According to David Kessler, the grief expert, grief needs to be witnessed before real healing can begin.
Don’t take advice from family and friends who haven’t been through this ordeal. You know more about grief than they do. They think they’re helping by offering words of comfort like, you’ll get over it, time’s a great healer, everything happens for a reason, at least they had a good life, they are in a better place or at least you had the time you did. What they don’t realise is that your wounds are so deep that words can’t reach them. Words of comfort, no matter how well intentioned, are empty. They don’t make the pain go away. Nothing fills the space that person held in your life. The only words you want to hear are, I don’t know what to say, I don’t have the words, I don’t even know if there are any right words. I don’t know what your path is going to be like, but I do know you’re not going to walk it alone. I’m going to be here with you. If you want to be angry, be angry. If you want to be sad, be sad. If you want to be stuck, be stuck. I’m here with you.
You need a safe space and someone who will just sit with you and listen. Not for them to offer words to fix, judge or advise but just to have a sanctuary that allows you to say the honest, or even shocking things, that need to be said. You need someone to understand how painful it is to lose someone you love and the reason it hurts so much is because it mattered. The pain is so intense because the love was so intense. You need them to know just how heart-breaking it to set a table for one and sit across from an empty chair. How soul destroying it is to reach for their hand in bed and grab nothing but a cold sheet. How brutal it is to walk into a room and instinctively call out their name and realise no one will ever answer again. How hard it is to hear a song they loved and feel your chest tighten because you can’t turn and say this was your favourite. It’s missing them so much it physically hurts. It’s sitting in the stillness, crying and admitting this broke me. It’s longing for just one more conversation, one more touch, one more hug, one more kiss or one more smile. It’s the daily struggle of living without the one person you can’t live without. It’s the sheer effort of pretending to be normal when you feel so broken, so alone and so weary. It’s understanding that sometimes the pain, sorrow and despair feel like the safest place because that’s where you feel closest to the one you lost.
Thank you, lovely words and so true. The pain of the loss we all feel is a deep wound and I don’t think it will ever heal. I like David Kessler, he talks a lot of sense on this subject.
So true that grief needs to be witnessed. I wish my family cared to even ask how I am, I’m almost 6 months from the loss of my husband and 1 sister and 2 brothers haven’t contacted me this year at all. Apparently I’m ‘too cross’ and have said they’ll just stay away from me. I don’t know how they came up with the idea that I’m cross, as they haven’t bothered to speak to me. As if anger isn’t a huge part of grief! Some day they’ll experience loss too, but I won’t be offering any sympathy.
Thankfully I have one lovely sister in France who always looks out for me, and a couple of good friends. But you really find out who is there for you.
Like many things in life the real battle goes on in our minds. I’ve know idea if this battle we will be the one I lose but it is certainly the worst. It makes you realise just how precious love is, something to be valued in all it’s manifestations and how small acts of kindness can have a profound effect.
Wishing you both the best
Tom
Maybe it’s because we put on our brave faces, we don’t want to burden the ones we love with our sadness.
At times I’d love to talk about my husband, I try too with our grandchildren. I don’t want him forgotten but there is never a response. Maybe like me they are protecting themselves or worried I’ll get upset.
The British stiff upper lip, I think that’s why so many need counselling. We’ve no one to talk too.
Hi Helen, the only person I’ve had contact with since my wife died is my wife’s aunt so there isn’t anyone at home just me. At least for me it’s going to have to be a one man job.
All the best
Tom
We are here Tom, not the same I know but at least we understand.
It’s too blooming cold out today, hope it’s warmer where you are.
Jane is painting (she’s very good) so I’m going to try and read one of her books. I used to read a lot but since losing Stephen I don’t seem to be able to concentrate.
I think Kessler is saying that it is cathartic to have our grief witnessed. We should keep reaching out until we find someone who can listen to us talk about our pain.
This is what David Kessler says about anger and grief. You might find it helpful.
There’s so much anger and a feeling of unfairness when it comes to grief or loss. This isn’t fair, this shouldn’t have happened, this didn’t happen to that person, why did it happen to me? Grief and anger tend to travel together.
Anger is an expression of pain. When we get bad news, people often have one of two responses; we either sit and cry or we get angry. We rush over to the person who sits and cries; we hug them, we give them tissues and say we’re here for you. When you get angry, people just say handle your anger issues first and then we’ll talk to you. People treat you like a porcupine, but you’re in just as much pain as those who sit and cry. It looks like you’re in rage, but you’re really in pain. Try to hug the porcupine; it’s a hard thing to do, but the porcupine needs a hug as much as anyone. Even though they seem to want everyone to back off, they still need a hug, and they will melt if you give them one.
Now, here’s the problem. So many of us have unhealthy anger from old wounds and trauma. We don’t know how to distinguish between that anger and the healthy anger that grief can produce. So, we need to identify the healthy anger of grief and learn how to express it.
How do you express healthy anger?
Hit a pillow, scream in your car, exercise, run; do whatever it takes. You don’t want to keep it in; you need to let it out.
Hi Wilson
Everyone has different ways of dealing with the pain of bereavement. Everyone has had a different life and a different death of their partner. How your life has been will without doubt change how grieve. I for one have always felt that things can get worse. Things shape us and I will always remember my cousin dying of cancer when he was seven after suffering all his life. So being with a such beautiful person as my wife for more than 40 years has been a blessing. Other people in my situation may think that they have been robbed of 20 or 30 years with their loved one.
I always have present in my mind an aunt from my wife who got cancer at 67, she turned on God and became very bitter. I only hope she came to terms with her lot in her final moments.
There are such horrific things that happen on a daily basis around the world yet we don’t often realise how lucky we are. I know I have been very fortunate to have had shared my life with a lovely woman and I know there are so many people on this site who have had much worse experiences than me.
Tom
The best advice I got was the blunt truth, from my boss. Having been through multiple family bereavements himself, he warned me several times that the road ahead was going to be a brutally tough one, how the death admin would be difficult, and it may take time to recover from the grief. He’s the best manager ever!
That in itself was acknowledgment of the grieving process.
I’ve yet to tell him about my partner, terminally diagnosed just a week after my Dad’s funeral.
I’ve noticed friends are really getting avoidy talking about my partner, either met with silence or changing the subject as they know, a) both parents passed away a very short time ago, and b) it will be my second partner to go. Only a couple of family members and an overseas friend (recently widowed herself) are still open/brave about talking.
Honestly, soon to be three passings back to back, I wouldn’t even know what to say to someone like myself either!
Even a doctor at a check up accidentally swore out loud when I told her. She was lovely, supportive, and very uplifting too (only went to get my blood pressure done lol! Shockingly, in normal range!?)
Anger.. a lady at our bereavement journey meeting was heartbroken like all of us on here and the other day couldn’t get her printer to work and she tried for an age to no avail.
She told us she completely lost it and battered the printer, throwing it and kicking and yelling at the darn thing , then she broke down, lay on the bed, fell asleep and woke feeling as though her anger at her hubby leaving her and her children and the fact the hospital weren’t able to save him had been released and she actually felt some peace…
She wouldn’t advocate battering a printer but that release helped her..
Oh how true your words are. People don’t understand and actually don’t want to. Most of my friends have drifted away and I have no family. I’ve had to try and create a whole new circle of people not easy! I’ve become fairly insular and the old me was such a happy person. Never thought at my age I would be like this. But I’ve come to realise people like this don’t matter to be honest. They will walk this path too one day. So just keep moving forward day by day. God bless x
A great post! This may be the wrong place to explain this, but here goes. Found my wife dead, it will be one year April 14th. I’ve since shut the world out, for many reasons, I’m doing this alone. Needed a little financial help in the beginning, asked my mother and got a cold response, panicked and got a small amount of money using my grown sons name, he wanted to put me in federal prison, even my ex called, out of the blue to twist the knife. I’ve cut them all out of my life!!! I’m not mad, just don’t want to see or talk to them. I’m beyond lonely and trying not to hate the world!
Hi Karen, I think a lot of us were looking forward to a time when we could slow down and enjoy life after a life of work only to find ourselves distraught and in pain with less resources, companionship and love to combat it.
Wishing you all the best
Tom
I’ve broken today. I do try and keep going but this morning I just couldn’t do it. Booked an Uber and back to my daughter’s. Last night was so awful, hardly any sleep missing Stephen so much. It’s right what people say, you learn to put on a brave face but miss them more as time goes on.
I’ll keep moving, keep plodding on but in the middle of the night I can’t help wondering why I bother x
Dear Helen, you are doing a lot on your own with the house etc it must make it very difficult for you especially when all these things would have been done as a couple. I hope that when you can put this behind you, you’ll be able to gain a little peace and feel better.
Wishing you all the best
Tom
