A mother in my grief circle posted it was her son’s first year anniversary and none of her family acknowledged it. She felt guilty that she was upset with them for this. The overwhelming response (from those of us who know) was that this reception is sad but true. People forget. They move on. They expect us to do the same. And this societal belief isolates us, deepening our grief.
Our society does not know how to handle grief. We like it to be wrapped up with a beautiful tribute at a tearful funeral and we then ‘move on’. This is for many reasons. Our loved ones don’t want to see us hurting. They feel powerless that they can’t make us feel better. They miss the person we were before the death. It is from a place of care that our loved ones try to hurry us along in our grief and get past it and back to ‘normal’. A normal we will never be able to go back to.
This desire is hard on us who are grieving. We too want to be our old selves. We wish life was normal but as that will not be now; we struggle to find new ways to go forward with this grief. It is difficult. It is work to mourn and learn who you are becoming with grief as part of you now. This journey will cause friends to fall to the side, adding to our loss. The friends that stay with us, these are our angels.
I recently had a chat with one of my angels in her new space. I had looked forward to seeing her. She met me with a hug and a tour of her creative room and we sat to catch up on life since we last spoke. She makes things so very natural. We share the frustrations of our current climate, the hopes for new projects at work and the status of what our kids are up to. And the true beauty of her is that our updates include Zane. In her quiet and loving manner, she will speak of him and ask how I am doing with my grief journey. She is interested and asks what I am presently doing to honor him and offers possibilities. Her visit comforts me and I leave with a refreshed calm.
I am grateful, and lucky to have friends like her. I listen to my fellow grief warriors who feel alone that they have no person such as this. I can’t imagine. It adds to one’s grief. It must. It demonstrates there is work we need to do to help our society understand and respond to grief better. We must help our loved ones be brave with the discomfort that comes with speaking of what has hurt us most. We must lead them in conversation, reassuring them that we want to speak of our beloved. That we need to speak of our beloved. We must remind them of special occasions of our beloved and share our desires and our expectations of what we need from them for these dates. It is up to us to lead the way because the alienation that comes from not sharing our grief or ignoring our grief is not good mourning. We need more earth angels, like my precious friend, one of the few whose soul needs no training on how to be such a wonderful support.
Recent Comments