Grey’s Anatomy Faces Grief

I don’t know if you watched the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy last Thursday, if not I’m sure you can watch the replay online.

It was a wonderful episode on how individual the grieving process is for everyone.  Many of the characters went through disbelief, denial, anger and even laughter.  I don’t think the episode ended in acceptance because that takes time and my hope is that the series writers will continue to shine a light on the grief journey the characters will continue to experience and how their lives will be changed.

As you and I well know, this journey takes time and the experience isn’t the same for any of us.  Our grief  is different depending on the relationship we shared with the person who passed as well as other factors.  I bring up this episode because I am thrilled that grief was talked about so openly, and I hope it will encourage both the mourners and the supports to speak openly about death and the grieving process rather than sweep it under a carpet as our society is so quick to do.

Unfortunately our society in general wants us to buck up and get over it!   Isn’t it ironic that we give 6 to 8 weeks paid family leave following the birth of a child but in the case of a close family members death,  our employers might give us a couple of days off for a funeral , and  family leave often  leaves grievers out in the cold to deal with their grief on their own time.

If any of you watched the episode, would love to read your coments on how they handled the topic of grief.

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No Need to Grieve Alone

Last week my friend Pam was faced with the two year anniversary of her husband Denny’s death and she didn’t want to do it alone. She had asked our mutual friend Linda and myself to accompany her to light a candle at church in his memory and to share a meal with her which we did to celebrate Denny’s life.

I was proud of Pam for asking for what she needed, and that was the support of friends who understood her loss, which both Linda and I did after losing our significant others and to not be alone.
Often grief can be isolating and we feel like we have to cry and grieve alone. If you are reading this and grieving loss you will understand when I say that after a relatively short period of public mourning most people think you should have gotten over it and moved on and can’t imagine why you would be grieving two years later. Those of us on this journey through grief know this is not true. Grief takes time and grief takes work, grief can be a roller coaster of emotions and no one knows this journey until they reach it themselves.

“One of the most important factors in healing from loss is having the support of other people, sharing your loss makes the burden of grief easier to carry. Wherever the support comes from, accept it and do not grieve alone.”

Pam, Linda and I became friends as a result of our losses. We have been able to support one another because our losses were all years apart and our stages of grief have been different. We are able to share, support and provide strength and hope for the future.

If you are unable to find your own support group whether it be a professional grief group or group of family or friends, here are some links that may offer help;
Widow Match
Grief Share

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Thoughts on Change

This week while riding my bike I got to thinking about the word change and how it affects all of us who grieve loss.

Change is inevitable, just as death is an inevitable part of life, but as I rode on through the beautiful bike trails around my home I wondered how do we accept or embrace change when it isn’t a change we ever wanted and in some cases change we didn’t expect to happen?

Here are a few thoughts I came up with;

- we usually sit in fear of the unknown, which is when the change is unexpected or unwanted (surrender to the unknown, even if you have to force yourself)

- fear can paralyze us from moving (so do what you know how to do today and tomorrow the next step will be given)

- change is uncomfortable (so breathe your way through it, yes lots of deep breaths, be conscience of letting go of fear)

- Surrender to the fear, doubt and change ( out of surrender will come grace & a new you)

- Sometimes change just requires some faith in knowing everything will be alright (this doesn’t mean you forget,  faith just asks that we believe in something greater than ourselves and our fear)

“Life is change – Growth is optional – Choose Wisely.” – Karen Kaiser Clark

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Giving Grief Its Due

Just days before my fiftieth birthday last  April, my beloved dog Tanner became gravely ill. He was diagnosed with a rare, terminal condition and died in June.

My friend Suzy helped me bury Tanner in my backyard, right by some special lilies I’d planted in memory of my husband. Adam also had died of a rare illness, a relatively rare bone marrow cancer called Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia, in May 2003.

In between losing Adam and Tanner, I lost my mother, as well, to complications from strokes she suffered at a family reunion on a beach in Maine in August 2005.

With three major deaths in five years, my grief has been profound. Sometimes it seems endless. And because these deaths occurred in such a relatively short stretch of time, just as the pain was beginning to soften from one loss, the next loved one died.

Yet for all the sorrow that has been telescoped into these last few years, I’ve come to appreciate the wisdom of giving grief its due.

Grieving takes time. Grieving takes energy. Grieving takes courage.

I have been amazed at grief’s power to affect every part of my being-physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

In early grief, an extreme fatigue wraps around me like a blanket I cannot throw off.  Some days, I crawl right back into bed after having just eaten breakfast.

Sleep doesn’t necessarily bring respite. The tears flow even then. And my loss seems even louder as evening comes and the quiet magnifies the emptiness.

The simplest chores take Herculean effort. The figures in my checkbook just won’t balance. Items I never misplace disappear into thin air. My words sputter and stop mid-sentence.

“Grief takes up a lot of space in my head,” I try to explain to friends.  It’s the only way to depict how my brain wrestles with a reality so devastating that it seems incomprehensible-that my loved one no longer breathes on this earth.

And my heart? Who knew it could break so many times and so sharply and into so many pieces? And that emotional pain creates a fatigue that surpasses my extreme physical exhaustion.

Contrary to popular myths, I don’t “get over” my grief in a week or two, after a month, or even following a year of first anniversaries.

But thanks to hospice bereavement groups, some wonderful books and friends who’ve walked through loss ahead of me, I’ve learned to live with grief as best as I can. I slog through it, in fits and starts, in bewilderment and clarity, in sorrow and in grace.

It is a much longer, harder process than popular modern culture would have us believe. It feels that as a society, we’ve lost touch with the wisdom and rituals and reality of death that our ancestors understood.

The difficult truth is that the healing comes through the grieving. The respite after the tears. My laughter is jumbled in with my sorrow. The same poignant memories that stab with heart-aching longing also hold the warm, soothing comfort that eventually flows.

Gradually, very gradually, over months and years, the gratitude for the life we shared takes up more space than the grief. It is hard work to heal. Personally, I don’t “get over” my loss. Why would I want to get over a love so sweet and maddening and dear?

I do, however, learn to live with the loss, to move forward in my life, in what friends call a “new normal.” And I’m let in on one of humankind’s deepest and, in this culture’s, often unspoken truths:  facing death changes life forever. How often we forget this reality. Yet how differently we might live, and treat others, when we remember.

Helene J. Powers, a freelance writer and educational consultant who lives in Florence, MA, contributes frequently to www.fiftyshift..com, where this essay first appeared.  She can be reached at hjpowers@verizon.net.

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