Living Beyond Loss

“I feel as though my life has ended too,” the recent widow said. “It takes all my strength just to get out of bed in the morning.”

Most of us would agree that this woman is not really living. Yet her story is duplicated countless times around the world in people who have suffered the death of an important person in their lives.

The power of grief takes many of us by surprise. After all, we live in a take-a-pill society in which we expect there to be a quick cure for anything that hurts. Have a headache? Take a pill. Grieving the loss of a loved one? Take an antidepressant (or stay busy, have a drink, refuse to think about it). Unfortunately, the advice we most often receive following the death of a loved one doesn't work any more than an aspirin would help if the headache is caused by a tumor. The cause of the pain needs to be addressed or it won't go away.

In terms of grief, the bad news and the good news is the same. The bad news is that grief hurts ~ a lot. The good news is that, if we allow ourselves to feel what we feel and express those emotions, we will heal from them. The sad fact is that, if we bury grief feelings, they stay inside us indefinitely, causing unwanted damage to our physical and emotional health.

Take Emily, for example. She sought counseling when, following the death of her husband of 46 years, she found herself seriously suicidal. But, as she explained to her therapist, her desperation was not over her husband's death. Instead, her pain stemmed from the fact that, at the age of seven, she'd been sexually abused. Emily told no one, simply held the pain and the shame within her for 63 years. With the stress of her husband's illness and death, she no longer had the strength to hold those powerful grief feelings down. They burst upon her with a fury, nearly causing her own death. Interestingly enough, it took only a few months of counseling for her to deal with her childhood trauma and move on to grieving her husband's death. Eventually, freed of the shackles of ungrieved losses, Emily was able to move on, making new friends and even finding love again. She truly was able to live beyond her loss.

The bottom line is that the techniques our society uses to avoid grief simply don't work. Grief waits for us; for a year, for ten years or, as in Emily's case, for 63 years; until we can no longer hold it down or run from it.

So what do we need to do to heal from the loss of a loved one? First of all, we need to recognize that the loss is real. This sounds odd but the reality is that, when someone important first dies, we are in shock, even if we knew the death was coming. Actually, this shock is helpful. It muffles our feelings until we can get the funeral, financial issues and family needs out of the way. It becomes a problem when we try to extend this period by staying constantly busy, pretending that George is on an extended hunting trip or burying our feelings under a blanket of pills or alcohol.

Next, we must allow ourselves to experience and express our feelings. This is social work-eze for letting the tears, anger and fears fly. This is the time when we are allowed to be angry with the person who died, the doctors and with God (He understands). We are allowed to burst into tears in the candy aisle of the store because, “Dad sure loved those chocolate covered cherries!” And it is perfectly fine to keep all the lights all night because we aren't used to being alone. There is no one way to get the feelings out. We can talk, cry, keep a journal or build bird houses for Mom's feathered friends. The important thing is getting the painful feelings out without hurting ourselves or others.

Along the way, we learn more about ourselves and our loved ones. We discover skills we didn't know we had, feelings we didn't know existed and, eventually, a future kissed by the love of the person who died. We discover how to live beyond our losses.