Coping with grief

I am a counselor at the Toronto West Detention Center and I am on call when an inmate requests that I have a one-to-one talk with him. On March 4th I met with one of the inmates whose father passed away three days earlier. What follows is a document I gave him prior to our meeting so that he could study it in detail after he returned to his cell.

All of us at some time or another have lost a loved one; be it a parent, a spouse, a child, a sibling, a relative, a friend or even a pet. Grieving over the loss of a loved one is a natural phenomenon that all of us must bear at some time or another in our lifetimes.

Losing someone or something you love is very painful. Loss that goes unacknowledged or unattended can result in more suffering. But grief that is expressed and experienced has a potential for healing that eventually can strengthen and enrich life. There is no right or wrong way to grieve --- but there are ways to make your grieving more complete and more positive.

When someone close to you dies, you don’t just lose that person on the physical level, you also face the loss on an emotional level. Your pain can involve missing that person’s presence: sleeping in a bed that’s half empty, craving a scent or an embrace or simply having a conversation with that person. But knowing that your loved one will miss all of the milestones in your life often lasts longer than the pain of the physical absence. This may include the children that are yet to be born, the trips not yet taken, weddings not danced at --- every life marker can be a reminder and an occasion for renewed grief.

With some, the loss is greater than it is with others. It depends entirely on our relationship with the deceased. The closeness of the relationship — spouse, parent, sibling, child — plays a role, of course. In the case of a blood relative, another factor is whether the person was a daily or regular presence in your life. Then there’s the psychological nature of the relationship: was it smooth or rocky? If you had unfinished emotional business with the person you lost, if your last interaction was angry, that can intensify your experience of grief. This is why the old adage about not going to bed angry has such meaning. The next morning, may be too late to apologize and make up.

When my 91-year-old mother was in a hospital suffering from a stroke, I stopped flying across the country to visit her because I was told by her friends that she no longer remembered who she was or who her friends were. I figured that she wouldn’t remember even me.

But then, I remembered that my grandfather suffered a stroke when I was a child and he too couldn’t talk. But I sensed that he understood what was going on because he was crying when my mother told him that she and my brother and I were leaving Toronto to go to British Columbia to live. He knew that he would never see us again. That was in 1941. I still get choked up when I try to tell anyone about that event in my life.

With this in mind, I phoned my mother and first spoke with the nurse. She promised to stay next to my mother so that I could learn how my mother reacted to my phone call. The phone call lasted twenty minutes. I told her as much as I could about my own family and how much we all loved her. Then I said goodbye to her. There was no response. The nurse came onto the line and said that as soon as my mother heard my voice, she was all smiles while I was talking to her. She understood what I was saying; she simply couldn’t speak. Three weeks later, she died.

Had I not made that call, I would have hated myself and my grief would have lasted far longer than it normally would. I miss my mother but her passing was easier for me to accept because of that phone call I made to her just before she died.

It’s essential that you have people in your life who will help sustain you emotionally as you grieve. It’s also important that your friends and family take your loss as seriously as you do. If you lose a cousin or friend who was more like a sibling, your grief shouldn’t be dismissed as less important than that of an immediate relative.

Don’t be ashamed when tears are in your eyes. It’s a normal reaction to grief. Don’t even be ashamed when you are crying for that too is a normal reaction to grief.While the sense of loss and the intermittent sadness may never go away completely, people experience the cycle of grief differently. Some find that within a few weeks or months the period between waves of distress lengthens, and they are able to feel peace, renewed hope, and enjoy life more and more of the time. Others may face years of being hit with what feels like relentless waves of grief.

While many cultures mourn differently, the mourning processes usually have common ideals: acknowledging and accepting the death, saying farewell, grieving for a specific time period, and some means for continuing to honor the deceased. And finally, mourners are encouraged to move beyond their loss and form new attachments.

Different cultures often define what is appropriate behavior for various family members, as well as the role of children during the mourning process. Often the length of our grief depends on what we are doing with our lives following the death of a loved one.

The single most important factor in healing from loss is having the support of other people. Even if you aren’t comfortable talking about your feelings under normal circumstances, it is important to talk about them when you’re grieving. Knowing that others know and understand your grieving will make you feel better, less alone with your pain, and will help you heal.

Let people who care about you take care of you, even if you take pride in being strong and self-sufficient. Especially when you live away from your family; true friends can offer shoulders for you to cry on until you begin to recover. It is a strange quirk in life that when grief is shared with others, the pain is easier to cope with. Although your friends won’t suffer the loss that you are suffering from, they will help you with your burden.

Wherever the support comes from, accept it and do not grieve alone. One of the key elements of healthy grieving is allowing your emotions to surface in order to get past them. Trying to suppress your feelings in the hope that they’ll fade with time won’t work in the long run. Blocking the grieving process will delay or disable your ability to eventually recovery.

Remember that eventually, your grief will pass as you move on with your life. Despite that, remembering your loved ones that have passed as they were when you shared your life with them, will continue to bring you joy until it is your turn to be mourned by those who love you and cherish your friendship.