Coping With Grief – Where is My Support?

When you are grieving the loss of a loved one that is when you need family and friends around you for support the most.

I am a member of two widows groups myself and I hear many stories of family and friends being unsympathetic or disappearing all together leaving the bereaved to cope with their loss all alone.

Some people are fortunate enough to have constant support through this journey of grief they are on and sadly some have no one to comfort them or give them any support.

Death, no matter how you look at it is a tragic loss of a spouse, a child, mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather or friends and will affect many people in different ways.

The loss of contact from family and friends at a time like this is a double loss to the grieving person. Already they feel like their world has been turned upside down and part of their own life has died with their loved one. They no longer feel they have a place in this world or how to live or exist and often times they don’t even want to live without their loved one. To have family and friends disappear makes the experience even more devastating.

Maybe you are guilty of this yourself. Maybe you realize it and don’t know what to do about it or maybe you don’t even realize that you are doing this to someone.

* You don't want to face the thought and/or realization of your own mortality.
* You are also dealing with the loss from a different standpoint.
* You don't know what to say or how to act around them.
* You think the grieving person wants to be alone.
* You are afraid you will make them cry or feel worse.

Don't abandon someone suffering the loss of a loved one. Even a short phone call to say "Hi" can mean the world to them at this time. Offer to bring them something to eat; offer to take them for a ride; or offer to just come and sit with them for a while.

Even though it may be hard to make contact and keep in contact with someone who has lost a close loved one, it will mean so much to them and you will have provided some hope and a future life for the one left behind.

Grief - Unresolved Feelings and Regrets (Should-a, Could-a, Would-a)

Your loved one is gone now.

Maybe your loved one went through a long battle with an illness and you were the caregiver and gave your all but you still think, "I should have done this. I would have done this or I could have done that".

Your situation may be that it was a sudden death. You never had a chance to say goodbye. Maybe you had an argument the night before or that morning and said things you cannot take back.

In my case, my husband and I buried our heads in the sand and didn't want to face the fact that he was really that sick. After all, he was an Army Airborne Ranger, having served 30 years in the US Army. He survived many near death situations and close calls but he made it through those times. Why wouldn’t this time be any different? We still had the belief, strength and hope that he would make it through this crisis.

In the days following, you mull over and over in your head what you "should-a, could-a, would-a" said and done if you had only known. I have and am still struggling with the "should-a, could-a, would-a" regrets and guilt.

We all need to learn (including myself) not torture ourselves over what we have no control over now.

1. If you were the caregiver, he or she knew you loved them by the time you spent with them and caring for them.

2. If you had an argument before. You know in your heart it would have been resolved. We all say and do things at times that we don’t really mean. Your loved one knows that and I can guarantee they do not hold anything against you for it.

3. If you tried to get him or her to go to a doctor or the Emergency Room and they refused, you did all you could do. They were going to do what they wanted to do and nothing is going to change that.

Whether you were with your loved one at the end or not, I can almost without a doubt say they were thinking of you at that last moment. I was with my husband at the end. I was also with both my mother and father at their times of leaving this world. Since those times I have said more than once, "I never want to go through anything like that again, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be any place else at that time".

Again, if you were not able to be with your loved one, your love was with them at the time and they are with you now.

I have a friend who lost her husband in 2006 and we were talking and venting about grief and dealing with life after losing a spouse. She copes with her grief in her own way.

She believes that if on the day her husband passed away of an undetected inherited family medical illness and it had been a normal day with her husband driving their son to school; she would have lost both of them. Her sister in law would not have known she also had this same condition, as well as the daughter. My friend now knows that her son should have a medical check up periodically to monitor this inherited condition. As we ended our conversation she also mentioned, "How many lives would have changed and been lost if he had been driving on a freeway that morning?".

Don’t misunderstand, she loved her husband dearly but she has chosen to see the other side of "Should-a, Could-a, Would-a".

I thought to myself, "What a unique woman to have learned to cope with her loss in this way". I cannot apply her thinking to my situation. I see no benefit to anyone whatsoever for my husband being gone. Maybe one day when I have been on this journey a little longer I may be able to look at things from a different perspective, but not yet.

The point I am trying to make is that we have to help ourselves along this "journey we never wanted to be on".

1. Just remember you loved him or her and that will never change. Tell them now. Talk to them.

2. Do you REALLY feel that you did all you could for your loved one? Tell them now. Talk to them.

3. Whatever happened that "day or night" it was their choice such as not going to a doctor or an Emergency Room.

4. Whatever happened that "day or night" was out of their hands also; they didn’t plan to have a car accident or be a victim of some other event.

I still have my own issues with questioning why this happened and questioning my faith in God and I will discuss that in another post but The Serenity Prayer does seem appropriate at this time.

Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen.
~ Reinhold Niebuhr

As always, let’s help each other on our "journey". You can email me at: Grief - Life During and After

There Is No Time Table for Grieving

There is no set time limit to your grief. Some people may start to recover in as little as three months or six months and some may still be grieving a year after or even longer. Don’t let anyone tell you “It’s time to move on”.

Your grief and loss is your own and no one else’s. Just because their lives have continued on as if nothing has happened, yours hasn’t. Something major and life changing has happened to you and your total way of life as you know it.

Maybe you are a younger person whose life was just starting with that special someone. You both had so many plans, hopes and dreams for the future that will no longer be. Maybe you find yourself now as a single parent wondering, "What do I do now and how can I go on?". Or you may be like myself, a little older and finally found love again and it has been taken away from you.

The shock and the "fog" you are living in right now is nature’s way of protecting you from the harsh reality of what has happened. As you begin to heal some of the reality of the event and the impact it is having on your life seeps in a little at a time as you are able to deal with it.

There will be days of non-stop crying and days where you will not cry at all and think that you are all "cried out" but then something will happen to trigger those emotions all over again. Don’t suppress the need to cry. Even though it is exhausting, it is also a part of the healing process to "get it all out".

Many times I have wanted to scream, cry and break everything in the house but then I would hear my husband’s voice telling me, "You will have to clean it up" and I stop thinking about breaking things. I sometimes wonder if I could have dealt with things better if I had broken a few dishes to vent my anger and frustration of being left alone.

To quote from another website on grief:

Time does not heal in itself

"It is what you do with it, and it is important to remember that the length of the course of grief is not a sign of weakness. Each person will be unique in their time of grieving." Reflections on Death

Remember, take some time for yourself. If you need to:
1. Sleep.
2. Cry.
3. Break things, unless you hate cleaning it up afterward.
4. Talk a walk,
5. Listen to music.
6. Talk with a friend.
7. Find a support group either locally or online.

JUST DO IT !!

You need to take the time YOU need to heal without anyone putting any "time limits" on your grieving.

Take care.

As always, I am here for support. You can email me at: Grief - Life During and After

February 14, 2009 – First Valentine’s Day Alone

As I sit here on this Valentine’s Day of February 14, 2009, this is my first Valentine’s Day alone without my husband. He has been gone now six months on the 17th. I still bought him a Valentine’s Day card and a rose and lit a candle in his honor which I will continue to do on “our special days”.

I started this blog for my own healing process and hopefully I can help someone else along the way. If you have found my blog and continue reading, you are here for a reason – the loss of a loved one; spouse, mother, father, child and unfortunately the list can go on.

I am deeply sorry for your loss. This is coming from my heart as I am dealing with a loss myself.

Grief is a heart wrenching and deep in your gut emotion to go through. I believe that the grief process affects each of us in different ways depending upon who the loved one is.

They say there are 7 stages of grief that each one of us will go through but not necessarily in the order listed.

1. Shock and Denial.
2. Pain, Regret and Guilt.
3. Anger; Lashing Out on Someone Else and Bargaining.
4. Loneliness, Depression, Emptiness and Despair.
5. Adjusting to Life Without Your “Loved One”
6. Moving Forward versus Moving On.
7. Acknowledgment and Hope (I believe there is never total acceptance).

In the wee early morning hours of Sunday, August 17, 2008 as I left my husband’s hospital room with his belongings in hand, I took my first "Widow’s Walk" to the car. It was the longest walk of my life and I still only remember parts of it. I remember dropping some things and wanted to just sit in the parking lot and scream and cry but I also knew if I did that I would probably never get back up for hours. I picked up what I had dropped and continued on to the car. I sat there in the car for what seemed like a few more hours before driving home to our empty apartment. I don’t remember driving home but for some strange reason I remember sitting at one traffic light. Why I remember that one traffic light, I have no idea.

In addition to the shock and disbelief that I was feeling, I was also a new bride of two days. I thought to myself, “How can I be so happy and so sad at the same time?” We were married in his hospital room on Friday, August 15, 2008. We both believed and hoped we had many more years together and we “just knew” he was going to pull through this crisis; however, it was not to be.

If you are in the stages of grief, I hope you will follow along with me as I go through my healing process and share in my goal to help someone else through their own trying time.

I have learned a lot through these last six months and I hope to share my experiences with you, as well as become support for those of you who need it. Maybe you have friends and family who are there for you or maybe you have no one but yourself to deal with your loss. Sometimes other people just do not "get it" especially when it comes to losing a spouse. We feel as if part of us died at the same time our loved one did. We are no longer whole. We have to learn to live life as "one" again and exist as a completely different person.

I plan to discuss many topics concerning Grief – Life During and After; some of which will be…

1. Self-help: Support Groups locally and online and books.
2. Dealing with funeral arrangements.
3. Taking care of yourself during this major ordeal in your life.
4. Dealing with children and their loss – now that you are a single parent.

and many more topics I have had to deal with.

I am just one person going through my own process but I would like to be there to discuss any feelings, issues or problems you are going through. I am not a professional in any sense of the word, no degrees or titles, just a grieving widow trying to find my way in the world again.

Let’s help each other. You can email me at: Grief - Life During and After