DON’T Say This

12/28/2016

New Year, New Grief after Death

As the world counts down the end of this year and anticipates the beginning of the next, news outlets will no doubt remind us of 2016 celebrity deaths: Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, George Michael, John Glenn, Florence Henderson, Janet Reno, Gene Wilder, Muhammad Ali, Christina Grimmie, Prince, Chyna, Patty Duke, Harper Lee, David Bowie, Alan Rickman … Many famous people left behind sorrowful fans who regret their absence — and grieving families who lament and mourn them.

If you haven’t recently buried a loved one, you might think the new year promises solace — a fresh start — to grieving friends. For some, replacing a calendar marked by death’s heavy hand offers healing.

Turning calendar pages can refresh old grief (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com).

Turning calendar pages can refresh old grief (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com).

But getting through holidays without deceased loved ones can feel disloyal, pointless, or any other strong emotion, and when the calendar changes, years shared with dear ones are forever left behind. For many mourners, the new year symbolizes further isolation from beloved ones.

New Year’s Eve/Day celebrations often trigger renewed grief. Traditions like listing resolutions, counting down to midnight, swapping ball-drop-watching stories, serving New Year’s Day black-eyed peas) — all can provoke painful reminders of bereavement in those who may have begun adjusting to earlier losses.

Anticipatory grief also rises at year end. For those facing a terminal diagnosis (their own or a loved one’s), realizing the coming year might — or will — be their last can be devastating.

In marriage, I’d grafted myself — mind, heart, body, and soul — to my husband; we’d been one. His death ripped apart that grafting, leaving me an incomplete fraction of myself — not whole — a walking wound, more a jagged hole than a functioning human. It shattered me.*

I wasn’t the only widow (or other mourner) who lamented, “Why am I still here? Why couldn’t it have been me?” During restless nights when waking alone felt almost as awful as going to bed alone, I’d have welcomed a passive exit in my scant sleep. Lest you misunderstand, please note: I didn’t, I don’t, and I won’t consider hastening to join my late husband.* (No way — I have daughters, other family, and friends who need me and whom I love and need, too.) But sometimes the brokenhearted agony of raw grief exceeded bearability.*

You can’t lessen the pain of grieving a loved one’s death at New Year’s (and beyond), but you can make sure your friends don’t have to endure it alone. How?

  • Acknowledge it’s a difficult time of year, whether the loss is recent and raw or even years ago. New Year’s Eve and Day can reopen grief’s wounds. Friends validated my loss by acknowledging and accepting my sorrow (rather than ignoring or trying to “fix” it).
  • Invite grieving friends to join in your celebration or commemoration of the event. Tell them you’d like them with you for your sake (“I’d like your company”) as well as for their sakes (“Please join me so you won’t be alone”). If they decline (as I often did), assure them the invitation remains open if their circumstances or feelings change.
  • Repeat the invitation, but don’t push. Offer bereaved friends the choice, but respect them to know best whether solitude or socializing will help. For some widowed peers, going to friends’ homes to ring in the new year lifted their spirits better than staying home. For me, some years I’ve needed to stay home watching chick flicks with my daughters; other years I’ve gone out dancing with friends. (I’ve yet to decide which I’ll do this year.)
  • Offer an oasis. Sometimes mourners happily engage with friends (and strangers) one moment but feel hit by tsunami-sized waves of grief the next. Let grieving guest(s) know ahead of time where they can find a few moments to themselves — sometimes crying in private helps channel emotions — but assure them it’s okay if they cry right there beside you and other guests, too.

If mourning friends choose not to join you, continue offering an oasis of listening, awareness, and concern.

If your friends lost loved ones this year, please reach out to them during this rough week. Even if the loss doesn’t seem recent to you, it still is to them. (For many mourners, the second year after a death can be as hard, if not harder, than the first.)

Express that you’re aware this year is different for your grieving friends when life moves on for the rest of the world January 1. (Don’t, however, tell mourners “life goes on” — for their loved one it didn’t.) Be there for them — not only New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day but in the 365 (and more) days to follow.

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* PLEASE seek professional help if you (or anyone you know) feel so overburdened by grief or loss (or any other reason) that suicide seems like an option. Do it now. If not for your own sake, then for those around you, get help now. Visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) in the U.S.; outside the U.S. you may find resources at this  list of international suicide hotlines.

(Forgive my overuse of single asterisks above. I wanted to call as much attention as possible to this notice.)

Elements of this post may seem familiar; parts are adapted from my earlier New Year, New Grief and New Year after Death posts.

For more on what to say (and what NOT to say) to the newly bereaved heading into the new year, see Don’t Say “Happy New Year” after a Death.

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Within hours of posting this the day after Carrie Fisher’s death, I learned that her mother, Debbie Reynolds, also died. I’ve edited the above text to include her name as well. I sincerely offer my condolences to their family as they grieve this heartbreaking double loss.

12/12/2016

The Pulse of Grief, Six Months Later

Half a year ago, 49 people died without warning in an evil attack at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub. For six months, these victims’ loved ones — parents and partners, siblings and children, other family and friends — have privately and publicly mourned their beloved ones.  Just (or should I say already?) 26 weeks ago our city — and with television and Internet coverage, the world — ground to a halt in emergency response, physical recovery, and remembering.

In the 180-some days since those horrible, early morning hours, Orlando’s outward pace has accelerated almost back to normal in a deceptive echo of the trite, insensitive dismissal — “life goes on” — some shove at the bereaved.

"You Mattered" Pulse Birds (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

“You Mattered” Pulse Birds painted outside an Orlando business (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

I have hope, though, that many hearts better understand the open-ended nature of grieving. Murals, T-shirts, store marquees, and hashtags all around town (#OrlandoStrong and #OrlandoUnited) display the love and pride my city’s citizens express in memory of the victims and in support of their loved ones. Surely, with such vivid visual reminders, we will keep these loved ones’ lost lives present in ways that will help their families rather than harm them.

I’m grateful for the media coverage focusing on the coming-together of disparate parts of our community. People who didn’t know any of those who were slain actively reach out to show their support for the people grieving them.

It’s important to remember, though, that most people mourning loved ones don’t have national or even local media reminding everyone of grief milestones — such as the six or twelve or eighteen or twenty-four months — since their loved ones died.

For many who grieve, such commemorations pass in lonely, heartbroken silence.  Death anniversaries — even “monthiversaries” — can be difficult. So please, reach out to those you know who have lost someone recently.

 

12/08/2016

Grieving through the Holidays — A Personal Message to Mourners

Several friends and acquaintances have contacted me in recent weeks because someone they know has lost a loved one. They’re worried about how grieving friends will endure the holiday season. The purpose of my website has always focused on educating people — like my friends — in how to support the newly (and not-so-newly) bereaved.

I’ve spoken indirectly to mourners rather than addressing them here — until now:

Dear Mourning Friend of My Friend,

I’m sorry.

As a widow whose life partner perished — and as a daughter who yet mourns her mother — I share my grief with you. Not in comparison with yours but as an offering to open communication. I do not know the exact pain of your bereavement — I have not experienced it. But from within the pain of my own, I recognize your guttural groans of grief as the same life-altered language of loss I’ve learned.*

I’m so sorry.

My Friend’s Friend, if I could sit down beside you, I’d listen to you cry (and maybe probably drop a tear or two of my own) while handing you one thick, lotion-infused tissue after another. (I’d bring a new box for you each time I arrived.)

I’d nod my head (and bite my tongue) while you ranted and raved about anything and everything remotely responsible for the death of your loved one.

If you said out loud all the things you’re going to miss about your dear one, I’d listen to every one — and I’d write them if you’d like me to. If you chose to tell me funny stories about your deceased darling, I’d laugh along with you (again handing you tissues if when laughter crossed the line back to tears).

I’d hear you out — without judgement or interruption — if you chose to tell me of your faith and how it helps you cope — or how it does not. If you asked me — and only if you asked — I’d relay how my faith sustained me through the earliest days of my own grieving (and — if you asked — how, six years later, it keeps me afloat through the occasional blindsiding waves of renewed grief).

If you wanted someone at your side to attend a worship service, I’d go with you, and you wouldn’t have to explain yourself or feel like hiding your tears when the familiarity of place and ritual clashed against the unfamiliar absence of your dearly departed. I wouldn’t judge you if you needed to flee mid-hymn or mid-prayer.

Grief dehydrates through tears and stress. (Photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

Grief dehydrates through tears and stress. (Photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

I’m so sorry for the devastating loss of your loved one.

If I could sit down beside you in your grieving, I’d bring you a glass of water, I’d suggest you drink it, and I’d tell you to breathe. Yes, breathe.**

(Really. Before you read further, take a long, deep breath.) 

I would not say, “Call me if you need anything,” because I remember how confused I was while newly grieving. I didn’t know what I needed — but I knew I was as physically as emotionally incapable of picking up the phone to ask anyone for help — no matter how sincere I believed their offer.

Nor would I ask, “How are you?” because I remember how impossible it was to answer that question when half my heart felt ripped away.

But I would reassure you that, no, you’re not crazy, and yes, your grieving body is likely doing all sorts of weird things to your appetite, skin, digestion, sleep cycle, immune system, memory … I’d encourage you that — in time — much of that will resettle, but in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt — and might help — to check in with your doctor.

I’d write things down for you, because you’re going to forget. I’d bring you an obnoxious, look-at-me-bright neon notebook for recording and storing all the death-related red tape and paperwork — everything from jotting the names, phone extensions, and times of day you speak with employees over cancelling accounts, to listing the kind ways friends and neighbors reach out, to stockpiling the government forms you have yet to fill out.

Three months after my husband died, I attended our congregation's annual Christmas pot luck social. I couldn't make myself go again until this year, the sixth after his death. (Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

Three months after my husband died, I attended our congregation’s annual Christmas pot luck social. I couldn’t make myself go again until this year, the sixth after his death. (Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

If I sat with you side by side, and you asked how I made it through the first (and second) holiday season after my mother died, and then after my husband died, I’d lower my eyes, thinking, Not well. Then I’d answer as positively as honesty allows, “I don’t really know. Much is a merciful blur …”

I’d pause before speaking the rest: “… but the parts I remember — hurt.”

I’d add assurances that it’s okay — even necessary — to be flexible about Christmas parties and Hanukkah traditions and holiday gatherings. I’d acknowledge they will never be the same. Only you will know which customary activities might bring you peace through their connection to your deceased loved one; only you will know which might grind salted vinegar into the raw recesses of your grieving heart. I’d give you my permission — which you don’t need — to change your mind at any time about any and all of whatever celebrations you desire to join in on. And I’d remind you that when traditions no longer bring joy, it’s okay to exchange them.

I’d ask if you’d welcome a hug, and if not, I’d graciously accept your refusal. When you’re the one grieving, you’re allowed to say what you need and want.

___

*My friend Melissa Dalton-Bradford‘s On Loss and Living Onward: Collected Voices for the Grieving and Those Who Would Mourn with Them beautifully speaks that language. Reading her poignant portrayal of working through her son’s death and studying the passages she shared from other voices helped me when I needed it.

**For specifics on why I urge you to breathe, see this post on the taboo topic of appearance.

11/23/2016

Thanksgiving after Death

I threw out the post I penned for this Thanksgiving week.

I’d written about how giving thanks while grieving helped me heal, but those thankful acknowledgments came from within me — not from others’ admonitions to be grateful for X, Y, or Z. And I wrote about ways the post-Thanksgiving frenzy of Black Friday shopping can be a grief trigger for many.

But two events nudged me to change this post: the death of an elderly friend and the news of the school bus crash in Chattanooga.

Sunset (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

Sunset (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

My octogenarian friend fell, had surgery, and began recovering. After all accounts reported she was healing, Emily took ill and died within days. Two common thoughts predominated this week as I met members of the family she delighted in, as I listened to neighbors who interacted with her daily, as I spoke with others who knew her through her writing (as I did):

  • We all loved and will miss her, though in different ways.
  • In spite of her age and recent health challenges, we all felt varying degrees of shock and disbelief.

I recognized the expression of acute grief in Emily’s family members’ faces, remembering (a little too clearly) how I felt when my mother and grandmother died. My friend’s passing saddens me, and I will continue to miss her. But her family and closer friends will actively mourn her for as long as they have loved her.

Which returns me to the second event prompting this altered post.

Many hearts in Chattanooga and elsewhere will be thankful this Thanksgiving weekend as they rejoice in their little ones’ safety, but even that gratitude will be overshadowed by the knowledge of others’ suffering. My heartfelt condolences and prayers and thoughts go out to the families whose children were so abruptly taken from them.

I cannot fathom the weight of grief and mourning in that community and within the walls of those homes. I have witnessed my friends’ acute pain in mourning their  children, but I have not worn the soul-searing loss of a child, so I cannot truly understand it. I can only try, knowing nothing I do will make them feel better because nothing I do will restore their dear ones. I can’t fix their pain, but I can — I must — acknowledge it.

After any loved one’s death, Thanksgiving as a holiday and thanksgiving as a practice are never the same. The holiday — with all its traditions — now carries the dark smear of absence. The practice — though healing — may seem impossible for a time likely to stretch beyond a single season (or year).

Every life is precious. All souls deserve to be sung out of this world with love and tenderness as the sun sets on their presence. Heart-songs of mourning include gratitude for the good they did, the lives they touched, and the connections they shared. But those sweet overtones ring truest when honestly accompanied by the bitter, background disharmony of bereavement.

If your friends are mourning this holiday season, listen as they share their gratitude for their loved ones. Openly share the reasons you thank heaven for their loved ones’ influence in your life.

(But please, do not lecture or admonish grieving friends on why or whether or how they should be grateful.)

 

11/07/2016

Mourning, Elections, and Choosing to Be Kind

After you study the issues and candidates, cast your vote, and learn the election results, please remember this:

Be kind.

Regardless of the outcome — win or lose, rout or run-off — the individual people in your life are more important than the people elected into community, state, and national political offices.

(You might be asking, “What does this have to do with grief and the bereaved?” Keep reading. We’ll get there.)

voted

(This sticker was from an earlier local and primary election. I’m going to the polls on Election Day. Will there be lines? Probably. But that’s okay — people-watching is always instructional.)

I don’t mean to imply that politics don’t matter. I take the opportunity to vote seriously. When I was a child, I watched my mom research the issues, attend rallies, and question candidates. This was long before the Internet allowed Google-speed searches. She invested her time — lots of it! — and her intellect in making informed choices to better our neighborhood, city, state, and nation, all the while instilling in me the responsibility to do the same.

Over some election results, Mom rejoiced; over others, she mourned — though never to extremes. No gloating, no berating. No in-your-face chanting or ranting.

I emulated her example with my children as they grew up, dragging them with me to pick up and turn in petitions, voting before or after school (so they came with me into polling places), explaining my choices beforehand and while awaiting election results.

After Mom died, when questions of politics arose, her overwhelming absence overshadowed my interest in doing as she’d taught me. I still went through the motions of researching, but the process felt hollow — as did much else without her.

However, it wasn’t until after her death that I learned how much farther her influence spread beyond what she taught me. In the first half dozen years after she died, I received phone calls — more than I counted — from people she’d met and networked with. For years, they’d sought her out during every election cycle, asking, “What do you think of so-and-so?” or “How do you interpret the meaning of such-and-such?”

She’d never told them how to vote, but she freely shared the information she had gathered and let them make up their own minds. So after she died, they called me, (rightly) assuming I did the same kind of research.

Over time, elections triggered fewer painful reminders of her absence and offered more opportunities to reflect on what a great woman she was. That became my secondary focus as I researched.

When my husband died, everything political blurred. I still cared on some level, but it was a level so far below the surface level of mourning — where I tried to survive — I may as well have been reading campaign signs without my glasses. (Reading anything without my glasses means I see only colorful, impressionistic, wordless blurs.)

Raw with shock and grief, I scarcely remembered to pay the same bills I’d managed before. I couldn’t pick out a box of cereal or loaf of bread in the grocery store without bursting into tears. Political research became a low priority. Campaign calls to my late husband’s phone, which I couldn’t yet make myself turn off, felt like daggers to my already torn heart. Contribution solicitations addressed to him made me want to stop checking the mail.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

What hurt the most as a newly grieving widow was the bitterness, rancor, mudslinging, and nastiness of political arguments. I didn’t mind honest, open-minded debate and discussion — still don’t — but I couldn’t stand the unkindness — still can’t.

Strangers attacking strangers — on social media, at rallies, over the radio. Family members fighting over philosophical disputes. Candidates calling names and contending.

Ick. Yuck. Eew.

When you’re grieving, the worst thing in the world — the death of your loved one — has already happened. Your world is upside down. The last thing you need is arguing and animosity over politics.

When you’re mourning — immersed in the hurt and anger of loss — you can’t abide meanness. You’ve been forced to acknowledge that life is too short for such negativity.

When you’re not bereaved yourself, it’s easy to forget that all around you — in person and online — there are folks in various degrees of mourning loved ones. People you know and people you don’t know, all facing their own grief over death or divorce or health …

So, please, please …

Please keep politics in perspective. There will be future elections. But many are mourning loved ones who won’t be with them in that future; they’ve got enough to handle without being surrounded by more negativity.

No matter the outcome of this election (or others), be kind.

___

For more about mourning and politics, see Taboo Topics When Someone Dies — Part 1, Politics