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kyburgAnd so, another one is lost.
If you know me, you know this hits very close to home.
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dsmoen also has her take on this:
* Everyone's grief is different. Don't judge another's process. (Intervene if you believe it necessary to life or sanity, sure.)
* When an outsider might think everything is okay is when it gets really hard. For me, I was in shock for 9 months, and then it got really difficult for another 9. But people thought I should be "over it" then. Ummm, no.
* You're never really over it, you just get better armor with smaller and fewer chinks.
* People grieving may need to express some negative sentiments, such as things they will not miss and things that frustrated them about the deceased. This is normal, and if the person expresses them, it's because they feel it's necessary. It's healing. People don't become saints when they die, and treating the deceased like that automatically means the other party in an argument was wrong or a bad person and it interferes with grieving. Yes, it can be uncomfortable to hear (especially once one gets to the anger stage). Healing first.
* From a friend who'd been both divorced and widowed: she said the primary difference is that, in a divorce, they pack their own stuff. I'd add that, in a divorce, generally there's only two parties arguing over belongings. (My late husband's ex asked for "her" wedding china -- which she'd given up in the divorce -- back. I recognize that she had grief too, but...no.)
* Sometimes the nicest thing you can do for someone is make sure they eat and have someone to be there with, even if they don't say a word.
* Movies can be low stress shared experience because no one feels obligated to talk.
* There's no easy way to crawl up out of grief except one moment at a time. Decide to live for one moment. Try to do something that pleases you for one hour. Thank living through the day. Eventually, it gets better.
* In my case, it permanently changed me. There is no old normal again. There is only a new normal.
* If you are the person who lost a loved one, especially a spouse or life partner, recognize that this is the one time when you might be able to be forgiven for unusual acting out. If you see that from the other end, try to let it slide unless it's actually dangerous.
* Know the symptoms of depression so that you will be able to recognize them. I was going into my doc for something else and read an article about signs. I had none of the primary symptoms and quite a few secondary ones. I started on anti-depressants. In two weeks, I went from being convinced I'd never write another word to writing again. It wasn't great writing, but I was able to have a creative outlet again, which in turn made me even happier.
* A few days before his sudden death, Richard asked me to promise to remarry and be happy if something happened to him. This promise kept me strong in times when I was in a lot of pain, and I think it was a great gift to me at that time.
I'll add a few things.
I don't know if it was a great idea for a mod on an online support group for young widows to have seen me posting a few days after Cliff passed and decided "HAY YOU'RE GREAT YO HERE - YOU MOD NOW BYE BYE" and skedaddled. You know me. Okay. Sure. Thanks for the compliment!
Uh oh.
One of the first things I had to do was shut down group membership sign ups to query-first only - because we were getting spammed with credit card applications and dating trolls. (Hey, we'd all gotten life insurance payouts and HAD to be LONELY. *eyeroll* Slammed that down, yes I did. LOUDLY.)
It's gone very quiet there, and I think I may leave the group myself soon. It's been ten years.
But I got to talk to people who had lost their spouse in car crashes as well as long-term care facilities. There's a key difference: in a sudden death, you have the prep and as well as the cope all at once. It's overwhelming. The aftermath can be something straight out of your worst nightmares, and you face it alone. No warning. Harsh? Oh man. The shock alone will ruin you.
If you have warning (you get a cancer diagnosis, you're dealing with a chronic issue that won't ever get better, or you just wore it out - whatever it was), it changes the landscape a bit.
You can ask. You can get advice. You can get direction.
You can wrap your head around it and start pretending for what will be. Play-act in your head. Try it on.
That's not to say it's easier. Gentler, perhaps. Kinder is relative.
In a lot of ways, it's kind of like someone installing a port into a vein - and moving it on a daily basis to another location TBD. The person dying is doing all the screaming, though. All you feel is the life bleeding out of you. They don't tell you where it will come from. Or where it all goes. It's just gone.
When it ends, all you can do is exhale - grateful that it is over. It gets no worse from here.
Not for them, anyway. And that's been all you've thought about for months. How can you keep it from getting worse...and then, that worry is taken from you.
And the other very wetware effects kick in. If you know what to expect, you warn people.
Don't expect - and don't try - to do more than breathe for 90 days. No, seriously. Don't try to figure out who gets this or that, don't sell the house, give away the pets or sign anything regarding contracts. You will have enough settling the remains - and society has put plenty of very easy-to-follow guidelines with people who know their stuff to help do that. Let them. Have the memorial services. Have the wake, the funeral, the setting free - surround yourself with ritual. They exist for a reason. This is HUGE. They give you time.
Nothing...NOTHING...has to be done right now. I don't care what it is. No, really. Don't do anything. The urge will be there. Fight it down.
Get a pad of paper, a mechanical pencil and carry them with you everywhere you go. Write everything down. Because for the next 45 days, your short-term memory is taking a vacation. You will not retain a damn thing, and there is nothing to do about it - so don't freak out when you notice it happening. This is normal. It will go away.
After the first 90 days are up, the next 45 or so are going to be a lot like a turtle coming out of its shell. You kind of peer out, very slowly, taking stock of what's around you and then you might begin to think about what you're going to do from here. Think about, mind. There is still nothing more with the doing. No, I'm serious. Leave the doing. Pay the bills, keep the plates spinning...but leave the rest for later. There is no hurry now. None whatsoever.
*chuckles* Cliff has been "that little shit" for almost all of the ten years he's been gone.
I didn't do the movie thing, and still don't. When Cliff passed, 'What Dreams May Come' had just come out and Robin Williams movie or not, couldn't see it. Didn't want it. For me, long drives with music and then video games worked better. I brought home a serious amount of stuff from Dave & Busters. Ate a lot of Curry House. Worked a lot of overtime.
They'll tell you the average length of time before you're in another serious relationship - even married - is three years. At the time Cliff passed in 1998, I looked around and went 's'yeah, right' - and then I met Jim in 1999, over a year later. Married in 2001. Um.
I still miss him. I miss the most that nobody around me now knows Cliff - the person I married - at all. (There are a few - very few - people who knew him in his last years. Not the same thing.) I take him with me everywhere I go, every day. I am brave in so many ways because of him. But nobody knows it, or why.
My process is not your process or her process or his process. Grief is a very individual thing, can't be weighed or measured or predicted. The most lasting effect for me is anger. I hated how he had to be told 'this is it' and 'it' was effectively jail in the ground floor of a condo in Ontario with no access to the outside world besides AOL. On dial-up. That's for starters. No trips to wonderful places, no outings into the bright sunshine, no long talks and heartfelt moments. I had to work - and twelve hour days, mind - and people would just shrug and say it would somehow work out. Well, of course it did. It ended!
I tend to get very mulish when I'm forced into anything similar. And I still don't cry much anymore. If I had ever started, I would never have had a reason to stop. And if there was anything I knew well, it was that nobody was coming. If I cried, I would cry alone until I stopped myself. Cliff's caregivers went on with their careers, and damn if I didn't miss them too!
The loss is just the start. You get tripped up by the damndest things. And they take months to show themselves.
I'll go over and drop a note. Hell, I moderated a support group for all those years.
I just wish it wasn't necessary. This just sucks. And I am so, so sorry.
If you know me, you know this hits very close to home.
dsmoen also has her take on this:* Everyone's grief is different. Don't judge another's process. (Intervene if you believe it necessary to life or sanity, sure.)
* When an outsider might think everything is okay is when it gets really hard. For me, I was in shock for 9 months, and then it got really difficult for another 9. But people thought I should be "over it" then. Ummm, no.
* You're never really over it, you just get better armor with smaller and fewer chinks.
* People grieving may need to express some negative sentiments, such as things they will not miss and things that frustrated them about the deceased. This is normal, and if the person expresses them, it's because they feel it's necessary. It's healing. People don't become saints when they die, and treating the deceased like that automatically means the other party in an argument was wrong or a bad person and it interferes with grieving. Yes, it can be uncomfortable to hear (especially once one gets to the anger stage). Healing first.
* From a friend who'd been both divorced and widowed: she said the primary difference is that, in a divorce, they pack their own stuff. I'd add that, in a divorce, generally there's only two parties arguing over belongings. (My late husband's ex asked for "her" wedding china -- which she'd given up in the divorce -- back. I recognize that she had grief too, but...no.)
* Sometimes the nicest thing you can do for someone is make sure they eat and have someone to be there with, even if they don't say a word.
* Movies can be low stress shared experience because no one feels obligated to talk.
* There's no easy way to crawl up out of grief except one moment at a time. Decide to live for one moment. Try to do something that pleases you for one hour. Thank living through the day. Eventually, it gets better.
* In my case, it permanently changed me. There is no old normal again. There is only a new normal.
* If you are the person who lost a loved one, especially a spouse or life partner, recognize that this is the one time when you might be able to be forgiven for unusual acting out. If you see that from the other end, try to let it slide unless it's actually dangerous.
* Know the symptoms of depression so that you will be able to recognize them. I was going into my doc for something else and read an article about signs. I had none of the primary symptoms and quite a few secondary ones. I started on anti-depressants. In two weeks, I went from being convinced I'd never write another word to writing again. It wasn't great writing, but I was able to have a creative outlet again, which in turn made me even happier.
* A few days before his sudden death, Richard asked me to promise to remarry and be happy if something happened to him. This promise kept me strong in times when I was in a lot of pain, and I think it was a great gift to me at that time.
I'll add a few things.
I don't know if it was a great idea for a mod on an online support group for young widows to have seen me posting a few days after Cliff passed and decided "HAY YOU'RE GREAT YO HERE - YOU MOD NOW BYE BYE" and skedaddled. You know me. Okay. Sure. Thanks for the compliment!
Uh oh.
One of the first things I had to do was shut down group membership sign ups to query-first only - because we were getting spammed with credit card applications and dating trolls. (Hey, we'd all gotten life insurance payouts and HAD to be LONELY. *eyeroll* Slammed that down, yes I did. LOUDLY.)
It's gone very quiet there, and I think I may leave the group myself soon. It's been ten years.
But I got to talk to people who had lost their spouse in car crashes as well as long-term care facilities. There's a key difference: in a sudden death, you have the prep and as well as the cope all at once. It's overwhelming. The aftermath can be something straight out of your worst nightmares, and you face it alone. No warning. Harsh? Oh man. The shock alone will ruin you.
If you have warning (you get a cancer diagnosis, you're dealing with a chronic issue that won't ever get better, or you just wore it out - whatever it was), it changes the landscape a bit.
You can ask. You can get advice. You can get direction.
You can wrap your head around it and start pretending for what will be. Play-act in your head. Try it on.
That's not to say it's easier. Gentler, perhaps. Kinder is relative.
In a lot of ways, it's kind of like someone installing a port into a vein - and moving it on a daily basis to another location TBD. The person dying is doing all the screaming, though. All you feel is the life bleeding out of you. They don't tell you where it will come from. Or where it all goes. It's just gone.
When it ends, all you can do is exhale - grateful that it is over. It gets no worse from here.
Not for them, anyway. And that's been all you've thought about for months. How can you keep it from getting worse...and then, that worry is taken from you.
And the other very wetware effects kick in. If you know what to expect, you warn people.
Don't expect - and don't try - to do more than breathe for 90 days. No, seriously. Don't try to figure out who gets this or that, don't sell the house, give away the pets or sign anything regarding contracts. You will have enough settling the remains - and society has put plenty of very easy-to-follow guidelines with people who know their stuff to help do that. Let them. Have the memorial services. Have the wake, the funeral, the setting free - surround yourself with ritual. They exist for a reason. This is HUGE. They give you time.
Nothing...NOTHING...has to be done right now. I don't care what it is. No, really. Don't do anything. The urge will be there. Fight it down.
Get a pad of paper, a mechanical pencil and carry them with you everywhere you go. Write everything down. Because for the next 45 days, your short-term memory is taking a vacation. You will not retain a damn thing, and there is nothing to do about it - so don't freak out when you notice it happening. This is normal. It will go away.
After the first 90 days are up, the next 45 or so are going to be a lot like a turtle coming out of its shell. You kind of peer out, very slowly, taking stock of what's around you and then you might begin to think about what you're going to do from here. Think about, mind. There is still nothing more with the doing. No, I'm serious. Leave the doing. Pay the bills, keep the plates spinning...but leave the rest for later. There is no hurry now. None whatsoever.
*chuckles* Cliff has been "that little shit" for almost all of the ten years he's been gone.
I didn't do the movie thing, and still don't. When Cliff passed, 'What Dreams May Come' had just come out and Robin Williams movie or not, couldn't see it. Didn't want it. For me, long drives with music and then video games worked better. I brought home a serious amount of stuff from Dave & Busters. Ate a lot of Curry House. Worked a lot of overtime.
They'll tell you the average length of time before you're in another serious relationship - even married - is three years. At the time Cliff passed in 1998, I looked around and went 's'yeah, right' - and then I met Jim in 1999, over a year later. Married in 2001. Um.
I still miss him. I miss the most that nobody around me now knows Cliff - the person I married - at all. (There are a few - very few - people who knew him in his last years. Not the same thing.) I take him with me everywhere I go, every day. I am brave in so many ways because of him. But nobody knows it, or why.
My process is not your process or her process or his process. Grief is a very individual thing, can't be weighed or measured or predicted. The most lasting effect for me is anger. I hated how he had to be told 'this is it' and 'it' was effectively jail in the ground floor of a condo in Ontario with no access to the outside world besides AOL. On dial-up. That's for starters. No trips to wonderful places, no outings into the bright sunshine, no long talks and heartfelt moments. I had to work - and twelve hour days, mind - and people would just shrug and say it would somehow work out. Well, of course it did. It ended!
I tend to get very mulish when I'm forced into anything similar. And I still don't cry much anymore. If I had ever started, I would never have had a reason to stop. And if there was anything I knew well, it was that nobody was coming. If I cried, I would cry alone until I stopped myself. Cliff's caregivers went on with their careers, and damn if I didn't miss them too!
The loss is just the start. You get tripped up by the damndest things. And they take months to show themselves.
I'll go over and drop a note. Hell, I moderated a support group for all those years.
I just wish it wasn't necessary. This just sucks. And I am so, so sorry.
