Death ends a life—not a good or a bad relationship

The bereaved often find first-year support group sessions comforting because they are with others who also feel the pressure to hide their sorrow and pretend they aren’t disoriented, sleep-deprived and anxious. While it is common to hear people express relief that a loved one no longer has to suffer, seldom do individuals say they feel set free by a death.

The book Liberating Losses: When death brings relief by Jennifer Elison, EDD and Chris McFonigle, PhD opens up the subject of “relief grief” and supports those who live in silence for fear of being judged and ostracized.

Not every death is tragedy

Marty Tousley, author of GriefHealing.com, is the giant on whose shoulders other grief blogger’s stand. Instead of our intended post, we have decided to end the year with her post Voices of Experience: 7 Things Chipper Taught Me about Life and Business.

Most of us have had our hearts broken by the loss of a pet, but I wonder how many of us have the wisdom to allow our pets to teach us how to live a richer life.

How will you get through the season?

Every year the holidays come with a rush: typically Halloween hits and life becomes a blur until January 2nd. But this is not a typical holiday season for you, and what you will likely notice—for the first time—are couples out and about coping with the holiday blur together, underlining the fact that you are now alone.

There is one consolation you can count on: January is not far off. Until then you can limit added holiday distress by remembering to:

1. participate when and where you feel most comfortable
2. give yourself permission to leave a gathering early, and
3. fight the desire to isolate entirely.

Where have you historically felt comfortable?

If being with family has provided a warm comforting holiday environment in the past, surround yourself with family this year, but keep in mind they are grieving as well. If there is ongoing family discord, limit your family time and focus on quality time with close friends.

Why doesn’t anyone mention your loss?

Widowed at 38 years of age, psychotherapist Megan Devine talks about grief and meditation in her post on OpentoGrief.com

Excerpt…

Does the practice of mindfulness apply to grief? I think it does, when it is disentangled from cultural misapplication and confusion. At its core, mindfulness does not try to talk you out of anything, nor does it judge what you feel. The pure practice of mindfulness is to bring your attention to exactly what is – whether that is pain or bliss, peace or torment. Mindfulness is meant to help you acknowledge the truth of the moment you’re in, even, or especially, when that moment hurts. Acknowledgment of the truth is a relief, and it heals.

The true path of mindfulness is to help you stay present to the pain – when pain is what is – and to witness it. This is especially true in grief: the work is not to overcome pain or to remove pain, but to bear it, to be strong and soft enough to be beside it, to find peace alongside it. The question is not “how can you see this as okay?” but what will you do when things are not okay? How will you stay present to yourself? How will you keep your eyes on love inside your pain? There are no answers. No real answers, no one size fits all answers. The only answer for how to live here has to come from you. One way to listen for those answers is through mindful practice: just becoming aware of what is true for you right now is healing, in and of itself.

You do not create your reality; life will be what it will be. What is in your power is how you respond to reality. A practice of mindfulness can help you respond with as much kindness and grace as you can; it can help prepare your heart and mind for living this. You are here. Where you are is not perfect. It may or may not be okay. But here you are.

Healing from loss… involves weaving together the remaining fragments of one’s assumptive world to recreate an existence that has purpose, meaning and some semblance of predictability and order.

Robert Niemeyer
Professor of Psychology & Grief Specialist (2001)

Feeling a sense of safety is a basic need. More to the point: maintaining the illusion of safety is so important that we must continually re-imagine it in order remain sane. The task, however, is getting harder and harder to accomplish in our current upside down world.

Illusion of safety is wearing mighty thin

When 9/11 happened we were incensed that anyone would have the gall to make us feel so vulnerable. Add the “great” recession, mortgage crisis, real estate collapse, unemployment, school and public massacres, home grown terrorist activity, record youth suicide rate, racial tension, cybercrime, and climate disasters, and one could say it is getting harder and harder to reweave the fragments of our world back into a state of predictability and order.

Top it off with the fact that when our financial and manufacturing sectors chose to globalize their operations, the entire world’s political, religious, economic, medical and social problems became ours as well. Therefore, it is not surprising that the edges of our peace of mind are seriously frayed.

If you have slept through the last years of assault on your lifestyle, the Ebola outbreak likely caused you to notice that the world’s healthcare system can’t handle every imaginable medical crisis.

Caregiving is a Lonely Exhausting Act of Love

We know that it takes courage to live and to die. What we don’t know is that it also takes courage to be a primary caregiver.

If you are currently caring for a loved one, you are likely struggling to accept the coming loss and frustrated that you have little influence over what is happening. The only thing you can seem to control is your quality of care – yet your best efforts often don’t seem to be good enough—which concerns you.

Actually you will provide better and more consistent care the sooner you accept your own limits and understand you can’t be a “perfect” caregiver. That said you will be surprised by your emotional and physical fortitude if you accept one critical caveat:

Most adult grief support group attendees have been primary caregivers for their parents or spouses. Generally they are physically and emotionally exhausted—and oddly disoriented because suddenly the 24/7 need for making lists and monitoring medications and meals is over.

I remember one woman in group saying “It’s like I was fired! Like I’ve lost my job! I don’t know what to do with all of the time.”

It is not unusual for caregivers to be more stressed than the person dying