Things I learnt about grief this year
What is that age old saying about the only certain things in life being death and taxes? Losing people you love is an awful yet unavoidable certainty that 100% of us will go through at some point. So it’s surprising in some ways that as a society we still don’t seem to talk about loss that much. But I think we should, because it helps.
I’ll begin this blog by saying that I’m not particularly sure that I’m ‘qualified’ to be talking about grief (but who is?) Sadly, I’ve had a fair bit of practice - but unlike many things in life, practice definitely doesn’t make perfect/ easier to handle. I am also acutely aware that, this time round, I’m less than a year into this particular journey of loss. I lost my mum in February, a heartbreaking, mind-bendingly fast three weeks after a terminal cancer diagnosis, so there are some significant ‘firsts’ and the spectre of Christmas looming large ahead.
Actually, this blog didn’t start out as a blog at all, more a collection of notes I gathered along the way because I’ve always found writing to be quite cathartic. Still, with Grief Awareness Week on the horizon and my own search history full of random ‘is it normal to….’ questions, I wondered if my musings might just help someone else if they wondered what was normal when it came to grief and the sneaky little ways it deals its sucker punches.
Which brings me on to the first thing I’ve learnt.
There is no ‘normal’ and no timeline
Everybody experiences loss differently. And the same person can feel different losses differently. I grieved hard for my dad, but the loss of my mum has hit me in an altogether different way. I felt differently again when I lost my best friend several years earlier.
What makes grief so difficult to navigate is the sheer unpredictability of the way you feel it, from day to day, even in a single day! Those bone-crushing, lung-squashing moments can come out of nowhere and pull the rug from underneath you all over again. There are triggers that seem obvious, of course - significant dates, a certain song, the rows of Mother’s Day cards and flowers that seem to accost you when you go shopping.
It’s the more random seeing a grandad swinging a child by the arms, the ‘I must tell mum this!’ moments - the ones that creep up and get you with no warning.
And, I’m sorry to tell you, but there seems to be no expiry date on those ones either. Like a game of snakes and ladders, some days you’ll be progressing through the squares of this grief game just as you think you ‘should’. But then, out of nowhere, you’ll stumble on a slippery great snake and end up going backwards.
Anticipatory grief can be as hard as the ‘real’ thing
I can remember vividly being told my mum had lung cancer. The following day, we were told it had spread ‘significantly’. The crap news kept rolling fast, after that; so fast that it was only three dizzying weeks from diagnosis to death, taking away any decisions about how we might cope and care for her if she got home.
That not knowing - that absolute fear of the unknown - can be as hard if not harder than what follows. The final few days of hospice care (should we stay? Should we go? Does she know we’re here? Will it be today? Does she look a bit better today? Have they got it all wrong, actually?!) were exhausting.
We lurched from dreading it being ‘over’, to willing it to be calm and peaceful, and that rollercoaster of emotions is a tough one to ride.
Grief is tiring
The amazing hospice nurses called it grief fatigue. It can affect you physically and emotionally.
It’s also possible to be physically and emotionally exhausted yet completely unable to sleep, with night the time that your mind allows itself to think of all the things you’ve put to one side during the day - or the time that you suddenly remember something you really need to do.
Which brings me onto….
The never-ending admin
The administration that goes with a bereavement (‘deadmin’, as one colleague called it) is a seemingly never-ending dance of bureaucratic form filling and phone calls. The frustration of it, wrapped up as it is in emotion, has almost broken me on occasion; some organisations do make it as painless as possible but others send you on an impossible ‘computer-says-no’ merry-go-round. (And what I think about the process of probate, house selling and solicitors could be a whole other blog, although maybe one I’d have to censor for an audience of surveyors.)
The only piece of advice I can give is to take a step back and remember that this is a long dance - so be kind to yourself if you simply can’t face answering that email or making that call today.
Make a list, break it up however works for you, and remember that in the grand scheme of things, doing something tomorrow instead of today probably isn’t going to make much difference.
The gut/grief connection
So most people know that grief can bring an array of real, physical symptoms. Less well-known but also apparently quite common is the impact it can have on your stomach and digestive system - from loss of appetite, nausea, ‘nervous stomach syndrome’ through to stomach cramps and IBS type symptoms.
Who knew?
Like losing an anchor
I don’t know why but there seems to be something quite profound about losing your final/ only parent. How can something leave you feeling so simultaneously old and knackered, yet so childlike and incapable of adulting?
The only way I can describe it is that it’s like losing a kind of anchor that’s been there your whole life. When it’s gone, you feel a bit adrift.
Grief and work
There is no one size fits all approach to grief and work. Of course it will depend on the nature of what you do, but some workplaces are brilliantly human and some just….aren’t. Some people feel unable to function and need some time out, for others it is a welcome distraction or slice of normality - and then there’s something in between where you’re not quite sure what you need or want.
For me, the time I really needed flexibility was in my mum’s final days. I’ll never forget messaging my manager to say, I just can’t do today, I feel a bit broken, and getting the response to take everything day by day, or even hour by hour if I needed to. It was exactly what I needed to hear.
If you are a manager and you can offer this flexibility, never under-estimate the impact that quiet kindness can have at a frankly rubbish and painful time.
(You can find out more about grief and work in our Understanding Bereavement in the Workplace webinar.)
Try and go with the ebb and flow
Grief, they say, comes and goes in waves. There are a lot of water analogies, actually. Our youth counselling partners talk about children ‘puddle jumping’ in and out of grief - but it’s not a bad analogy for any age. It seems to be the brain’s way of protecting us.
So those raw emotions will ebb and flow. Sometimes, the tide laps at you in a gentle but incessant way. And other times it’ll knock you off your feet.
You might have an uncontrollable/ inappropriate urge to giggle. You might feel the need to swear at the hospital car parking machine that’s refusing to recognise your number plate. You might just want to do something normal, or you might want to spend three hours poring over old photos. The tears might come and just not want to stop; or they might dry up and refuse to come at all for a bit.
The point is, there are no rules as to how you might feel, so - as someone wiser than me said - try to be at least a little bit gentle with yourself, at least some of the time.
And finally. It does help to talk/ or muse/ or write. You don’t get to park grief, because those snakes have a habit of lying in wait.
If you need someone to talk to, the team at LionHeart are a pretty amazing bunch. I'm not sure how I'd have got through the year without 'em.
Hayley Draper is Communications Manager for LionHeart.
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