My thoughts on Grief

We're fortunate nowadays that we don't encounter death and dying the way our ancestors used to. In those days, death was a common place event. No one was exempt. Parents lost children, children lost parents. Through these experiences, tragic as they always are, they learnt about grief. They learnt how to come together as families and communities and through their various customs and beliefs, deal with their grief as they celebrated and remembered the life of their loved one.

I don't think that we're so good at dealing with grief anymore. Many of us have no fixed belief system to guide us through our emotional loss. We have no celebrated customs for the grieving period as our ancestors had and as families we're so spread out around the globe, that we hardly know each other any more, so how can we come together and understand each other?

I'm no expert on death and dying. I'm not an analyst or a grief counselor, but I have experienced the pains of death in my life. I have lost my father, a granddaughter, my brother, grandparents, aunts, parents in law as well as cherished pets and other friends and colleagues that I knew. Through the course of my work as a nurse, I have been privileged to have been present when some of my patients have unfortunately died. When you nurse a patient for many weeks and get to know them and their family well, their loss can really touch your heart. Always tragic and sad is the loss of a baby. When people visit the labor and delivery unit where I work, many comment on it being a happy place. I'm pleased to say it is, for the most part, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes a child is born before it had the chance to live. The grief of the parents and grandparents is always profound.

When I think about my own grief at these times in my life and have witnessed the grief of my family members, I have learnt that grief is different for everyone, and it's different at different times in our lives and even from day to day. We're all at different stages of our lives, with different exposures to death and grief. Depending on what is happening in our day to day life,  how strong we feel, or not, will determine how we cope with and express our grief. It's not dependent on how often we saw our loved one or when we last spoke, but on the countless times that we thought about that person on a daily basis. It's about what's in our heart that no one else can see.

The difficulty lies in our interactions with those who are grieving. Even our family members who we think we know well can be upset and hurt by our insensitive comments when we think they should feel or act a certain way. The way we feel. The way we would act. But how can they? They're not us and we're not them and we're not feeling the same as they are even though we might be grieving the same person. Each one of us expresses our grief in a different way, some privately, others publicly. When a loved one dies it's all to easy for family members to look around them and feel critical of anothers expressions or behaviors and react rashly. Comments, no matter how generic,  may be made that under normal circumstances are easily brushed off, but under the mantel of grief, are taken to heart. How many family relationships have been damaged or even severed at times like these?

If you're one of the few people who read this blog, you might be wondering if I have experienced critical feelings towards me during my current period of grief. The answer is no. I have not. I am just feeling sensitive to grief right now and have been thinking a lot about the different reactions to grief of those around me, how there is no right and there is no wrong. There is no perfect way of behaving. We just need to be super sensitive to others when they are in this delicate stage of their lives, especially if those people are ones with whom we want to have continued relationships.

Mainly, this post has been a catharsis for me. I was never a great one for keeping journals, but every now and then I get this burning desire to write something down as a way of working through my own emotions. Right now I just want to conclude that I feel much better for writing this. Perhaps I have resolved my own internal conflicts. Who knows?  I hope that going forward, whenever I encounter someone who is grieving, I will remember my own words and be sensitive, compassionate and empathetic. I will not judge and I will not measure their pain and grief against my own, for they can never be the same.


And if I go, while you’re still here…..
Know that I live on,
Vibrating to a different measure
Behind a thin veil you cannot
See through.
You will not see me,
So you must have faith.
I wait for the time when
We can soar together again,
Both aware of each other.
Until then, live your life to its fullest
And when you need me,
Just whisper my name in your heart,
…….I will be there.

~ Emily Dickinson