LOSS, BEREAVEMENT and GRIEF have as many forms as life has faces. Sudden loss brings shock. Long, drawn-out loss brings exhaustion. Loss changes the expectations of daily life. It brings disbelief and despair.
Divorce, a wayward child, loss of a job, and the finality of death – these events are earthquakes. They upend our expectations of how our life should be.
Grieving may be open and vocal. It may be silent and withdrawn. It always hurts.
Losing a child, whether by separation or death, is a cliff dropping off right before us. Losing a spouse or a close friend is calling into a dark, empty well. Losing a parent is facing our own, naked mortality.
Moving on after a loss to death feels ugly, unfair, like a betrayal of the one we loved. The grief is unbearable, but it is all we have of the one we love. We suffer, and it feels that we should suffer.
The time does come when we cannot go on living in constant pain. We need to find other ways to fill the emptiness.
So what is the best way for coping with loss and grief? We need new routines, new roles, and new interactions. We need to redirect our energy to living in the here and now. In some cases we can share the gifts that once stayed between us and those we lost. We need to make use of our memories and our growth, to make them count in today’s world.
When that happens, the losses become part of our strength. We become different and better people for our experiences, the good and the bad. We cope with grief by learning to tap into our greater empathy and understanding of ourselves, our lives, and of others.
RESOURCES:
- A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis
- Dying with Dignity Canada, https://www.dyingwithdignity.ca/
- Healing After Loss, by Martha Whitmore Hickman
- Hospice, hospiceniagara.ca.
- How to Go on Living When Someone You Love Dies, by Therese Rando
- Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl
- On Death and Dying, by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
- The Grief Recovery Handbook, by John W. James & Russell Friedman
- When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold Kushner
- Who Dies?, by Stephen and Ondrea Levine