finished the bag looked like new. He then put the finishing touch on it with a penny in the small spare key compartment before he put it in a box with wrapping paper and a bow.
He hid it for Nicole’s next birthday. When the evening came a few months later, Greg gave Nicole a beautiful necklace for her birthday. After dinner Nicole became teary-eyed talking about how much she missed her mom. Then she said, “I bet our moms are in heaven right now thinking about us too.”
Greg suddenly remembered the purse. “Hang on,” he said, “I have one more gift for you.” He handed her the box and added, “Mom would have wanted you to have this.”
Nicole was delighted when she saw the purse, immediately noticing that Greg had put two pennies in the small spare key compartment. Greg turned white. “I only put in one penny,” he said. “You have no idea how I cleaned that purse and checked every inch. I can tell you without a doubt that there was no penny there until I put one in.”
Nicole took Greg’s hand and said, “Your mother always told me that my mom was thinking of me in heaven whenever she found a penny. I guess she still wanted me to know that our moms are together again watching over us.”
The ritual of dealing with a loved one’s clothes and belongings facilitates the grieving process, partly by helping us accept the reality of the loss. The simple act of giving clothes away to someone who otherwise could not afford them is one of the many ways that your loved one continues to have a positive impact on the world. A dining room set and special china can be a connection of one generation to another. Keeping your mother’s favorite scarf, or a tie that your husband loved, is an additional keepsake that will remind you of a special feeling you had with them and for them, always.
“Holidays are time spent with loved ones” was imprinted on our psyche from a young age. Every family has its own traditions and unique ways of celebrating holidays. When we grow up, we usually update them and make them our own, but original imprints of how holidays are spent usually transcend generations.
Holidays mark the passage of time in our lives. They are part of the milestones we share with each other, and they generally represent time spent with family. They bring meaning to certain days and we bring much meaning back to them. But since holidays are for being with those we love the most, how on earth can anyone be expected to cope with them when a loved one has died? For many people, this is the hardest part of grieving, when we miss our loved ones even more than usual.
How can you celebrate togetherness when there is none? When you have lost someone special, your world loses its celebratory qualities. Holidays only magnify the loss. The sadness feels sadder and the loneliness goes deeper. The need for support may be the greatest during the holidays.
Nevertheless, for some, it makes sense to just ignore the holidays as if they didn’t exist. The alternative of just going through the motions without any meaning might seem pointless—the worst loneliness of all—so why not just cancel them for a year?
Berry Perkins knew she had to allow her teenage boys the space to grieve when her husband, actor Anthony Perkins, died. After his death, Berry and her sons, like so many other families, tried to carry on. Luckily Berry was very intuitive and knew when something was not working and that grief needed its space.
She said, “Holidays were so important to us as a family, and suddenly there was this huge void. Every holiday is a bombardment, a hole that reminds us that he is not here. We tried to re-create these holidays and we thought we could carry on doing things the way we had always done. But we learned quickly we couldn’t do it the way we had always done it before, not without Tony. It was just too hard and sad.
“The first Christmas, we kind of glided through, because we thought, ‘Okay, we are going to do this.’ The second Christmas, we put up the tree but it took us a week to hang the decorations. We needed time to grieve without trying to have a happy time. We were all so sad. Then we came to a mutual agreement to take a break from Christmas for a couple of years. We decided when we came back to Christmas again, we would start a new tradition.”
Berry knew to not keep up the pretense of happy holidays when she and her children were grieving. She knew what was right for them, and she taught her children to honor their feelings. After a break and some healing time, Berry and her family were able to celebrate the holidays again, not the way they had before, but in new ways.
Berry Perkins was a wise woman, and it was a terrible twist of fate that she died in one of the hijacked airplanes on 9/11. Hopefully the grief lessons she gave to her sons helped them through their second tragedy.
For others in grief, staying involved with the holidays is a symbol of life continuing. For them, celebrating the holidays creates a time to be with other loved ones and not to feel so alone. It is a time for some to find meaning and to reflect upon all that has been lost.
Many find it difficult not to observe the holiday but don’t want to pretend. You can integrate the loss into the holiday by giving it a time and a place. Perhaps the prayer before dinner includes your loved one. Maybe you light a candle for her. A simple gesture of recognizing your loved one can reflect the continued presence in your heart. Some elect to leave the festivities early, to have some time alone with their loss. Making time for your loss and acknowledging it is often easier than resisting it.
Sometimes our loved one’s death is linked to a certain holiday. We remember they died before Valentine’s Day, or on Mother’s or Father’s day. We never forget they died right after Easter, or that was their last Passover. Maybe they died near the Fourth of July. From then on, the holidays will never be the same. Since the holidays are markers, even if your loved one didn’t die near one, you still look back and think, that was their last Thanksgiving or last Christmas. Some knew it would be their last holiday and some didn’t. Either way a formerly joyous holiday becomes a time of sorrow.
Sixteen-year-old Amy went into her mother’s room on New Year’s Eve. Her mother had been dealing with kidney disease for many years, and Amy wished her a Happy New Year. Then Amy whispered in her ear, “This will be the year you get a transplant.” The mother died four days later. Had she lived, Amy might or might not have thought of her mother every New Year’s; but in that moment her death and that holiday became forever linked.
The holidays are a time to review your traditions and decide what you want to do. For some, the changes they experience during the holidays are temporary, whereas for others, they’re permanent. Marie always sent out cards with a picture of her husband and herself from their most recent vacation. After he died she did not want to carry on that tradition. In fact, when she examined it more closely she realized it was not a part of the holiday she enjoyed. It had begun as a fun thing to do years ago, but in truth it had lost its fun way before her husband died. For Marie, grief provided the opportunity to release traditions that may have lost their meaning anyway.
For others it can be a time of complete reorganization. Joyce, a teacher in her early fifties, said that after she lost her husband, she started out by lying low during the holidays. “I decided,” she said, “that grief gave me the permission to really evaluate what parts of the holidays I enjoyed and what parts I didn’t. If I was going to rebuild the holidays, I knew the old way was not an option. Probably for the first time, I took the time to make them personal.”
There is no right or wrong way to handle the holidays in grief. You have to decide what is right for you and do it. You have every right to change your mind, even a few times. Friends and family members may not have a clue how to help you through the holidays, and you may not either. If you do know, give the people around you clear messages. For instance, you can tell them, “This year I don’t want the responsibility of cooking the family dinner.” Or you may find it important that you continue to do that. Just let people know. Tell them you want to talk about your loved one, or let them know you are just too raw and don’t want to. Don’t be afraid to change things to suit your needs. People feel very pulled to do things they often don’t want to do during the holidays, and this is your chance to make your needs known.
Many people have had too much change and need the familiarity of the seasons. Bill felt that his wife had enough Christmas spirit for both of them, but after she died, there was not enough Christmas spirit left for one. He felt that any attempt would only make him feel worse, so he used the holiday to travel to Alaska. “I needed a change of environment,” he said. “I’d always wanted to see Alaska and I felt like I could manage exploring a new place, while I could not have managed Christmas and New Year’s without my wife at home.”
It is very natural to feel you may never enjoy the holidays again. They will certainly never be the same as they were. However, in time, most people are able to find meaning again in the traditions as a new form of the holiday spirit grows inside of them.
When death occurs before it, a holiday can remain unfinished. Gina’s mother had the family’s gifts under the Christmas tree when the call came to Gina on December 22: her mother had suffered a massive stroke, and she died two weeks later. The Christmas tree and presents sat untouched by the family, like a deserted town.
After New Year’s, the family solemnly opened up their gifts for each other, but no one knew what to do about her mother’s gifts, so they just sat there. During January, Gina helped her father pack up her mother’s belongings and put her remaining affairs in order, but she would not allow the tree or gifts to be touched. “Christmas was frozen in time for me,” she said. “Opening the gifts would be too hard and I had no idea what to do with my gifts to my mother.”
She took down the tree at the end of January and left the presents in the corner. She and her father agreed that they were starting to look like an unmarked grave and felt that way, too. Her dad helped her pack up the boxes and put them in a closet. The following Christmas, when Gina was out of shock and ready to receive the gifts from her mother, one by one she opened them and felt her mother’s presence as well as her presents. Her father opened the gifts that were intended for his wife and commented on how she would have loved them.
Even if you decide not to do the holidays after a loved one’s death, they are hard to ignore. Everyone around may wish you happy holidays without any idea that you are grieving, since the holidays continue despite your deep sadness. You continue on with your loved one’s loud absence.
We are often acutely aware of the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah season, but we forget how hard Mother’s Day might be without a mother or how empty Father’s Day may feel without a father. You will never have another mother or father again, and you may feel completely left out of this holiday, unlike the others. People find ways to remember their mothers and fathers and honor them long after they are gone. Some honor them by becoming mothers and fathers. Some do it with a simple, kind thought of love. That is the uniqueness of the loss of a parent.
Rob and Cindy were unable to celebrate the holidays after their seventeen-year-old son died. They understood that for the next few years, the holidays would be unfixable, so they decided to spend the time serving others. On Thanksgiving they went to the local homeless shelter and served dinner. On Christmas they helped wrap presents for local foster homes. In the end, their action served more than they had expected, because it took their mind off the intensity of their loss and helped them see that they were not alone in their pain and misfortune.
Holidays are clearly some of the roughest terrain we navigate after a loss. The ways we handle them are as individual as we are. What is vitally important is that we be present for the loss in whatever form the holidays do or don’t take. These holidays are part of the journey to be felt fully. They are usually very sad, but sometimes we may catch ourselves doing okay, and we may even have a brief moment of laughter. Whatever you experience, just remember that sadness is allowed, because death, as they say, doesn’t take a holiday.
Even without grief, our friends and relatives often think they know how our holidays should look, what “the family” should and shouldn’t do.
Now more than ever, be gentle with yourself and protect yourself.
Don’t do more than you want, and don’t do anything that does not serve your soul and your loss.
Grief must be externalized. Our pain and sadness can be fully realized only when we release them. For many, writing letters to their loved one is a convenient, always available way to get the words out and communicate. What—or even why—should you write to someone with whom communication seems to be lost?
As far back as we can remember, writing has been a tool to help us say, “We were here.” In a historical sense, to say who we were and what happened to us matters. Ancient writings may have been created to communicate with others in the area and perhaps even to communicate with future generations. But they always originated with a longing to connect. That longing is never stronger than when a deep connection has been broken.
Amelia found whenever she most missed her sister, Lydia, she would stop what she was doing and write to her. Sometimes it was just a note with one sentence on it and other times it was five pages. She unknowingly went through many of the five stages in her letters over time. Her early letters were about her denial, how tough it was to believe that Lydia was gone, how she kept feeling that Lydia must be away on a long vacation.
She then wrote diatribes about what life was like without her and how angry she was that Lydia had left her alone in the world. She wrote of feeling depressed about how they would not go through old age together, of wondering about all the “what ifs” in her sister’s medical care. Finally, though, she reached a point of acknowledging that Lydia was truly gone and was not coming back. Then she wrote that although she was finally accepting her sister’s death, she didn’t like the acceptance one little bit.
For Amelia, the letter writing was not only a form of externalizing her loss. It was also the form that her grief took, an outlet that worked best for her as it facilitated her working through the stages. She just did it on paper. Years later it was easy for her to see her grief and healing in her words. It also gave permanent witness to all that she had felt and lost. It was the record of her pain and healing.
Writing is a wonderful companion to our loneliness in a world where we stand alone. Many people write about their feelings after a loss. Some write in a grief journal to deposit their feelings without worrying about someone else’s reactions. In any case writing externalizes what is in us. Those circulatory thoughts can find an exit with the pen and paper or with the keyboard and mouse. For many, writing feels better than speaking, as the unspoken healing can come through journaling. You can find your voice in writing in a way that you can’t find in other forms of communication. You can also finish your unfinished business in letter writing.
We are filled with so many memories, feelings, hopes, dreams, stories, insights, reactions, and questions that are all wanting to get out and take their rightful place. The written word can be their expression.
The written word can also be a communication to our loved one, as we are often left with things unsaid. We believe that death is not the end of communication, and if you have something to say in your heart, your loved ones will feel it in theirs. Write to them even after they are gone. Tell them how you are doing and how much you miss them. A letter can be a substitute trip to a distant grave when frequent travel is not possible. Write what you would say if you were there. You may find you have a collection of letters and may want to read them when you are next able to visit your loved one’s grave. You may find the letters were just for you.
You may find comfort in reading old letters and cards that the two of you gave to each other. Letters have a special power in that they are tangible evidence that our loved one took the time and effort to sit and write on the very paper we hold in front of us. Letters comfort us and often outlive us. The proof of someone’s presence exists in his or her handwriting.
We write to express ourselves, but sometimes we can write to ask for an answer. How on earth can you receive an answer from a loved one who has died? One technique that we have found to produce interesting results is to write the letter to your loved one with your dominant hand. Now get a fresh sheet of paper and allow yourself to write a letter back from your loved one with your nondominant hand. For example, if you are right-handed, your nondominant hand will be your left.
Miriam missed her mother terribly since her death. Miriam was a strategic planner for a large educational firm and missed her Sunday get-togethers with her mother, the grounding she had come to count upon on a weekly basis. Miriam decided she’d write her mom a letter. She would write the letter as she normally would, with her right hand, and then write a reply from her mother, using her left hand to receive the answer from her mom.
In her first letter, Miriam wrote about how much she missed talking to her, how busy she was at work, and how well things were going. But she still felt a terrible void. Then she added that she was relieved that her mother was no longer sick or in pain.
She was a bit skeptical about the process but felt she had written her letter with sincerity and had nothing to lose. When she switched to her nondominant hand and began to write back, she was surprised how the letter seemed to flow. Her mother reassured her that she was okay and missed her too. Then she went on to say, “I miss our Sundays too, and I loved our discussions, but I also had another reason for them. You were never a good eater, and that way I made sure you got one good meal a week. You haven’t been eating well lately.”
Miriam was startled by the response and believed it was her mother writing back to her. Her mother was always the cook and the mother, making sure Miriam ate right, and now she felt a bit less alone in the world, feeling that somehow her mother was still there. She would continue to do this handwriting exercise whenever she was really missing her mother.
This form of letter writing has been comforting to many people, even when we’re not sure of what is happening. Neil and his wife, Michelle, were in deep grief after the loss of their boy, Max, who had just turned eight. Michelle decided to use the letter-writing process to talk to Max. She cried as she wrote how sorry she was that he would not have a full life and would never get to have a million normal experiences.
In his letter back, Max told her that even though it was hard to understand, it was his time. He reassured her she would see him again and that he was okay. He told her that it would take her many years to understand this loss and that they would have “more kids,” and he wanted it that way. He mentioned several times that she would have more kids.
After she received the letter, Michelle didn’t get the sense of comfort she’d hoped for. She loved knowing that he was okay but felt it was too soon to even be thinking about another child, much less several. A few days later she missed a menstrual period. She got a home pregnancy test and was shocked to see she was pregnant.
She didn’t know how to deal with the possibility of being pregnant so soon after the loss of her son, and she made an appointment to see her doctor. In the next couple of days she and her husband talked of nothing else, and both agreed that a new baby coming so soon after Max’s death was poor timing. Michelle put the letter-writing out of her mind—until the doctor announced she was pregnant with twins.
“It’s okay,” she said, suddenly smiling. “I know it’s okay.”
Her husband did not understand her peacefulness until they were home and she showed him the letter she wrote from Max, as he went on and on about them having “more kids.”
It can be argued that Michelle unconsciously knew she was pregnant with twins and that she, rather than her dead son, had produced the letter.
The point is that she derived comfort from the letter writing. In the end, that’s all that matters.
People generally don’t want to talk openly about their finances, but as these play a role in life, they also play a role in grief. We know we can’t take it with us when we die, but when a loved one dies, money can be a complicated matter. The complications involve having either too little or too much and depend on how well you are prepared to deal with your finances after a death. We can make matters worse with all of our emotions around finances, but the truth is that money is a tool. It is in itself neutral, neither good nor bad. It is what we do with our money and how we perceive it that decides whether we feel good or bad about it.
Allan and Paige never really made a decent living. A housepainter who dreamed of being an artist, Allan had met Paige in his twenties when he signed up for a community college class she taught on the great Italian masters. They fell in love and were soon married, but while many of their friends were taking inexpensive Las Vegas honeymoons, they dreamed of going to the art galleries in Florence, Italy. But they would have to save up the money.
They were in their early twenties when they had one child, then a second and a third. Kids, house payments, and day-to-day expenses soon got in the way, and Allan got busy painting houses. A far cry from Italy, but they kept their dream alive.
By the time they were in their forties, the kids were teenagers and they had saved enough money to put them through college. That would leave half the money they needed for their long-awaited honeymoon. But soon their dreams were shattered: Allan’s friend drove up to Paige’s house one day and suggested she sit down. Allan had fallen off a scaffold and plunged three stories, breaking his neck, dying instantly.
Paige was devastated by all that she had lost. But when Allan’s boss informed her that she would be the recipient of the company’s life insurance policy, now doubled since Allan’s death was accidental, Paige was instantly wealthy. Now she realized the sad irony that she could take off to Florence any time she wanted, but she would have to do it alone.
Paige had to mourn all they had wanted to do together, all the dreams that would never be fulfilled. And there was another complication. Every time she spent any of the money on anything, she felt enormously guilty. To exchange a life of thrift for one of financial independence had been possible only through Allan’s death, a tragic irony.
Most of us dream about having more money, but we have mixed emotions when the money is tied to death. We may feel good that our loved one cared for us and protected us, but it sometimes feels like tainted money, tough to enjoy when its origin is loss.
Many people have to find a way to make peace with this situation. Some do it by never spending the money. Others do it by spending it as quickly as possible. Still others spend it in a way that does some good in the world, understanding that although the sudden financial boon feels good, it is not a trade-off for loss. And then, many are not prepared to manage it, no matter if it is a fortune or enough for their day-to-day bills.
Lamar always handled the finances in the family. After he died, his wife, Hanna, had no idea how to write a check. In her grief, she did not want to learn about deposits, checks, automatic bill payments. She said, “Nothing is really automatic if I don’t know what I am doing. The last time I dealt with money, I put a paycheck in the bank and wrote out a check for rent and lights. Now I’ve got a notice ‘the automatic debit was not honored and the money had been reversed.’ I had no idea what any of it meant.”
Hanna’s story is common when one person in the family takes responsibility for the finances. No matter how hard or simple the money matters are, if you are not used to doing it, it is just one more thing that makes loss harder to take and grief longer to heal. Even if they had been doing the finances all along, many have shared how they had a tougher time after they suffered a loss, since they felt more alone in their financial world. In the past, if anything went wrong moneywise, at least they were not alone. Now they have no partner and it’s completely up to them.
Meg and her husband, Dale, were determined to beat his cancer. Despite the prognosis from the community hospital, they decided to go to a well-known cancer clinic in New York, where Dale spent two months in expensive treatments. When their money ran out, they traveled to Mexico for alternative treatments, refusing to give up. They even cashed in Dale’s life insurance policy, hoping and praying to save his life, but it didn’t work.
When Dale died, Meg was so broke, she had to borrow money for the funeral and file for bankruptcy. Her grief was compounded by her new world, which did not include her husband or any resources, for that matter. But she took comfort in the knowledge that she had done everything possible for her husband.
Death can give focus to what money can and cannot buy. It can teach us what being rich is all about. We learn that no amount of money can ever replace the loss of someone we love.
Suzette knew from the day she married Jason that his parents did not like her. They had hoped their son, a stockbroker, would marry a financial equal, but Suzette, a teacher, did not come from money. During the next twenty-two years, the family were cordial and even nice at times, which led Suzette to believe that they had finally accepted her.
When Jason had a stroke, she left her teaching career to care for him for the next two years until he died. After the funeral, she went back to her hometown for a week to be with her family, but when she returned, she discovered that most of the furnishings in her house had been removed, even the curtains. She was calling the police when her mother-in-law showed up with a trust deed in hand.
“Most of these pieces were family heirlooms,” she said, “but you can have the ‘other stuff.’ ”
“What other stuff?” asked Suzette. “You took the bed we slept in every night of our lives together.”
“Well,” said the mother-in-law brusquely, “it’s a very important antique that belongs in the family.”
Suzette had thought she was family by then. Now, not only had she lost her husband, she also felt betrayed by those she had long considered family. She realized their opinion of her had never changed after all those years. She spent the next few years fighting over the trust. Unfortunately we have heard many such stories about how the funeral arrangements have barely been made when someone swoops in and makes sure the will gets read and the finances distributed.
Grief is a time when we try to find our wholeness again after all has been lost. But finances can often create a distraction from the grieving process. It’s better to let those financial disagreements go and just focus on healing. We understand this is not very practical and it is hard to let go of finances, since they often symbolize family, union, togetherness, and a piece of all that has been ripped apart. In many cases, since money means survival, it’s hard to grieve when you’re not sure you can pay the rent. But grief is a sad, soft spot we must fall into for our healing to begin. If you are in a defensive mode because of money, no matter what the circumstances, it is hard to find that soft spot.
Wealth and poverty are states of mind. Many people without money feel wealthy, while many rich people can feel poor. Death is a factor that changes all our views as we are forced to evaluate our worth and what ultimately matters in life.
Length of life is one of the ways we measure our time on earth. If your loved one died young, you may feel that the death was premature, that their life was unlived. If your loved one died in midlife, you see someone who did not reach her prime or someone who left without the retirement he was promised. An older person may have had a long life, but it still feels as if it wasn’t long enough. For some, many years provided a full life, they may have lived to ninety-eight, but they didn’t have quality of life for the last few years. There is every conceivable feeling in between for every possible age at death.
In the early 1980s, in a cystic fibrosis unit of a children’s hospital, the average life span was sixteen years if you were lucky. It was easy to look at these kids and say, “How sad they’re missing out on sixty years of life.” But for the patients, this had always been the reality. They grew up with this truth; they led full lives and some married at twelve, which makes sense if you know you’ll most likely be dead at sixteen. They were raised with the harsh reality that they needed only two ingredients for a complete life: birth and death. They did their best to have as complete a life as possible in the years they were given.
The rest of us, on the other hand, require many other necessary ingredients for a full life: college, work, marriage, home, cars, vacations, grandkids, retirement, and old age. To think of having anything less seems a tragedy for most of us. And no matter how much time someone had, no matter how full the life was, it is still a deep loss for us.
For you as the one left behind, your age is also a factor. There is no denying that for the most part, the longer we’ve lived, the more experiences with loss we have had. Of course there are many exceptions, but more years in the world also provides us with deeper experiences of support systems, problem solving, and emotional maturity, things we didn’t have in place when we were younger.
A younger person grieves differently from an elderly one, for many reasons. They have more life in front of them, they have to get back to school, back to work, and maybe back to their own children. Younger people have to get back out into the world, because they still have lives to build and experiences to have.
Becky was devastated when her sister died in college. She felt as if her world had collapsed, but she carried on, never forgetting when her sister would have graduated and what she might have become.
Becky finished school, started her career, got married, and had kids of her own. When her daughter started college and turned twenty-one, Becky saw things differently. “I suddenly realized how young my sister was,” she said, “and how huge her death was. I see it so differently with a daughter the same age. I grieved at that time, but I didn’t get it fully. I just didn’t realize that for the rest of my life, I would never have a sister again. She would never do all the things I would go on to do. There would be no career for her, no marriage, and no kids.
“How could I know that when I was in my twenties? Death was a tragic event, but I had no idea I had only touched the surface of my grief. I only saw what I lost at the time. I didn’t understand what she lost. Now that I am in my fifties, I realize how young she was when she died, it being almost thirty years ago now.”
An older person in retirement may have more time to think about the loss. They may feel less need to rejoin the world, thinking that they have already seen and done enough. They may have fewer years in front of them and less desire to fill those years with new experiences. This may lead to depression in many cases, while in others it can result in more contentment with what is left.
How we deal with our grief also reflects how our loved one dealt with death. When Blair was dying at seventy-nine years old, her daughter asked, “Mom, are you afraid?”
“Years ago,” she told her daughter, “I might have been afraid, but now, I know so many more people who have died than I do people alive. Most of my friends are now dead. I figure if death is nothingness, I won’t be dealing with anything. But if there is an afterlife I’ll see all the people I love and miss. Wherever I will be, I’m sure I won’t be alone, and in time, I know I’ll see you again.”
As sad as she was, Blair helped her daughter to feel comforted in her grief. She was able to picture her mother seeing her own parents again as well as so many other family members and friends. When we are older, we may fear death less. Sometimes, the absence of fear mixed with the hopes of reuniting with loved ones who have passed connects to those in grief on some level and provides comfort.
When someone dies in their twenties or thirties, we grieve not only for the person but for the years unlived, for all that might have been but wasn’t. We feel cheated. But when an older person dies after living a full life, we are generally more comfortable with their passing. Their advanced age makes us feel that they lived a natural life span and things are more in order. For example, President Ronald Reagan’s death felt very different from President John Kennedy’s death, because of their ages at the time of death and the latter’s being assassinated. If John Kennedy had died at age eighty-seven of an illness rather than a gunshot, we may have felt the loss but not the accompanying suffering over a life being cut short.
Old age in many ways cushions us in grief, prepares us, and helps us deal with loss. Young age complicates our grieving by increasing our sense of unfairness. We all believe we should die old, not young. This is why we see a different face of grief as we ourselves age.
Dictionaries describe closure as the “act of closing or the state of being closed; a bringing to an end, a conclusion.” In Gestalt psychology it is the “tendency to create ordered and satisfying wholes.”
If you look back at the origins of the word, closure comes from an old Latin source meaning “closing the gap between two things”—or to enclose so as not to disturb your neighbors. But in modern society, where grief disturbs our neighbors who want to fix and heal us so they don’t have to feel their own grief, closure has taken on the clichéd meaning of “wrapping up a situation.” We are pressured to find closure on the work situation, the romantic relationship, and even on a death. But how do we find an ending on a process that encompasses the integration and healing not only of a loss but of a person whom we deeply loved?
When we speak about grief, there are two closures that come to mind. The first is the unrealistic wrap-up we expect after a loss. It has become an added burden not just to mourn and grieve the loss, but to find that closure and find it quick so you can move on.
The second kind of closure involves doing things that help put the loss in perspective, such as reviewing what happened and why—or looking for missing pieces of the stories and filling in the gaps. It can range from finding the killer of a loved one to finding a way to say good-bye after a loved one died at the end of a long struggle with illness.
John’s birthdays were always big celebrations, mainly because his mother’s two best friends’ children also had July birthdays. Every year there was a joint party for all, and they loved the idea of doing it all at once. In a year or so, their parents knew that each kid would want a separate celebration, but for now it worked for everyone.
One particular July when it was exceptionally hot, they decided on a pool party. The pool was wall-to-wall kids, who were splashing, cavorting, screaming, and playing. Five-year-old birthday boy Johnny put his left foot in the water, descended the steps into the pool, silently walked in, and kept walking until he was completely underwater. In a few minutes, when his mother, Gwen, saw that he was gone, she frantically cleared everyone out of the water. There was Johnny, on the bottom of the pool, not breathing. The paramedics could not revive him, and his mother kept muttering and repeating, “I was right there. I never heard a thing. He didn’t call for help or anything.” The paramedics explained that as adults we scream when we drown, but kids often just drown silently and go under without even knowing how to fight.
For the next three years, Gwen talked with everyone who had been at the party, all of whom reassured her that she had been a good mother, that it had happened in a second. By the fifth year, she was still talking about it, and her friends felt it was time to find “closure.”
Gwen, however, was baffled by the notion. “How do I find closure for such a tragedy? Every morning I wake up and think, ‘Today my child would be ten and in the fourth grade.’ How do I find an action that will put this to rest? How long am I allowed for a child that I loved for five years? Can I get an extension because it was an accident?”
In the loss of a young loved one such as Johnny, people may oversimplify the stages. We expect six months of denial, then a few months of anger and depression, followed by some bargaining. Finally we expect to find acceptance, which we imagine will lead to some type of “closure.” It’s never as easy as items on a checklist. Real life and real grief are never as neat and tidy as that. Many believe that after the death of a child, there is no closure.
Gwen will never find a defining act that will place Johnny in her past. He will never be behind her as if he moved out of the house. He will always be a part of her past and will live in her heart, which makes the concept of closure unrealistic. Gwen survived, and she and her husband had other children, but she never closed the door on Johnny. Instead, she learned to live with a permanent hollowness in her heart. She realized that the only acceptance she could find was that death had happened and that she would develop ways to live with it. But for Gwen, “closure” will never come.
When we approach closure as the actions we take to put loss in perspective, it can be a big help with filling in the gaps. Mary was shocked to get a call that her fifty-year-old husband had suddenly died of a heart attack. She consented to an autopsy, and after a few months, she decided to study the autopsy report. She pored over every detail, looking up every word and medical term she did not understand. Her friends couldn’t comprehend why she was being what they called “macabre.”
“Understanding what happened,” she said, “helps me fill in the gaps; those empty spaces of ‘how and why’ have some answers now. Nothing will bring him back, but now I have a sense of finality about what happened to his circulatory system. Now I can begin to deal with my own heart.”
It is not uncommon for people to order autopsy reports to find out exactly what happened. If they lost a loved one to murder, there often is no rest until the killer is found. Even then, there is often no closure.
Some people, though, find a way to turn their grief into something meaningful for others. When Candy Lightner lost her child to a drunk driving accident, she used her rage to help found the organization MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. John Walsh, of the TV show America’s Most Wanted, used his grief after the murder of his young son to help find other missing children.
No matter how you work at feeling your feelings fully, you never really find the closure that you hear about or see in movies. But you do find a place for loss, a way to hold it and live with it.
We have often spoken about unfinished business with the dying as they try to die knowing they did the best they could, but no one gets to finish everything. The dying ultimately must accept that their lives are now complete just as they are. In grieving we mistakenly think we can finish everything, but grief is not a project with a beginning and an end. It is a reflection of a loss that never goes away. We simply learn to live with it, both in the foreground and in the background. Where grief fits in our lives is an individual thing, often based on how far we have come in integrating the loss.
We have never asked anyone, “Have you found closure?” and found that they responded with a solid yes. The concept refers to bringing some thing to a close, like a misunderstanding, a project, or a school year.
You don’t ever bring the grief over a loved one to a close.