Expectations in Grief

• Your grief will take longer than most people think.
• Your grief will take more energy than you would have ever imagined.
• Your grief will entail mourning not only for the actual person you lost but also for all of the hopes, dreams and unfulfilled expectations you held for and with that person, and for the needs that will go unmet because of the death.
• Your grief will involve a wide variety of feelings and reactions, not solely those that are generally thought of as grief, such as depression and sadness.
• You may experience grief spasms or acute upsurges of grief that occur suddenly with no warning.
• You will have trouble thinking (memory, organization and intellectual processing) and making decisions.
• You may feel like you are going crazy.

Grief is love, not ever wanting to say goodbye.

— Rabbi Dr. Earl Grollman

What Is Grief?

Grief is a complicated mixture of many feelings, including shock, panic, anger, fear, guilt, sadness, and more. Since the death of a loved one is the first chapter in a lifetime of living without that person, grief is a lifelong process of coming to terms with this major loss. The journey of grief is a process of discovering what is lost, what is left, and what is possible.

When a loved one dies, each person embarks on their own individual journey of grief.

Grief is a complex process. Deep grief — a response to the death of a close loved one — is not a single feeling or experience. It is a complicated mixture of many feelings swirling together — in a way that is often confusing for children (and for adults). These feelings can include shock, panic, anger, fear, guilt, sadness, and more.

Grief is feeling out of control. Grief is also questions — Who am I? Where do I fit? Who else will die? Who will take care of me? What is life now? What is my life now? Why me?

The death of the one we love is the first chapter in a lifetime of living without him or her. At every age, at every step along the way, we have to figure out how we're going to manage without the one we love so dearly.

Grief is a lifelong process of coming to terms with a major loss in our life. For many children, as well as adults, the second year after our loved one's death is more difficult than the first year after the death.

"It's just like a feeling of emptiness; they're not there [to] turn to." —Zach, 12

The reality that our loved one is never coming back — that this death is permanent — takes time to sink in. As it does, the feelings of loss and bewilderment are often harder than the shock and confusion of the first months after the death.

Grief changes and sometimes it moderates over time, but the journey of grief is a lifetime journey.

What Is Lost? What Is Left? What Is Possible?

In and through these feelings, questions and longings, we begin the process of discovering:

• What is lost?
• What is left?
• What is possible?

What is lost?
As in the aftermath of a hurricane, after a death it takes time to sift through the rubble and discover all that has been lost.

"He had my eyes. So my eyes died with my son." — Amanda, Caring Place Parent

It doesn't take long to realize that the main loss is just the biggest of a whole train of further losses, the many ways in which their absence has created so many other holes in our lives, has wrecked so many other plans, has broken so many routines. Everywhere we turn we stumble across another place where they are not and will never be again. There's that familiar voice. That unique smell. The special food enjoyed together. The now-empty chair at the table. There are holidays, birthdays, family get-togethers of all kinds, all different now. Even parts of us are lost, gone, changed now. There are hopes and dreams and goals and plans, wrecked like a town after a hurricane has blown through.

Grief is a process of becoming reconciled to the loss of another person, a person who was dear and close and woven into your life. It's a process because so many other things die along with that person. When it happens, the death of the person you love seems like a single final catastrophe. But every day after that you find something else that has died, something shared that will be no more.

Grief hits again and again when a family member dies because so many other things die with them; like that person, so many other things will never be seen again. You think you've finally gotten control of these big feelings of loss, you've finally attained some stability, and then when some little reminder — a television show, a joke, the scent of aftershave or perfume, a song on the radio, the way the sun slants in through the dining room window — trips you up, and there you go again.

It's terrible — after a parent, a sibling, a child, has died — when it seems that the sun has gone out. But then so many other lights are discovered to be extinguished as well. The little things that aren’t there anymore. The little things a life is made of.

The person you love is gone.

"Grief is a huge hole, it's a hole in your life, it's a hole in your heart. It affects everything. It's like you lose the other half of your body." — Vicki, Caring Place Parent

And so is Christmas or Hanukkah or Ramadan as you've come to know it. So are the Sunday morning breakfasts. So are the movies with your brother. So are the sled-riding parties. So is dancing in the kitchen.

What is left?
But not everything is gone. It may take a bit of time to come to this realization, and even more time to discover what is left, but over time we do trip over more and more that has remained, that has survived the devastation.

Memories, for one thing. Memories remain. At first, that may seem like more of a cruel joke than a gift, as the fleeting memories stand in for the actual person who used to be right here in front of us. Yet soon, we begin to cherish whatever connection we still have to one who is gone.

We discover more — relationships, maybe; physical items handed down from the one we loved; traditions we still keep, or that we modify; values and beliefs; even dreams, rearranged over time to fit the new reality.

No one can say for any of us what is left for us. It's something we'll have to discover for ourselves. But as we continue our journeys of grief, we will continue to make these discoveries, and find continuities with the past.

What is possible?
At first, even continuing with life itself may not seem possible. But possibilities do begin to open up, to assert themselves to us, as we continue on this journey.

Discovering possibilities normally does happen after spending time finding what's lost and what's left. It’s hard to discover what's possible in building a new life without first finding out what's left in our old life to build on. And we often can’t see what’s left until we sift through the wreckage and come to realize what's missing.

But this isn't a neat set of stages, where one happens right after the other, where we finish one and then move on to the next. What is lost to us is usually more obvious at first, but we might continue stumbling across new discoveries of what’s been lost, even years after the person died. These processes overlap and often happen together.

The important thing is knowing that as you struggle with answering these questions day by day — maybe not even consciously aware that you're struggling with them — you're growing in the new person you're becoming.

See Spirals of Grief for more on what grief is like.