Having been given the opportunity to provide a brief case study about grief, here is a snapshot of my story. I was fortunate that my reflective piece became part of ‘The Grief Collective: Stories of life, loss and learning to heal’ By Dr Marianne Trent.
Within the last 5 years, I have experienced two significant bereavements. Although neither were my ‘immediate’ family, they were my family none the less and they both affected me deeply. I feel selfish even saying that, as I consider that I was on the periphery of the loss, in that they affected others much more strongly than me. At the age of 27 my (now) fiancé lost his father to a heart attack. A complete shock, early hours of the morning where his mother attempted CPR and by the time we arrived, he had gone. As life changing as this was for the family for several reasons, the grief process felt relative to the loss and we have survived it.
Two years later I experienced another loss, which I am going to talk about here. Two days before going on a short holiday, I received a text message from my best friend saying she and her husband were now home from the hospital and along the lines of ‘we’re going to enjoy some family time at home’. To provide some context, her husband (also one of our best friends) had a lifelong condition and spent his life having bouts of hospital admissions which became normal to most around him. Three days later, whilst starting our second day away. I received ‘the’ phone call. I just knew. We communicated all the time, but as with many people today it was always via text. Rarely, if ever by phone really. I could not believe it, I wanted to scream, but I felt numb. It is fair to say, that we considered life may have been limited for him, in that he may only reach 40 or 50 years old. But by no means did we think this soon. Not at 27. Although he had several periods of hospital admissions, generally he was ‘well’.
After nearly 30 years of friendship I thought I knew her well. And although we do know each other very well, to this day the regret I have for not going straight to visit as I received that message, to be with her and make sense of what she was trying to tactfully tell me, will probably take a very long time if ever, to go away. Although I do not hold any guilt per se, as when it came to his health, they were a private couple so I didn’t wish to pry too much, but I just wish I could have been there for her during those final 48 hours. At the time I told myself that if ‘things were that bad’ she would surely just come out and say it. Yet the kind being she is, she didn’t want to worry me and only hoped I would read between the lines. But I didn’t. On reflection, I accept that this was because of denial. We have of course spoken about this and I think denial also ran true for her. And saying the words would have just been too painful.
What affected me more about losing not only a close friend, was I guess losing someone my age, lifelong condition or not. And he was my best friend’s husband. Triple whammy. I also had the strangest feeling of being able to imagine what it might have felt like for her. It is a level of empathy I have never experienced before. I genuinely felt the significance of her pain and felt that I also held her loss in some way, in addition to my own. Maybe seeing my mother-in-law lose the love of her life had scared me into worrying about the fact that couples lose their partners every day, and one day I may experience exactly that. As absurd and as unhelpful as this sounds, I ruminated about losing my partner just so I could tell her ‘I know how you feel’. Even when I imagined how it felt for her, I knew that my loss was just not the same as the pain intensity that she was going through. Hers was another level to mine and to most, just incomprehensible. I am unsure how, but I think I did somehow comprehend it. Even though I have thankfully not experienced it.
When I lost my father-in-law, those two weeks in between death and the funeral were a confusing, heart-breaking, busy blur, often with lots of visitors. But after the funeral, it almost felt like people forgot and as they continued with their lives, the support that was around at the time, seemed to quickly dissipate. This time around, I was not going to be a person who ‘forgot’.
I found the loss of my friend incredibly painful, but what did not help was how I saw our friendship group carry on with life so blatantly. I understand that although it seems like it won’t, life does go on and we do move forward with our grief. But I was lucky, I had my partner at home to comfort me and I was very aware of this. However, I observed friends to be so incredibly unaware of comments, conversations, and actions whilst in the company of a newly bereft widow. Our single friends would so candidly talk about dating, our married friends talked about sex and some would express that as she was lucky(!) that she was still young and that she had plenty of time to meet someone else. Shocking I know. But she did not want to meet anyone else, she wanted her husband. So why would people say that? Is that supposed to make her feel better? On several occasions my pain for her was so strong that my blood would boil at the insensitivity of others around her and the lack of comfort from some people. We now, on reflection (as we have talked it over, during many nights of tears and laughter) just believe that they either could not understand, were unable to show that they cared, or thought that by ‘being normal’ would help in some way. I cannot speak for everyone, but I would say, maybe don’t try to be normal, don’t try to ignore the elephant in the room. If you want to be helpful, sit with that discomfort or at least ask them if they want to talk about it. As your discomfort for not knowing what to say does not even come close to what they are going through. However, a caveat to that is of course that we are all different, so maybe address it directly to know what works best for that person. But for me, just do not ignore it because you are unsure of what to say. Just say something.
As time has passed, the pain does become more manageable and for me, the pain genuinely eased tenfold, when I started to see her coming out of the woods. I have felt guilt with this feeling also, as if in some way she is responsible for making me feel better. I know that is not the case and it just means that by seeing that her life is a little easier and happier, makes my grief a little easier too. I could go on for pages about the scenarios, feelings, hurt and confusion that has gone along with my grief. However, it has taught me the importance of just being human and being compassionate. Being there for her, on reflection has no doubt helped with my grief but more importantly hopefully helped with hers, even just a little. We talk so openly about it all and how it affected her and me and everyone else around us, that I think we made some sense of it together. And when I am feeling a sense of sadness, I remind myself how proud I am (and how he would be) of her for finding the strength and resilience to be able to smile and laugh, even on the tough days whilst learning how to find happiness again. For her to get up every day and be the best mummy to their miracle twin boys, is the pure ray of sunshine that constantly reminds us, that Nick, you will never be forgotten.