grief

10/28/2013

Avoid Saying “At Least” When Consoling the Bereaved

If you begin forming the words “at least” — STOP!

Stop using "at least" to talk about grief. Console. Stop sign. TealAshes.com

Stop saying “at least” when consoling mourners. (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

Do not, do not, do NOT let that phrase pass your lips (or fingertips)! If you think uttering (or writing) “at least” to console anyone who is grieving, I advise this:

Bite a hole in your tongue (or slam your fingers in a door) to  prevent yourself from saying “at least.”
(Can you tell I feel strongly about this?)

Here’s why:

“At least,” by definition, shrinks and plays down a thing, reducing it to its smallest component. It minimizes. It downplays and lessens importance. It diminishes and disparages, and when applied to grief it belittles the perceived importance of the loss.

Any intended consolation beginning with “At least you …” will not console. Instead, it isolates mourners, proclaiming their devastating loss to be less calamitous to others than if feels to them.

Examples of “at least” statements (and how they come across to the bereaved) and why they’re so hurtful:

  • “At least you didn’t have any children” (so you won’t have to “deal with” them or their grief and you can just pick up and go on).
    What if the couple privately, desperately wanted children? What if they planned to conceive or adopt within the next year or two? What if one was already pregnant at the time of (her own or her partner’s) death?
  • “At least you (can) have more children” (so you shouldn’t be upset over losing this one).
    One child’s presence cannot “replace” another. The loss of a child (at any age) is a grief unlike any other. Never diminish it. Never assume “replacement fertility” is possible, either — because it may not be, and even if it were, “replacing” one who is lost is not possible.
  • “At least the children are young enough they won’t miss their [parent, grandparent, sibling…]” (so it really won’t be that hard on them).
    Grieving families need to know loved ones won’t be forgotten. Children who’ve lost loved ones, even at very young ages, are impacted in ways only families in similar situations can comprehend.
  • “At least your kids are all grown up” (so you won’t have to raise them alone; also implies adult kids will be “okay” with the loss).
    The surviving parent is now left alone to weather the years-long, unrelenting upheavals of grief by him- or herself. The adult children are burdened with their own grief as well as their concerns for their surviving parent.
  • “At least you weren’t married very long” (so you can’t miss your spouse that much).
    The loss of future, anticipated experiences runs as deep as the loss of familiar comfort and companionship. Those widowed after fewer years together often feel deeply “cheated” by the timing.
  • “At least you had [however many] years together” (so you had more than your share and shouldn’t complain it came to an end).
    A lifetime shared is irrevocably altered by the shearing of one’s “better half.” In A Grief Observed C.S. Lewis compared the loss of a spouse to the loss of a limb which, even when healed, leaves the amputee forever changed.

If you’re cringing now because you remember saying “at least” in past attempts to console, remember that you meant well — at least you tried. (Now that you know, you’ll do better next time.)

10/24/2013

Better Questions than “How Are You?” Part 2–What to Ask When Grief Is “New”

For at least the first year after a death, avoid casually asking “How are you?” It’s too broad, and because it’s routinely used in place of “hello,” it can seem insincere.

Instead, ask one or two specific questions that acknowledge life has changed:

  • Are you remembering to breathe?
    If you’ve never been blindsided by grief, this may seem odd. (After all, who forgets to breathe?!) More than a month after my husband’s death, another widow first asked about my breathing. I thought the question strange–until I inhaled. All at once I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fully filled my lungs. The difference felt amazing, even luxurious! Still, over the next year, I found myself failing to do so again and again.
  • Do you need a drink of water? Are you drinking enough water?
    Your friend has shed incalculable streams of tears. You may (or may not) have witnessed them, but I guarantee more are shed unseen. Those tears, along with the other myriad physical and emotional stressors and distractions of grief, can lead to dehydration.
  • Can I make calls for you?
    Notifying others of my husband’s death was excruciating. It had to be done, but I  dreaded every personal and business call.
  • Would you like to talk?
    This helps, but be sure to listen! Your job is to L-I-S-T-E-N–not to evaluate, judge, or redirect. Let the conversation wander wherever your bereaved friend needs it to go.
  • Would you like to talk about [name the loss]?
    Grieving loved ones need to share feelings and memories about the deceased.
  • Can I bring you [name a specific food, whether homemade or take-out] at [#] o’clock on ___-day?
    Menu planning? Hah! I felt like a five-star chef if I managed to serve cold cereal or popcorn. Sometimes I forgot to eat or to stop eating. Grief disrupts digestion as ruthlessly as it sabotages sleep.
  • May I help you with [name a chore (*see below)]?
    Name one or two, because often the bereaved struggles to recall even simple tasks. I knew I wasn’t handling everything that needed doing, but I couldn’t figure out what was undone until someone offered to help with it. (I appreciated those thoughtful folks!)

    [*Consider offering to take on: errands, paperwork, transporting kids, yard work, washing the car, sweeping, laundry, polishing shoes, buying milk or fruit, house cleaning, etc.]

Questions like these show you care in practical ways. Even if the answer to all is “no,” your interest will be appreciated. (If your offers are rebuffed, please, please try again in a week or so. Consistency counts.)

If you’ve suffered such a loss, please add a comment sharing what helpful things others asked–and did–for you.

10/21/2013

Better Questions than “How Are you?” Part 1–Why

“How are you?” is almost impossible to answer if you’re newly bereaved (within 13 months of a loss).

When grief shakes your world, tips it end over end, and dumps it in the middle of life’s ten-lane freeway during rush hour, you find yourself smashed into  3.4 bazillion pieces (give or take a handful).

Even if you could yell “STOP!” and every commuter and freight driver pulled over to help gather the detritus that was your life Before… Even if magical glue could mend you more seamlessly than Humpty Dumpty… You’ve lost bits and pieces of yourself, blown away by the breezes of cleanup or embedded in the tires of already faraway cars.

So how would you reply to the question, “How are you?” while you’re still smeared and strewn and fragmented and incomplete?

Picture this:

I answer the doctor’s questions about my hubby’s medical history. Doctor utters impossible to comprehend, life-shattering words: “I’m sorry to inform you …”

Everything shifts.

Somehow my brain processes the meaning of the doctor’s ongoing words, though my ears hear only wuh-WUH-wuh-wuh vocalizations like adults in Charlie Brown TV specials. My vision zooms onto my daughter’s shocked face as I watch comprehension and disbelief drawing battle lines across her lovely, distorted features. In the same moment, as if I have more than one set of eyes, I notice the way light plays differently in the corners of the ceiling above and behind the doctor’s droning and I squint at the glare of his bald spot. Out of nowhere, a wrecking ball tugs from the base of my skull, its weighted chain confined within my spine, its globe of destruction swinging wildly through my abdomen. I am helpless to console my child, because this cannot be real and it cannot be undone–and how, oh how can I call her sisters 2,000 miles away to tell them–over the phone–they’ll never see their father again?  “So this is what it feels like,” the writer’s voice in my head intrudes, “when you lose your spouse.”

A bit of time passes. Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Impossible to say, but the doctor is still here, saying I don’t know what anymore.

In walks a hospital employee, portable phone in hand. (Soon I’ll learn he’s on the line with someone from the medical examiner’s office to question me.) As his eyes fix on mine, he says, “How’re you doin’?”

I admit my response was impolite.

(Part 2, Better Questions than “How Are You?” —  What to Ask When Grief Is New, will offer alternative questions that show you care.)

09/12/2013

Do NOT Tell the Bereaved “Life Goes On.”

Never tell a newly grieving person that “life goes on.”  Don’t.

The first time I heard that after my husband’s death, my breath whooshed away like when a fifth-grade bully punched me in the stomach. If my lungs hadn’t been empty I’d have screamed, “That’s not true!”

It wasn’t — not for my husband. His life did NOT go on.

It wasn’t true for our family, either. Death ended the life we had together. His/Our/My life did NOT “go on” physically, emotionally, financially, legally, socially. It screeched down a slope, plunged over a cliff, and shattered into flying shards.

“Life goes on?” Straightforward, everyday chores nearly undid me! When I entered the grocery store as a new widow, Halloween decorations mocked from everywhere. My heart pounded faster than my thoughts raced. “How can there still be holidays? How can people put up decorations? How dare they depict death and decay and graveyards as fun?”

I took as much offense at the onslaught of every season throughout that year of “first” annual events. Each birthday, anniversary, and holiday that “went on” without my husband scratched nails across the now excruciating chalkboard of occasions by which we had once marked our shared passage through each calendar page.

That life could “go on” normally — for everyone else — seemed cruel.

During those first shocked, raw months, I felt bruised and fettered by day-to-day evidence that — for others — “life went on” around me.

Gradually, as I worked through the motions of “going on,” I felt a brief loosening of those fetters. Sometimes they tightened again, protesting my returns toward living my own life as I faced “new firsts” without him. When I opened my first “Congratulations! Your story has been selected …” notice, I squealed and waved my arms and shouted (just a bit excited, you understand!) and then — and then I wanted to tell my husband … and my mom.

Ouch, again.

But each time I stepped forward, those fetters stretched a little more, and with each new “first” I found their restrictions looser, briefer. Eventually they began resembling bracelets more than manacles, accessories to my life story more than markings of “The End.”

I’ve learned that life does, indeed, go on, that it can be beautiful again. I, however, like every other grieving soul, had to discover it for myself — when I was ready.

08/21/2013

When Someone Dies, Do NOT Say, “I Know How You Feel.”

Never tell a grieving person, “I know exactly how you feel”—because you don’t.

You really don’t.

Each survivor’s grief is as unique as it is personal.

Picture your coworkers, classmates, relatives. Do you relate to them identically? I don’t mean answering to the same boss, the same teacher, or the same great-grandma. Do you interact the same with everyone at work? Do your classmates get along equally? Do your siblings share identical relationships with your parents (or your children with theirs)?

Of course not.

Although every grieving parent commutes to work inside the Office Building of Loss, and each shares a suite with at least one other person, each must employ individual skills and equipment to complete assignments for their tyrannical boss.

Even though parentless children enrolled in the Boarding School of Bereavement attend classes together, all must write long-answer exam essays in the unfamiliar tongue of separation and carry their own belongings from dormitory to desk day after day.

While surviving spouses are forcibly relocated to the lonely—yet far too crowded—neighborhood of Death Did Us Part, each widow(er) must maintain sole upkeep on a once-shared mortgage, even while working within walls irreparably damaged by the move.

No matter how many coworkers, classmates, or relatives you share with the bereaved, grief is non-transferrable—one size does NOT fit all.

After my husband died, I knew that people expressing condolences intended support and comfort; I appreciated their efforts. However, each time yet another well-meaning person said, “I know what you’re going through,” I wanted to scream: No, you DON’T know (… you’ve never married, your spouse is alive, you divorced your husband, your third-cousin’s death isn’t the same as my husband’s …) because you have NOT been through THIS!

Ironically, most other widows (and widowers) did NOT say they knew how I felt! Instead, they acknowledged the uniqueness of my grief—and their inadequacy to comprehend it.

  • “X and I raised our kids before he passed, so I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”
  • “I feel for you. We said our goodbyes before Y died. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you.”
  • “Z and I weren’t married as many [or as few] years as you and your husband were, so I can only guess how you’re feeling right now.”

Those who verbalized their lack of understanding made me feel best understood.