In this blog post, I am going to share a number of reflections on my grieving process with you.
1. Anticipatory grief.
Shortly after Paul's death, people would say to me that I was now in the early stages of my bereavement. And I realised that that wasn't true. I had been grieving for Paul since the moment we got the diagnosis of liver secondaries.
This phenomenon is called "anticipatory grief".
I cried on the evening of the day we learned about Paul's liver secondaries. I couldn't stop sobbing for hours and remember thinking, "This almost feels as if he has already died". The sobbing came from such a deep, deep place of sorrow.
As I told you before, my "doer" was strong and did not allow the grief to come to the surfice all that often over the following months. But I always knew that it was there somewhere hidden deep inside of me.
2. Not rushing.
It is not good to rush into anything when newly bereaved.
Only one week after Paul's death, I rushed into St. Luke's Hospital with chocolate and "thank you" cards for the nurses on the different wards we had been on. I also requested to speak with one of the nurses who had been with us in Paul's final hours, his main oncologist and the palliative care doctor in charge. Most of that day is a blurr in my memory. I remember that the oncologist and I hugged and he told me that on the night of the day of Paul's admission, when he already knew that Paul wasn't going to make it, he had gone home crying. Then I remember clearly asking the palliative carer doctor what they had given Paul in his final hours and her response that they had given him only a little bit of Difene. At the time I simply accepted this and didn't think about it further, although it did strike me even then that this was a bit odd given what he had previously been on. Only months later, with a mind that was a lot clearer, I asked myself: How could they have given him something as weak as Difene when before he had been on Morphine? And today I think that the doctor, seeing my distressed state and probably knowing that no matter what she said I wouldn't take it in anyway, she decided to say this instead of reading from the actual file. Maybe she also wanted to see how much I was actually able to take in the medical facts and therefore told me something so strange to see how I would react. This is of course all an interpretation on my part. The truth is: I wasn't ready to visit the hospital on that day and I was certainly not ready to have those conversations. Sometimes I wish I hadn't gone in on that day. Sometimes I wish I could go in now and have the conversations with the doctors with a lot more clarity and ask questions and be able to take in the answers.
So, if you are newly bereaved and you feel the urge to go back to where your loved one died and/or ask questions to the medical staff, I would advise that you give yourself a little more time. You will probably be able to have a much more meaningful conversation with them later on. And, by the way, I think this goes for all kinds of big decisions we have to make following our loved one's death: don't rush. I know of a lady who, following her husband's death, decided that the best thing for her to do was to sell her house and move to a different town, but, months later, when she was already living somewhere new, she regreted having given up on the home that they had shared for over 40 years of marriage. So it is good not to make big decisions for a while after the death of a loved one.
3. I have understood that grief affects everybody differently and that there is no "right" or "wrong" way to grieve.
There were times, particularly in the first couple of months after Paul's death, when I felt that I wasn't grieving right, that I needed to cry more, eat more, sleep less... But over time and through reading a lot on grief and bereavement and being an active participant of the "Bereaved Spouse" forum, I have realised that I am okay and everybody else is okay. I want to remind us all that grief affects everybody differently and that there is no "right" or "wrong" way to grieve for a loved one. All we can do to facilitate the process in ourselves or when accompanying a family member or friend in their grieving process is to be kind and compassionate and to allow the process the time and space it needs.
4. In my opinion, grief is an ever-changing process.
I used to have ideas about grief like, for example, that at first I would cry a lot and, as time goes on, I would gradually cry less until I would stop crying" or that I would feel very bad at first and, over time, feel better and better in myself. But the truth for me was that I would sometimes feel very sad and sometimes feel a little better and sometimes feel good but that there was no particularl order in which these changing feelings would occur. Sometimes I would have a very sad day followed by a really good day followed by a very sad day followed by an okay-day. And sometimes I would experience all of the feelings from very low to very high on the same day or even within one hour. In writing this blog post I have realised that there has been a little bit of a linear process in the sense that I do have fewer very sad days now than I used to have only a couple of months ago. But most of the process is an up and down, back and forth, ever-changing and certainly not linear. It never ceases to astonish me. And there is so much comfort in it for me because I do know now that when I am feeling very sad or a little bit panicked about the future or anxious because I feel sick and Paul is not here to look after me, those feelings will pass and there will be different and better feelings somewhere along the way.
5. Try not to look too far ahead.
In the beginning, I would find that whenever I was looking too far ahead into the future or when people asked me about my future, I was either feeling panicked because I was going to have to live my future without Paul or I would feel overwhelmed by sadness and pain. So for a while I stopped looking. And I think this is something that is absolutely okay. Over time, I started to look a little bit more and look a little bit more and now that I am sitting here writing this the thought of the future doesn't cause me the same panic, sadness or pain. I still can't imagine one without Paul, but my experience day after day after day shows me that there is one.
6. I can find beauty in grieving.
Of course my grief is very painful for me. And of course I miss my man terribly and wish he was still with me, healthy and well.
But the more I have accepted that Paul is no longer here with me the more I have felt able to find a certain type of beauty in and perhaps through the grieving itself. For example, I was sitting on a bench by the sea the other day, it was a day of glorious October sunshine, very mild too, and I was thinking of Paul and feeling very sad that he wasn't here to experience this moment with me, but then I suddenly felt a lot of peace come over me and I thought something like "But it is only because of Paul that I am able to experience this moment of beauty as beautiful", "Paul has taught me to really appreciate the experience of beauty".
7. Good self-care is very important.
It can be so difficult to look after our own needs when we have looked after our loved one's needs for a long time.
In the first couple of months after Paul's death, I really didn't know how to do this "self-care thing". I have always been a very caring person, would do everything for others, but have been finding it very difficult to look after my own needs. I have just a very caring nature, so people say. And there is nothing wrong with that.
However, when we have lost a loved one and are in the early stages of bereavement, we are probably in need of a lot of self-care because we are physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. So now is the time to learn to look after ourselves.
I remember the exhaustion after Paul's death. It was physical exhaustion because I hadn't slept much during the final weeks of Pauls life and then there was all the crying and all the pulling-my-self-together moments when that was necessary. It was emotional exhaustion because I was dealing with all my sadness and pain of loss and panick about the future and longing for Paul... And there was mental exhaustion too because I had been doing so much thinking for months. I felt so run down and tired for the first couple of months that I often thought I would get sick. And it was during that time that I started to do things for myself. It didn't feel comfortable at first, but over time, very gradually, I started liking preparing a meal for myself, making a healthy smoothie, listening to music, watching a film, getting back into reading, getting back into meditation.
It is still a work in progress. I think I will never be someone who is really great at looking after themselves. But I am better now and I can feel that it is good for me.
I am hoping that you find some of what I have learned during my grieving process so far helpful for your own situation. I am ending this post with the poem "For Grief" by the Irish mystic John O'Donohue which I have always loved but which has become even more meaningful after Paul died:
"When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.
Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.
There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.
Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.
It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.
Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time."
