Daily Excerpt: Harnessing the Power of Grief (Potter) - The Experience of Grief and What It Might Be Like for You
Excerpt from Harnessing the Power of Grief (Potter):
The Experience of Grief and What It Might be Like for You
“I
was just as crazy as you can be and still be at large. I didn’t have any really
normal minutes during those two years. It wasn’t just grief. It was total
confusion. I was nutty….” —Helen Hayes, Actress [McNees][1]
Your individual grief experiences will differ from
others’ experiences and differ from your own past grief experiences. When you
lose someone, your experience of the loss may surprise you. You might envision
how you might feel, or what you might think, but you will not know how you are
with the loss until it happens.
The experience of grief includes general characteristics
commonly experienced by everyone and personal characteristics that are
particular to your own situation. Your personal characteristics will affect how
you experience the more general characteristics. All these characteristics are
interwoven.
Five
general characteristics
There are five general characteristics of grief that by
and large we all experience. They are the search for meaning, the dual process of
grief, oscillation in grief, reminders, and middle knowledge. Not everyone
experiences these in the same way.
Search
for meaning.
As human beings, we search for meaning, and we create
meaning. We are meaning-making animals. The way we make meaning of death is the
same way we make meaning of life—through stories.
We
listen to stories.
We
tell stories.
We
create meaning through stories.
We
come to understand through stories.
We
feel a part of life by sharing stories.
Guy A. M. Widdershoven, Professor of Philosophy and
Ethics of Medicine and head of the Department of Medical Humanities at Amsterdam
University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, says “…life is both more
and less a story. It is more in that it is a basis for a variety of stories and
it is less in that it is unfinished and unclear as long as there are no stories
told about it. The intertwining of experience and story lies at the core of
individual life and psychological understanding.” [Widdershoven][2]
How many times have we been at a funeral of a loved one
where someone tells us a story about him, a story that until that moment we did
not know? We are uplifted by this knowledge, this story.
When a loved one or even an enemy dies, there is a need
to make sense of the death. Why did it happen? How did it happen? Could it have
been prevented or avoided? What was the chronology of events leading up to the
death? Was his death peaceful? What were his last words? Your efforts to find
the answers to these questions help you to pull together the story of what
happened so that you can tell it.
And then there is your story. What did your loved one’s
life mean to you? What is the meaning of your own life now that your loved one
is gone? What is the meaning of your loved one’s life? What is the meaning of
your loved one’s death? What is the meaning of life now?
The search for medical answers, spiritual answers, and
personal answers is part of the quest for meaning. Telling the story of your
loved one and telling your own story help you to discover meaning in the loss.
Over time, the stories may change and evolve. This is not to say that the old
stories were false. Rather, over time, as you change, you may discover facets
of the stories that may not have been known or may not have seemed important or
relevant before. As you change and grow, your understanding, wisdom, and
compassion may cast a new light on the past.
The
dual process of grief [Stroebe, Schut, and Stroebe][3]
Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, psychologists, developed
the dual process theory of grief. They recognize that you are grieving, and you
are also learning new skills as you move on in your life. A dual process is
happening.
In grief, you may feel very alone, maybe even crazy,
ashamed, angry, fearful, guilty, and hopeless. Your sense of who you are is
turned upside-down. Yesterday you were a spouse. Today you are a widower.
Yesterday you were someone’s child. Now you are orphan. You may feel that no
one understands or cares. You may make irrational decisions and be upsetting to
yourself and others. You may accept that your loved one is dead and then at
another time be sure that you saw her. This is intense grief.
Yet, other things happen: you continue your practical
daily life by going to work and carrying out your household duties. You may be
grateful for those who “get it” and respect your experience. You may make new
friends, discover new skills, experience episodes of joy, and become stronger.
Grief is a process in which you recognize and adjust to
your loss, incorporate it into your life, and move on in your life. The loss
entails more than the absence of a person you love. It can also include a
change in your identity and roles, a loss of safety, a loss of meaning, and a
changed view of your world. You grieve the loss of your loved one, and you
grieve the loss of your own place in the world. You have to come to terms with
these two losses:
One
is the interior loss: What does the loss of this person mean to me? How will I
make it without him?
The
other is the outer loss: How will I now make my way in the world?
A dual process is happening: adjusting to your loss and
making it in the world in a new way. These two things, by and large, do not
happen simultaneously. You go back and forth between the pain and stress of
grief, and the challenge of making a new life. You oscillate between the two.
Oscillation
in grief
Hopefully, you will not be grieving 24/7. Hopefully, you
won’t be doing anything 24/7. We all take breaks from what we are doing to give
ourselves respite: to replenish, rejuvenate, and restore a sense of
equilibrium. This is called oscillation. It is no different in grief. There
will be times when you need to attend to other activities. You oscillate, or go
back and forth, between experiencing the pain of grief and going about other
activities, including experiencing other non-grief feelings and thoughts.
Oscillation can happen naturally. It can start simply as a matter of attention.
Unwillingly, one’s attention focuses on a new life almost immediately. After
her spouse’s death, the widowed spouse unwillingly eats alone, sleeps alone,
and wakes up alone. The new life starts, but it is not a creation. It is simply
attempting to attend to the daily matters of life.
Circumstances may demand oscillation. In your day-to-day life, you may need to learn new skills
that were performed by the deceased and thus focus on your learning. If your
job requires human interaction and/or a lot of concentration, you may find it
necessary to simply perform your duties as best as you can.
Oscillation can be willed. You may need a breather from grief and create welcome opportunities
to think about other things or engage in other activities that bring pleasure.
A 92-year-old widower was interviewed on the PBS News Hour. After his wife of over 60 years died, he felt that
“something vital has gone out of my life.” He was asked if he missed his wife
every day. “Pretty nearly every day. Every once in a while, I take a day off.” [4]
If you are with people with whom you are uncomfortable or
who do not understand, or who wish you were over it, you may opt to put your
grief on hold until those encounters end. On the other hand, you can avoid
those people for a time.
Sometimes, desired oscillation will not happen. You may decide that at work
you cannot cry, you can only work. Suddenly, you burst into tears. Or you
attend an event to take a break from your grief and memories come back, and
grief washes over you.
At other times, you may experience joy and contentment
when you are engaged in some activities. Relish these times as they will give
you strength.
Human beings are wired for grief. [Bonanno][5]
It is natural for us to grieve our losses and to continue with our lives.
We are also wired for love. It is natural for us to love and
to continue with our lives.
We are wired for movement. It is natural for us to move and
to rest.
Oscillation occurs naturally in our human behaviors. With
oscillation, we achieve equilibrium. [Bonanno][6] With
oscillation, we grow. It may seem that we are compartmentalizing by doing one
thing and then the other, but each will have an effect on the other. There is
give-and-take. Your grief will color the rest of your life, and your life will
color your grief. It reminds me of “Ecclesiastes” in the Old Testament.
There is a season for everything under heaven.
Reminders
A reminder [Rosenblatt][7] is anything
that reminds you about your loss and triggers a grief experience: holidays,
birthdays, an aroma, a room in a house, a place, an event, a favorite
restaurant, or an article of clothing. You can sometimes see reminders coming
and prepare for them, e.g., not being alone (or being alone) on special
anniversary dates. What are your reminders?
With time, reminders may not trigger intense grief
reactions. Instead, they will rejuvenate the bond between you and your loved one
and may give you hope and a sense of peace.
Middle
knowledge
Avery Weisman, a psychiatrist, who studied human dying,
identified middle knowledge as the “fluctuation between denial and acceptance.”
[Weisman][8]
(Parkes calls this double knowledge). [Parkes][9] Middle
knowledge can occur during the dying process. You may know that your loved one
is dying, but then, there might be another treatment to try, or a
far-in-the-future event to look forward to.
In mourning, middle knowledge may manifest in this way:
you grieve the loss of your loved one, and then forget that she died and call
her on the phone or set a place for her at the table. You straddle the fence of
reality. On the one hand, you grieve your loss. And on the other hand, it
didn’t happen. This is natural, and a way we slowly assimilate difficult
knowledge.
In the beginning, there may be only shock and disbelief.
The yes-no of middle knowledge evolves after the shock has worn off.
One widow, whose husband had been dead for a year,
described her experience this way: “I was proud of myself for making it through
the year. When the year ended and I had gone through the last of the first
times for everything, I inwardly said to him, ‘Okay, I made it through the
year. You can come back now.’”
Author Joan Didion gave away her deceased husband’s
clothes but could not give away his shoes: “…he would need them if he were to
return. The recognition of this thought has by no means eradicated the thought.
I still have not tried to determine (say, by giving away the shoes) if the
thought has lost its power.” [Didion][10]
Six
personal characteristics that make your grief unique
Your personal characteristics affect how you will
experience grief. By their very nature, each of these characteristics is unique
to you and your situation.
Let’s look at six personal characteristics:
(1) An expected death or a
sudden death
(2) Attachment: how attached
you were to the deceased
(3) Identity and roles: how
much they changed because of your loss
(4) Changes in your view of
the world (your view of the world, your “take” on it is called your assumptive
world)
(5) Judgment: your
susceptibility to the judgments of yourself and others
(6) Your psychological
strengths and weaknesses
(
An expected
death or a sudden death
When a death is expected, you have time to prepare, share
final sentiments, and to grieve. When a death is sudden, there is no time to
prepare and no opportunity to say goodbye. A sudden death may also be a
traumatic death, such as a homicide or a suicide—leaving the survivors
themselves in a traumatized state.
Even in an expected death, there can be suddenness in its
finality. No matter how much you as a loved one are prepared, there is a shock
in that last leap, that last moment. Further, aspects of the dying process or
the death itself for which you were not prepared may be traumatic.
Attachment:
how attached you were to the deceased
Attachment is “a personal connection or feeling of
kinship.” [yourdictionary.com][11]
Grieving people allude to the importance of attachment.
They may say that after the death of a loved one, “I feel like I am missing a
limb,” or “There is a hole in my heart.”
If you did everything together, your grieving experience
may be different from those who had a mixture of shared and separate interests.
You may not even realize how attached you are until death separates you.
John Bowlby, psychologist and psychiatrist, researched
attachment, particularly in human infants and their mothers. When separated
from Mom, the baby becomes distressed and will cry and search for her. Over
time, the baby’s distress between Mom’s leaving and returning will lessen as
the baby’s trust and sense of safety increases.
Bowlby saw that attachment behaviors have their roots in
infancy and are experienced throughout the lifespan. The baby behaviors when an
attachment figure is gone occur in adults, too—crying, searching, and
exhibiting distress. “In sickness and calamity, adults often become demanding
of others; in conditions of sudden danger or disaster a person will almost
certainly seek proximity to another known and trusted person.” [Bowlby][12]
In death, that very person who you may have turned to in times of distress is
no longer there.
The attachment may be to a person with whom you had a
trusting and loving relationship. Or it could be to a person with whom you had
a turbulent and mistrustful relationship. Or it could be a combination of the
two. The attachment can be generational. Your last relative or your last friend
may die, accentuating your aloneness and the end of the collective memory of
your generation.
Identity
and roles: how much they changed because of your loss
First, foremost, and most important, your identity is as
a human being. There is no one else exactly like you. Whether you are a baby or
an older person, or at any of the different ages in between, you are unique;
you are special.
You live in the world with other human beings, and you
have many identities in your daily life. Certain identities are assigned to
you: e.g., sibling, niece, nephew, child, grandchild, grandparent, ethnicity,
nationality, gender, age, the religion you were born into, and your family of
origin. Others are identities you create: spouse, lover, parent, friend or
colleague, neighbor, retiree, working person, your acquired knowledge and
skills, and your philosophy and/or chosen religion.
When a loved one dies, you miss the person and you miss
your identity as a spouse, child, parent, or friend. You may miss the roles you
played and all the things you did to maintain and enhance the relationship. For
example, a parent may cook meals, work to support the family, shop, pay bills
and maintain finances, be a chauffeur, oversee and support school progress,
read stories, teach values and skills, mediate disputes, celebrate family
events, give and receive love, and more. If your child dies, many of these
roles will either stop or drastically change.
The following exercise demonstrates how important
identities and roles are for each of us. When these change, the effect can be
jarring and even devastating. As you read the following “I” sentences,
experience each assertion of identity. Then, when you read the next sentence,
imagine the distress that can so easily challenge who we think we are.
I am a good wife. My spouse dies.
I am a good husband. My spouse has an affair.
I am a competent worker. I didn’t get the job.
I am a hard worker. I was fired.
I am healthy. I was diagnosed with cancer.
I am graceful and energetic. I fell and broke my hip.
I am safe and carefree. I am the victim of human
violence.
I am a soul mate to my lover. She now is living with
Alzheimer’s disease.
I am a good parent and protect my children. My child
dies.
I am a competent driver. I caused an auto accident.
Changes
in your view of the world
Your worldview is called your assumptive world: what you
assume you will see when you wake up in the morning, and who will be there. If
you can attach the word my or our to someone or something, that
is your assumptive world.
When your loved one dies, your assumptive world changes.
In sudden death, you do not see the change coming; your assumptive world can
change completely in one second. The more your assumptive world changes because
of your loss, the more you have to adjust to the change and rebuild your life.
In the United States, the assassinations of prominent
and/or vulnerable persons and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have occurred
within our current historic memory. Our assumptive world as a society has
changed.
We even connect strongly with past historic tragedies
that affected generations long ago, before we were born. I attended a play
about Mary Todd Lincoln, staged in the theatre where Lincoln was assassinated.
It was about her experience as a newly widowed person. As the final curtain
came down, many people were weeping. Our collective consciousness is still
incorporating that tragic loss into our American assumptive world even though
it occurred over 150 years ago, on April 15, 1865.
Your assumptive world can even include strangers. Few of
us knew those who died on 9/11, yet that terrorist attack affected all
Americans. We felt a connection to the victims and their surviving families.
The connection may not even be with a human. You can have
a connection to the natural world. For example, when I learn of the decimation
of elephants for ivory, I am devastated. I personally don’t know a single
elephant, but they are part of my assumptive world.
Frequently, grieving people cut back on their TV viewing
or Internet news consumption. The news always has losses in it and may further
affect and change your assumptive world.
Another characteristic of our assumptive world that most
of us share is that death is optional. “For most people, death is a fateful and
regrettable necessity. Yet, they harbor a primitive belief that appeal is
possible, that suitable negotiation is available, and that, granted the
forbearance of adversaries, death might not, after all, be compulsory.”
[Weisman][13]
When death happens to significant others in your life, suddenly the door to the
possibility of your own death is opened, maybe just a crack, and to the
possibility of the deaths of others who are dear to you.
Judgment:
your susceptibility to the judgments of others and yourself
How do others judge your grief? How do you judge your
grief?
In the Talmud, it is said, “Hold no man responsible for
his utterances in times of grief.”[14] Let’s
paraphrase that: One must give up judgment about everything a human being
experiences in grief unless it is violent or destructive.
It is easy for most of us to accept that there are
different levels of love. You may be closer to one family member and less close
to another. You may have different degrees of love and different expressions of
love for your friends. Somehow with grief, we mistakenly think that we should
experience it a certain way, and if we don’t, we wonder if we are grieving
correctly.
Your regular ways of thinking, feeling, and acting may no
longer work for you. You may find yourself looking to others for validation of
what you are experiencing. Rather than simply appreciating what you are going
through, others may instead judge your experience and offer advice on what you
should or should not be experiencing. This is hard to take.
Kathleen R. Gilbert, educator and researcher in family
studies says, “One of the assumptions held by family members may be that
because they have lost the same individual their grief should be the same.
Alternatively, some may also assume a shared view that their experience of the
loss is more significant than that of other family members, or that they have
suffered more because of the relationship they shared with the deceased. They
may also believe that the loss was less significant for themselves than for
others and feel uncomfortable with the expectation that they should ‘put on a
show of feelings’ to accommodate other family members. Finally, because they
need to socially confirm the reality of the loss and its impact on their
assumptive world, family members may presuppose greater similarity in beliefs
within the family than may actually exist…. Some may see the loss as
devastating; others may see it as distressing; yet others may find it a relief.
An additional complication is that, over time, individual members may
experience changes in their own interpretation of the loss.” [Gilbert][15]
Grief is not a contest as to who loves the best, or who
grieves the best, although the opinions and words of others can make you feel
that way. One of the challenges of grief is that you may feel scrutinized by
others: you are not grieving correctly, you are crying too much or not at all, or
you are grieving for too long or for too short a period.
In grief, it is hard to know who you are so if you want
to be yourself that may be impossible. Instead, have an intention to accept
yourself. Give yourself permission to experience your loss in your own way.
Give everyone else that permission, too. In families, communities, or friend
groups, you all may share the loss, but you will not share the same grief.
[Gilbert][16]
Your grief and its expressions are yours alone.
Your
psychological strengths and weaknesses
Your own personal psychological history affects how you
engage with the world. Your engagement is not static. You change, grow, and
learn from your life experiences.
You have strengths and weaknesses, and they manifest in
challenging times, oftentimes in surprising ways. You might think that you have
zero self-confidence and that this is a weakness. However, in grief this
“weakness” could inspire you to ask for help from others and talk with others
about how you are doing. On the other hand, you may think that knowing the
answers to life is your strength. In grief, maybe suddenly there are no
answers, and now “knowing the answers” is no longer a “strength.” It may not even
be possible.
The psychological strengths and weaknesses you possess
may be different depending on your age. The needs of a young child who loses a
parent differ from those of a middle-aged adult who loses a parent. Hopefully,
the bereft adult will be able to function independently in the world without
his parent. Of course, this same level of independence would not be expected of
a grieving child.
How did you manage other losses and life challenges? Are
there losses that have stayed with you for a long time and have had a long-term
effect on you? Do you have a support system that you can depend on, or are
there few people to talk to about your experience? The answers to these
questions are part of your psychological and social makeup.
Chapter
Summary
There are five general characteristics that are part of
the human experience of grief:
Search
for meaning. The search for and appreciation of the meaning of life is
a universal human quality. We discover meaning through stories—the stories we
tell and the stories we listen to.
The
dual process of grief. A necessary dual process is
happening: the process of grieving your loss and the process of creating a new
life. Each of these requires a different kind of energy. One is interior and
personal; the other is exterior and an engagement with the world.
Oscillation.
You go back and forth between grieving your loss, then
attending to other activities and life responsibilities.
Reminders.
These are places, events, people and things that bring on or “trigger” a grief
experience. They can be traditional such as birthdays or anniversary events or
something as simple as a song on the radio.
Middle
knowledge. One knows and does not know that the loss has occurred.
You may have times when you completely forget that your loved one died. Middle
knowledge helps you to take in difficult knowledge slowly.
There are six personal characteristics that make your
experience of grief unique.
An expected
or sudden death. If the death was expected, you had time to prepare. If it
was sudden, there was no preparation, and possibly the loss has elements of trauma
for you. Even in an expected death, there may be elements of suddenness.
Attachment
- how attached you were to the deceased. An adult
whose parent dies will have a different kind of attachment than a child whose
parent dies. How much you grieve will depend on how attached you were to that
person.
Identity
and roles, and how much they changed because of your loss.
Each loss has some amount of identity and role change. These can be acutely
felt. The death of a child and the death of a spouse are losses that cause
extensive and deep changes.
Changes
in your view of the world. Your view and experience of the
world is called your assumptive world. When your loved one dies, this changes
–sometimes dramatically.
Judgment—your
susceptibility to the judgments of yourself and others. In
their wish to help, people may be critical of how you are, or are not,
grieving. You, too, may judge your grief, and wish that you could be different.
Your
psychological strengths and weaknesses. The strengths and
weaknesses that you possess will affect your grieving process. These strengths
and weaknesses can change over your lifespan.
Your own personal characteristics will affect how you
experience the more general characteristics of grief. Learning about these
characteristics may help you to understand and appreciate your grief
experience.
[1] McNees, Pat, Dying: A Book of Comfort (Doubleday Direct, 1996), 167.
[2] Widdershoven, Guy A.M., “The Story
of Life: Hermeneutic Perspectives on the Relationship Between Narrative and
Life History”, in Josselon, Ruthellen. and Amia Lieblich, eds, The Narrative Study of Lives, vol.1
(Sage Publication, Newbiey Park, CA, 1993), 19.
[3] Stroebe, Margaret, Henk Schut, and
Wolfgang Stroebe, “Attachment in Coping with Bereavement: A Theoretical
Integration” (Review of General Psychology, volume 9, no. 1, 48-66, 2005), 50.
[4] Goldbloom, Richard, “Brief But
Spectacular Take on Life,” (PBS Newshour, October 12, 2017).
[6] Bonanno, George, The Other Side of Sadness, (Basic Books,
NY, 2009), 198.
[7] Rosenblatt, Paul C., Bitter, Bitter Tears – Nineteenth-Century Diarists and
Twentieth-Century Grief Theories (Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
MN, 1983), 39.
[8] Weisman, Avery D., On Dying and Denying, (Behavioral
Publications, Inc., NY, 1972), 65.
[9] Parkes, Colin Murray and Holly
Prigerson, Bereavement: Studies of Grief
in Adult Life, 4th edition, (Routledge, NY, 2010), 75.
[10] Didion, Joan., The Year of Magical Thinking, (Alfred
Knopf, NY, 2005), 25.
[11] www.yourdictionary.com,
definition of attachment
[12] Bowlby, John, Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1, (New York, Basic Books, 2nd edition,1982), 208.
[13] Weisman, Avery D., On Dying and Denying, (New York,
Behavioral Publications, 1972), 6.
[14] Palano, H, The Talmud: Selections (Evinity Publishing, digital, 2009) 291.
[15] Gilbert, Kathleen R., “We’ve had the same loss, why don’t we have
the same grief?” (Death Studies, vol. 20, issue 3, 1996, 269-283), 276.
[16] Gilbert, Kathleen R. “We’ve had the same loss, why don’t we have
the same grief?” (Death Studies, volume 20, issue 3, 1996, pages 269-283.
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