It should be fairly obvious to everyone that losing someone you love - a parent, sibling, partner or child - is one of the most traumatic things that can ever happen to you. Western society, in particular, finds itself very much at a loss in these circumstances. We have long since moved away from the Victorian approach to death. No one can tell that you're bereaved by the clothes that you wear, nor by your jewellery. The traditional mourning period of 'a year and a day' seems to strike modern society as excessive: Americans are given 3-4 days compassionate leave, and many people are startled to hear their doctors tell them that by the time six months has passed, they should be 'getting over it,' at least, if they have followed the neat Stages of Grief that have somehow become a prescriptive norm.
Bereaved people are thus doubly pressured. Not only has someone very close to them died, but they are expected to conform to the values that society has imposed upon them.
The following is an attempt to give an account of loss as it is, not as how it 'should' be.
I was widowed on Christmas Eve, 2002. My partner Charles died of a brain tumour: a secondary cancerous growth that had remained undiagnosed until a month before. He was 62; I am 38. We had been together for 15 years. I arranged and conducted the funeral myself, because I did not want him to have a bland ceremony in a dusty chapel of rest, with a service conducted by the minister of a God in which Charles did not believe, or by a person who had never met him. We held the funeral in an oriental bar in Brighton, buried Charles beneath a tree in the woodland cemetery that overlooks the Downs and the sea, and held a wake until past midnight.
Since then, I have not sought counselling, but have relied on friends, family, Druidry and an online support group (see end for details). This is partly a personal story, and partly relies upon the experience of others. I have concentrated upon widowhood, since that is my direct experience. I can only imagine what it must be like to lose a child, or to lose someone through violence or suicide: I would encourage people experiencing other types of loss to seek out those in a similar position. At the end of the day, true empathy is only possible between those who have been through similar experiences. Many people find that counselling is helpful - if you feel that you need it, don't be hesitant about seeking it out - or dropping it if it doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything. There are no band-aid solutions, but good grief counselling can be very useful.
When someone you love dies, whether from a long, lingering illness or an accident lasting no more than a few seconds, the body's natural response is to go into shock. You flood with adrenaline. You're able to do amazing things and you'll probably have to - there are a host of bureaucratic details to take care of. You may or may not cry - people who sit stony-faced through funerals are not cold-hearted or shallow, they are in shock. It can last for hours, days, or weeks, depending on your own nature and the manner in which you were bereaved. Shock is probably less intense if you've been nursing someone for an illness that lasts for years than if your loved one has been killed in an accident or through violence, or suicide, but it is still often present.
It's not a bad thing, because it carries you along, but it has unpleasant physical side-effects (see 'health') and it can make the world around you look very strange. When Charles died, my flat and the neighbourhood in which I live looked physically different: as though they had been placed at right angles to the way in which they normally were.
It's normal not to be able to take in the fact that the person has gone, even if you watched them die. It takes a long time to accept the fact of someone's death - this is not a rational process. Relatively few people seem to go into actual denial and pretend the death didn't happen, but it is entirely common to feel that the person will be coming back, that there has been some terrible mistake, or that they are 'just hiding'.
What to do: Don't worry about it. You are not going crazy or having a nervous breakdown. You are grieving. Shock will wear off, sometimes intermittently. Use it to do what you have to do, try to eat and sleep as well as you can (which is often extremely hard), and actively seek health. Talk to people about what has befallen you. Write things down, if you find it helps. I made a huge collage of photos from Charles' life for the funeral, then put them in an album. You need to recover the life that you had, if the death is not to overshadow it.
This is the more-or-less continual aspect of grief for the first few weeks at the very least and often a lot longer. This is the bit in 'Truly, Madly, Deeply' when Juliet Stevenson howls like a banshee. This is banging your head on the floor in hysterics, crying yourself to sleep, during meals, while brushing your teeth and while driving. It is grim. I had a nosebleed for a month after Charles died.
What to do: just do it. Go through it, and do exactly what you feel like doing as long as it doesn't involve serious self-harm. It is a lot better (not nicer, but better) in the long run to cry and cry and cry, rather than self-medicating or self-harming. If your doctor tells you that you are depressed, ask her which planet she comes from. Of course you're sad! (you may or may not be clinically depressed). If it's really preventing you from functioning in a major way for a lengthy period of time (not just a few days off work hiding under the blankets), then consider anti-depressants. But remember that you have a perfect right to be like this now, and if it embarrasses other people, that's their problem. Which brings us onto:
This was actually said to an acquaintance of mine at her husband's viewing. Don't expect people to comprehend it. There is a Gaelic saying: 'you cannot understand grief unless it has come to your door.' Some people are known on my support group as 'DGIs' (Don't Get It's). Common responses are:
"It could have been worse" (this to a woman whose husband died in a hijacked plane on 9/11). How, pray?
"At least he didn't suffer" - why did he have to suffer at all??
"You're young. You'll get over it/find someone else" - maybe so, but not helpful in one's current state.
"Aren't you over it yet?" (this to a man whose wife had died 2 months previously, leaving him with 2 small children).
Some folk, of course, will simply avoid the minefield of polite social discourse and cross over the road when they see you coming - it being well known that bereavement is catching, rather like leprosy.
What to do: None of this is your problem. You have enough to deal with without witless individuals making fatuous remarks. Smile from the teeth out, explain as patiently as possible that it can take an extremely long time to come to terms with a bereavement, or simply tell them where to go if that's what you feel like doing and you don't have to ever see them again. No one - but NO ONE - can tell you how you should feel or what you should do.
However, talking to sympathetic people is a great help. I talked about Charles' death ad nauseam for the first two or three weeks - after all, it was the most serious thing that had ever happened to me. Talking it through makes it real, fixes it in a particular context, and eventually you do actually become tired of discussing it and want to talk about something else. One of the worst things of all is when people pretend that nothing has really happened and that the subject should be avoided altogether, because they 'might upset the bereaved person.' The latter is already upset - big time.
Sometimes you just go blank and numb, for hours or days at a time. You don't feel anything. It's as though someone sneaked in during the night and ran off with your emotions.
What to do: don't worry about it. It's normal. Use it - at least it enables you to clean the house and feed the cat - as long as it lasts, because it won't last.
It's as though your brain knows how much woe you can handle, and doles it out in small packages. Sometimes, it seems to decide to just cut out and give you a rest.
However, don't pretend to feel fine if you don't. I'd rather walk down the street howling and telling concerned passers-by to sod off than grit my teeth and pretend to be wonderfully brave. Grief is not pretty and it shouldn't be.
For a long time, whenever the person in the flat downstairs opened his front door, something in me thought it was Charles coming home and I sat up like a dog. The places that you visited together, especially on a regular basis, are a horrible reminder of what you've lost. Particular times, items of furniture and songs are always rising up to smack you in the face with absence.
Significant dates - birthdays, anniversaries, dates of death - are dire. There is a general principle that anticipation is often worse than the actual event, but there is no easy way to get through these days except by trying to honour the person as much as possible.
What to do: people deal with this in different ways. They change their routines, they go to a different supermarket, they move (not recommended during the first year, but sometimes a serious drop in income means that you have no choice), they make small alterations to their home. On significant dates, hide if you have to, or go away. Ultimately, however, this is another thing that you can't do much about apart from live through it and hope it will improve. It will, but it's hard to believe that, sometimes.
It's also usual to feel that this isn't really your life. God knows what happened - perhaps you slid into a parallel dimension - but it takes a long time to come to terms with the fact that your old life and the normal you are gone. You have to find a new you and a new life. It's very, very hard, especially if you loved your old life with the person you've lost. You just want it back, and it's the one thing you can't have.
Asking 'why' is also common. This has never made sense to me - everyone dies - but it seems usual for people to wonder why the hell this terrible thing had to happen to them. This, too, is normal - it's the animal howl in the face of the implacable.
What to do: give it time. It slowly seems to fade. It is possible, but very difficult, to treat the loss as a challenge and use it to develop the sides of yourself that have lain dormant, or that you feel enhance your day to day existence.
This is an aspect of life in which spiritual beliefs become extremely important. How you regard death - as a shattering, nihilistic event which brings no hope and no comfort, or as part of a natural, cyclical order - changes how you deal with it, and so do beliefs in an afterlife. The principles of Druidry have proved extremely helpful in enabling me to deal with Charles' death, and so was the Irish belief in the 'mind-month', which is the month after the death of the person in which you are held to be in constant contact with them. Meditation, prayer, lighting candles and ritual are all extremely helpful.
This is a term among the online widowed community, but it applies equally to other kinds of bereavement. It refers to the cement-like mush to which your neural processes revert in times of extreme trauma or shock. Driving the wrong way down one-way streets, putting the kettle in the fridge, losing your keys nine times a day or trying to get into the wrong car - we've all been there, done that and seen the movie. Obviously it doesn't help, because it makes you feel like an idiot as well as being bereaved.
What to do: just don't berate yourself. You're going through hell - you're entitled to behave like a ditz occasionally.
However, it may be necessary to watch your back a little. The world is full of predators and there are some real horror stories about those who seek to take advantage of the bereaved. As a general rule, bereavement seems to bring out the best and the worst in people - the latter including close family members who, up until now, have been apparently kind and supportive. I was lucky, but others haven't been. Be a bit ruthless about telling people to back off, if necessary, and keep a close eye on your finances.
The capacity of the universe to dump stuff on you all at once is legendary. People who are bereaved find that trouble often comes in a great big package. In the two months after Charles' death I had, in chronological order:
What to do: just hang in there and try not to become too paranoid. It will stop. Eventually. A dark sense of humour helps: as they say, humour is the other side of anguish. Allow yourself some self pity. You've earned it.
Death makes a lot of people very angry. It doesn't matter how the person died - illness, accident, suicide. It is not rational, but it is natural, to be furious with the dead person for doing something so outrageous, and most of all for leaving you behind to pick up the pieces. I am in touch with people whose relatives died on 9/11, and they are furious at both relatives and the people who murdered them. It's normal.
What to do: don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't be angry. Don't try to deny it, or to hold onto it. Don't feel guilty about it. And - conversely - don't let grief counsellors tell you that anger is something you 'should' feel. I have never been angry at Charles for dying (though I am filled with wonder that he did something so bizarre) and many people just don't go through it. Neither anger, nor its lack, are unhealthy.
There is almost always something to feel guilty about - the last thing you said, or did not say, the treatment you obtained or did not obtain for the person, the arguments, the secrets, the resentments. Guilt can make a difficult process inordinately harder. It is a particular issue if someone has committed suicide.
What to do: you may have to learn to live with it. Try and be objective, however, and forgive yourself for the things that you really could not help.
Here, I myself am at a loss. I am not a parent and I do not know how one would go about telling a child that someone they loved has died. My own mother managed it very well when my grandmother died (I was about 9) by telling me in a matter-of-fact, undramatic way what had happened, and adding that it was fine to feel sad, but all was now well with my grandma. If the loss is more immediate, children seem to grieve in very different ways - this is why I would strongly recommend seeking out other parents on the various support networks and asking for advice if necessary.
Grief is an emotional and physical marathon. It can wreck your digestive system. It produces panic attacks - I had severe chest pains for a month after Charles' death, to the extent of fearing a heart attack. If you are female, it can derail your menstrual cycle. It can kill your appetite, induce involuntary vomiting, or the return of eating disorders.
What to do: it is vital to try to stay healthy. This is, clearly, easier said than done, especially when you can neither sleep nor eat. Hitting the bottle is not helpful as a long-term solution, but it can help in the short-term as an anaesthetic. Needless to say, now is not a good time to give up smoking. Yoga proved very helpful to me, and so did going on a retreat. But basically, if your physical health suffers, your psychological state will sink accordingly.
Environment is also important: some people become manic cleaners, others let the house go to wrack and ruin. Exercising some control over your physical situation is helpful and cleaners can be paid for.
No one can tell you when it's right for you to come back to life, out of the lands of the dead. Bereavement is, most accurately, a shadowland. If you are widowed, you think you will never feel anything for anyone else, that you are permanently locked into the memory of the one who has died. I felt this for some months, until a friend and I had a brief affair. The effects of this were transformative: it felt as though someone had reached out a hand and pulled me through a door into the light. However, the nature of that hand, and how you travel back through that door, are immensely individual. You cannot go looking for a short-term solution. Trust in life, and it will come.
Some people become wedded to grief, and that is their prerogative, although it is probably best, if you are in this state for years, to try to lose some of the intense meaning attached to bereavement and re-attach it to the work of living. But no one else can say how long it takes. It is probably not accurate to say that you 'get over it'. You grow around the loss, scar tissue forms, and you change. It is alchemical, difficult, and strange.
It is worth mentioning, as a grim afterword, that some people never do come to terms with bereavement. The Nietzschean saying 'that which does not kill you, makes you stronger' is nothing more than individualistic toss. Bereaved people have nervous breakdowns. One acquaintance of mine, at least, has killed themselves. It is not for me to say that this is the wrong decision, although it is never the path that I would take. I would repeat: if you feel that you are entering severe depression, seek medical help and spiritual guidance.
WidowNet - extremely helpful online support group for widows and widowers. Includes a bulletin board (Pendulum) for those interested in Pagan and alternative spirituality.
Grief and Loss Resource Centre - a huge array of sites dealing with grief and grieving
Natural Death handbook; includes an order form for the most recent edition