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02/06/2016

Super Bowl, Super Grief

Super Bowl 50 may be a big deal to some folks out there, but for those who are grieving it may or may not matter. If you have friends who’ve lost loved ones within the last couple of years (or so), keep in mind:

  1. Invite grieving friends to watch the big game at your house with you.

    This is the most Super Bowl that gets watched at my house.

    This is the kind of Super Bowl that gets watched at my house.

  2. If you and yours don’t watch the Super Bowl, invite your grieving friends to join you in whatever you do — or don’t.
  3. If you’re having a tailgating party, invite them there.
  4. Mourning leaves people feeling bronco-bucked. They may need to immerse themselves in occasional fun to escape their pain for a while.
  5. Grieving makes your friends feel panther-mauled. They may need to curl up in their dens to recover in solitude.
  6. Living after losing a loved one is harder than you know, so cut them a bit of slack. Mourners may need a replay or do-over.
  7. Crowds storm the field after the game, but eventually the stadium empties. Well-wishers surround the bereaved up until the funeral, but eventually everyone else goes home, leaving the bereaved alone in their loss.
  8. When you’ve lost the highest-stakes championship — with death on the line — getting riled up over a football game can seem pointless.
  9. Mourners need fans to cheer them on with encouragement and support — whether they seem ahead of their game or whether they seem to be running behind.
  10. After the game, the losing team needs fan support and continued training. After the funeral, bereaved friends need ongoing support, too.
  11. If you’ve already asked mourning friends to join you but they said, “No thanks,” ask again (GENTLY). Invite them to change their minds at any time.
  12. Honoring traditions (such as pre-game parties with friends) can make the bereaved feel more connected to their departed loved ones and their living friends.
  13. Honoring those same traditions can make the bereaved feel more disconnected from their dead loved ones and their living friends.
  14. Mourners can feel happy and involved with their friends while also feeling sad and isolated from their friends at the same time in the middle of a party.
  15. Not being invited because they’ve lost loved ones makes mourners feel like they’re being unfairly punished.
  16. Just because your friends have lost loved ones doesn’t mean they can’t laugh at funny things. Sometimes mourners need to laugh.
  17. Laughing while mourning can feel so good it makes you cry.
  18. If players are sidelined due to injuries, they need medical treatment but still belong to the team; if mourners are sidelined by grief, they’re still your friends — so treat them that way.
  19. Sometimes players’ numbers are retired, never to be worn again; people sometimes see that as sad, but the team carries on with new players signed on. Mourning friends’ loved ones have gone beyond retirement, never to play or work or interact again; their family team will never, ever be the same.
  20. Super Bowl teams train and work out long before they set foot on the televised field in front of the world. Whether mourner’s have advance notice of bereavement’s demands  or they’re tackled by it without warning, grievers often feel vulnerable under spectators’ scrutiny.
  21. Mourners don’t need would-be coaches who’ve never mourned their loss telling them how to play through their grief.
  22. If you haven’t already asked your grieving friends to join you for the game, it’s not too late. (If you’re reading this after the game, it’s still not too late to get together doing something — anything — else!)
  23. Game day snacks might be the most wholesome meal your mourning friend has eaten since their loved one died. (Mourning appetites are weird.)
  24. Players sidelined with concussions are never told to get back out on the field to play again too soon. People concussed by the death of a life partner (or other loved one) should also never be told to get back out into relationship fields to play again too soon. (They’ll know when — and/or if — they’re ready again, so don’t give your input UNLESS they ask.)
  25. Tailgating means shopping ahead and prepping food before the big event; mourners may have trouble shopping or prepping food at all.
  26. Even if you don’t usually invite friends over for the Super Bowl, please invite your bereaved friends anyway. You don’t have to do anything fancy; just being there as a friend will help.
  27. Have a box of tissues nearby for commercials. Sometimes touching ads will touch off emotions of grief. Let your friends know you are okay with them expressing their feelings.
  28. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk (grieving or not). So don’t. Ever.
  29. Whether your friends lost their loved ones recently or long ago, keep in mind that annual events may strengthen and stir up traumatic losses.
  30. Last-minute invitations are better than no invitations at all. If you haven’t already done it, please, call, text, or message your grieving friends — NOW.

Whether you’re reading this hours or minutes before the big game, halfway through it, or long after, tell mourning friends you’re thinking of them. Acknowledge that even though they may feel alone, they aren’t forgotten and they don’t have to be alone all the time.

Let them know you care.

01/27/2016

Crazy with Grief

If you want to comfort someone who is grieving, or if you’ve recently lost a loved one, here’s something you need to know:

Grief can make a person feel crazy.

Stark. Raving. Crazy.

Before I go on, please accept that I don’t use the word “crazy” lightly. I mean no offense to any individuals living with mental illnesses. On the contrary. I have a glimmer of understanding — just a little bit — about how difficult it can be to live with mental health challenges. I have relatives and friends whose diagnoses impact their day-to-day lives.

My late husband grappled with severe, life-impeding OCD. During his last two years, other mental and/or neurological symptoms (which were never adequately diagnosed) infected his thinking and behavior, bringing our home life to its own level of … no other way to put it … crazy.

After my husband’s unexpected death, I thought I was losing my mind; it didn’t work right.

  • My short-term memory stunk. I couldn’t hold simple to-do lists. I’d flit from the start of one to the middle of another. (Why am I standing in the laundry room holding my toothbrush wearing only one shoe?) For the first time in my life, I forgot to pay bills on time. When I remembered to attempt cooking, I left perishable food on the counter or in the stove or microwave until it turned on me and I had to throw it out. I had too many near-misses forgetting I’d turned on the stove or lit a candle. (NOTE: SET A NOISY, OBNOXIOUS TIMER IF YOU’RE GRIEVING AND TRYING TO COOK.)
  • I lost time. It took twice as long (or more) to do routine things like putting on clothes or brushing my teeth. Even pouring a bowl of cereal and slicing a banana took longer. More taxing tasks (like paying bills) took three to four times longer (and I didn’t do them very well).
  • Showering was a sob-fest. I fell apart every time. The solitary vulnerability allowed too much time for thinking, reflecting, and mourning. The waterworks were so bad, for a while I put off showering as long as I (and my family) could stand it.
  • Sleep was a nightmare. Literally — I had soul-waking, body-shaking nightmares. That is, when I could sleep.  For months I avoided sleeping, no matter how exhausted I became, in hopes of avoiding (or at least delaying) the nightmares.

    After my husband died, my brown eyes looked green to me. (Photo by Teresa TL Bruce/TealAshes.com

    After my husband died, my brown eyes looked green to me. (Photo by Teresa TL Bruce/TealAshes.com

  • I couldn’t look myself in the eye. My reflection looked wrong. Instead of seeing myself — the self I’d always seen before — I saw only the emptiness in my eyes. (Emptiness, that is, except for the bloodshot insomnia tinting the whites.) It was unsettling. I knew I’d lost my husband (my other half) and the mirror flaunted I’d also lost myself. I had to avert my gaze, careful not to look too closely into my soul’s windows.
  • I couldn’t stop looking at my eyes. (Yes, that sounds like a contradiction, which seems a little crazy. Which is my point …) All my life, I thought I had clear brown eyes. It may be scientifically impossible, but after my husband died, my eyes looked more green than brown. (Yes, I felt irrational green-eyed jealousy over couples who got to keep their spouses to ripe old ages, but I’m not talking about their metaphoric hue.) My irises still look more green than brown to me.
  • I couldn’t stand to be photographed, either. I remembered as a child reading in National Geographic of a tribe of people who feared that cameras somehow captured their souls. The thought of documenting the emptiness in my eyes brought panic. I still remember one person telling me to smile for the camera and when I told her no, I didn’t want my picture taken, she did it anyway. The violation chilled me, left me shaking.
  • Making business phone calls felt like mountain climbing. (No, I’ve never actually been mountain climbing, and if I could have avoided all reasons for using the phone during that period, I wouldn’t have made those necessary calls, either.) Every time I called another organization regarding the business side of my husband’s death, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. (And yes, thanks to a bigger-than-me-boy-bully from elementary school, I do know how that feels.)
  • Personal calls were harder. I can’t count how many well-meaning souls said, “Call me if you need anything.” I knew they were my friends. I knew they meant it, but their offer was too general, too much from a perspective of not understanding what that “anything” might have been. (I didn’t know what I needed, and besides, didn’t they know how HEAVY the phone felt?) Even as the words came out of their mouths, I knew I would not call them. Could not.* 
  • My body betrayed me. In the first weeks of widowhood, I didn’t remember I was supposed to eat. When I complied with reminders, my body wouldn’t keep food inside. (I’ll spare you the details, but it wasn’t pretty.) Eventually, it overcompensated, telling me I was hungry when I wasn’t. Of course, there was also the nightly insomnia (and the need for daytime naps to compensate). I forgot to breathe fully. And my skin went crazy, peeling and cracking as if it were dehydrated while also creating acne like I hadn’t seen since adolescence. Even my sense of smell went haywire as I perceived the presence of smells that weren’t there.
  • I followed a stranger. With my car. For a couple of blocks. I knew — KNEW — it couldn’t possibly be my husband walking down the street with his build and gait and hair color and wearing a striped shirt like his. It couldn’t be. But I had to follow until I could see the front of him. Because it looked just like him. And I knew we’d buried my husband, but what if we hadn’t? What if it was him?

In short, I felt crazy.

For all the examples above (except the eye color thing), I’ve heard other bereaved souls acknowledge similar irrational thoughts while mourning. Finding out I wasn’t alone in my mind-mush helped me cope.

But that wasn’t enough.

Before I talked myself into giving grief counseling a try, I pondered the advice of several widowed friends who’d found the process helpful.** Those who got the most out of grief counseling plunged themselves into the process without holding anything  back. They told their therapists everything. Everything.

That scared me.

There were elements of my husband’s mental illness I hadn’t shared with anyone. Some of his symptoms were obvious to those around him; others were more subtle, known only to those closest to our family; a few issues I learned only over the course of our 24 years together. I never wanted to undermine him or betray his confidence, so I spoke of them to no one. Most people had no idea of the depth of his struggles or how they impacted both of us in our shared life.

So during my first appointment with a grief counselor, I let it all out. Everything. All the grief-related craziness and all the new-widow insecurities and all the old-life abnormal-normalcy of living with my husband’s mental illness.

It helped. Telling one nonjudgmental, neutral person everything brought a balance to my grieving. More importantly, the therapist validated the life-altering impact of losing a loved one. She helped me reframe my perceptions of how to move forward in the newly-revised, work-in-progress, ongoing version of my life.

I wasn’t crazy, she assured me. I was grieving.

If you’ve thought your grieving friends were going crazy, or if you’ve thought it of yourself while mourning, I hope this has helped you feel less alone. Please feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

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*I believe I made only ONE middle of the night call during the first couple of years. It was to a dear friend I met through a widows network, Shelby Ketchen. Because she’d been a widow for about six months before me, I was able to trust the sincerity of her offer to call “day or night” more than I could trust myself to call upon people I’d known much longer. I knew that as a recent widow, she understood my post-midnight madness. She shared her experience, her faith, and her friendship at a time I most needed to quell the desperation I dared not show in daylight.

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See the Mayo Clinic’s page on Complicated Grief for more information on warning signs that your friend may need professional help adjusting after a loss.

**For a related post, see Grief therapy and a friend’s counsel.

11/26/2015

Thanksgiving and Thanks-Grieving — Serving Mashed Gratitude with a Side of Grief

In previous years I wrote about grief and gratitude intermingling during Thanksgiving.* Whether someone died recently or long ago, the holiday season is forever altered for surviving family and friends.

For families who have lost loved ones within a few days, weeks, or even months, the shock of new grief might mask the sharpest pain of the first holiday season — or not.

The pain can be overwhelming. Getting through my first widowed Thanksgiving (only a couple of months after my husband’s unexpected death) was like waking up in a surgical recovery room. I was groggy with grief, unable to focus on anything but the faces of my family, too aware of the open wound where half my heart had been removed without my consent.

Our post-death holiday menu abstained from all things traditional. Instead of cooking favorite dishes, we went out to eat. Instead of verbalizing what we were grateful for as a family, I privately listed my many blessings in a notebook. Instead of putting up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving for the 25th year in a row, I forgot. (I even forgot we’d bought an artificial tree two years before he died.)  I forgot Christmas was coming.

Seasoning my every acknowledgement of personal gratitude was the GAPING HOLE of his absence. My husband — my children’s father — WAS NOT THERE … and would NEVER return.

Sometimes the pain of loss can be motivating; not every loss means all tradition must be avoided. Mom died two months before Thanksgiving a decade and a half earlier. (Yes, my husband’s death was the same time of year as my mother’s.) Our family did everything we could that first Thanksgiving and Christmas to serve up “sameness” — as much as was possible without her presence. (Though we did have her presents, sort of. She left behind — or more accurately purchased ahead — ornaments for her grandchildren.) Thanksgiving and Christmas were bittersweet commemorations (not exactly celebrations) that year; her sweet reminders and attitude of gratitude surrounded us, tempered by our distress and longing for her, softened and lightened by everyone’s anticipation of her third grandchild’s birth between the two holidays.

These examples from my household illustrate one of the most important things to remember if you want to support a bereaved friend or if you are yourself grieving: There is no “right” way to grieve, and (short of recklessly dangerous behaviors) there’s no “wrong” way to grieve, either.

Every loss is unique. Everyone’s journey of adjustment after a death takes its own time. Like people attending an all-day Thanksgiving buffet, no two plates of grief will hold identical quantities, and few will eat all their items in the same order or at the same time.

Let your friends know you’re aware of their losses. If you haven’t said it lately, say it again. (Grief is ongoing; your concern should be, too.) Invite them to share your table. Reassure them they’re going about it the best they can.

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*Here are links to my other posts on this topic:

Thanksgiving and Thanksgrieving

Happy Thanks-Grieving: Grief-Enhanced Gratitude

09/05/2015

Getting Lost in Grief

Navigating life while dealing with death can be like finding your way to an urgent appointment — in a new country …

Where you don’t understand the culture — or the language …

While operating a vehicle you’ve never driven, flown, or sailed before — and while responsible for a dozen kids, their gear, and their pets …

All yelling, “Are we there yet? How much longer?”*

And you were supposed to be there yesterday.

You could pull over to ask for directions — if you could find a passerby with whom you can communicate.

You could call someone who has been there before — if you hadn’t just unknowingly crossed a border not included in your phone plan. If you had any service bars available. If you had your charger with you.

Getting lost in grief

Getting lost in grief, photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com

“The grief journey” is one description for the process of learning to live again after a loss. It’s not like vacationing to experience new scenery or to reconnect with family origins. It’s more like traveling through J.R.R. Tolkein’s Mordor, but without a noble quest. There’s no loyal Samwise Gamgee for unwavering companionship — those on the journey are there because a beloved one has been forever left behind.

Travelers on the grief journey constantly ask themselves, “Where am I? What am I doing here?”

Have you ever forgotten where you were going (while halfway there)? Ever been so lost you had to approach a stranger for directions,  or call a friend to talk you through your route, or pull out a map — even while using GPS?

There was no map to show me the way from life with my husband to life without him.

I’ve always been prone to “creative” navigation from Point A to Point B via unintended alternative routes. My husband and kids found it amusing, though sometimes annoying, that I could find my way through any area — once I’d already been lost there.

After he died, when the shock of grief was new and raw, I couldn’t locate familiar, close-by places; less familiar, more distant destinations were all but impossible.

The interstate was easy to reach, just two turns from my street. But I can’t begin to count how many times I found my widowed self turning too many blocks before I got there. Or half a mile past it. Or not remembering where I’d meant to go. (In hindsight, that was a good thing. I had no business driving at highway speeds when I couldn’t even figure out how to reach it.)

Physically, I was lost all the time. Emotionally, I was just as lost.

In the early months, I was so lost I even blurted my grief whenever I approached strangers. (Most of my widowed friends have said they did the same.) It was as if telling the grocery store clerk, the librarian, and the receptionist “My husband died” was a compulsory password to activate my grief processing symptoms — my distressing, personal GPS.

In time I learned to call on others who’d been there; they’d also lost their spouses. They talked me through how they survived the upending of all they’d known.

Slowly, oh, so slowly, I began drafting my own mourning map.

It took more time than I would have expected to be able to find my way again. It took more time than many of my friends expected, too.**

Be patient with your grieving friends as they relearn how to navigate their altered lives … and offer them rides whenever possible.

___

*See my earlier post called Are We There Yet? (How Long Does Grieving Take?)

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**Speaking of my friends … I’d like to thank Bettie Wailes, Doug Grossman, Nylda Dieppa, and Liz Collard for their feedback — and patience.

07/12/2015

Speak the Names of the Dead

what to say when someone dies

Speak the Names of the Dead (word cloud created on WordItOut.com)

People often mistakenly worry they’ll “make” grieving survivors feel sad by mentioning or alluding to their friends’ deceased loved ones. They’re afraid speaking up will remind them of the loss. There are two reasons this isn’t so:

  • You can’t “remind” a person of something they cannot (and should not and don’t want to) forget. Grief is rooted in love, and that love doesn’t die with the deceased. For the one grieving, no matter the relationship — bereaved parent, sibling, child, grandparent, best friend, spouse, aunt, uncle, niece, cousin, in-law, or other loving mourner — the loss is never forgotten. With time — more time than you can possibly imagine unless you’ve mourned a similar loss — the sadness will thin from a suffocating deluge to a gentle mist that moistens but no longer threatens drowning. It may at times seem imperceptible, but it never evaporates completely.
  • Most people who mourn loved ones fear that others will forget them. They may feel they have to hold tighter to the memories of their dear dead ones — because if they don’t, who will remember? Hearing others speak their dear ones’ names acknowledges they aren’t — and won’t be — forgotten. It frees them to mourn without fear of losing their memories.

Yes, your friends’ eyes may glisten (or pour) when you speak their loved ones’ names, but that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes grief fills a mourner full to bursting — and tears act as a pressure release valve.

It’s been nearly five years since my husband’s death and nearly twenty years since my mom’s. My life is rich and full (sometimes too full) and I’ve learned to live with the grief I still — yes, still — feel for them. (Thank heaven I’m way past the awful days, er, months when I blurted out variations of “My husband died” to everyone I encountered.)

But there are days when grief gets ugly again, not just for me, but for everyone who has lost someone dear. It sneaks up behind us and whispers cruel doubts about whether anyone else still cares they’re gone, about our ability to keep on keeping on, about the disloyalty of moving forward in our lives without them.

Those are some of the days when we most need to hear others speak their names. Tell us stories of what they did — good or bad.* If you knew them, tell us you miss them, too (no matter how long it’s been). If you didn’t know them, tell us you remember (and understand) that missing them goes on . . . long after they have.

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*I realized after writing this that part of my thinking (and post title) draws on echoes of Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead. Its title character cautions survivors that he will speak the truth — the full truth — about the dead they wish memorialized.