mourn

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.

07/01/2015

Taboo Topics When Someone Dies–Part 5, Legal Status

When someone dies, what should you say to surviving loved ones about their legal status?

[While you wait for the answer, listen for sounds of shy, exhausted crickets …]

[… and wait …]

[… and wait …]

Is the silent treatment getting a bit uncomfortable? Only slightly? Then let’s wait a bit more …

[twiddling thumbs]

[looking around the room, avoiding eye contact]

[clearing throat to break the awkward silence]

… and … you’re still waiting, aren’t you?

Get used to it, because I can’t think of a single thing it’s appropriate to say about the legal status of deceased loved ones — or their survivors. Broaching the subject will cause far more discomfort than a pregnant pause.

What seems like a gazillion grief years ago, I started a mini-series of posts on taboo topics* with these assertions:

All grief is personal, but please don’t impose personal comments on the newly bereaved.

Unless the mourner asks you, or it pertains to your already established professional relationship, don’t bring up the bereaved person’s politics, religion, money, physical appearance, or legal status. 

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality reminded me I hadn’t yet posted about why legal status is a taboo topic if you want to console the bereaved. When your relative, friend, or colleague has lost a loved one, the only legal certification that should matter to you is the word deceased. 

Whether you’re a fundamentalist Christian preacher or the chief organizer of a pride parade or a number-crunching hospital administrator, whether the departed and their surviving loved ones are old or young, gay or straight, zealots or atheists, when you learn that someone died, your only concern should be to offer nonjudgmental consolation and comfort in any way you can.

  • Do estranged surviving spouses suffer more distress than long-term partners who stood by loved ones in unwavering fidelity? Should one group have a say in making funeral and other arrangements while the other has no say?
  • Does it matter to a mourning mother whether her child’s birth (and death) was connected to her by biology or by adoption? Does a father who truly fathered a stepchild (by day-to-day manning up to meet his kids’ emotional and physical needs — whether he legally adopted them as his own or not) grieve less fervently than one whose birth certificate – documented “fathering” was over and done with long before that child died?
  • Do bereaved best friends (who talked twelve times a day) deserve less consolation and consideration than surviving siblings (who exchanged little more than annual Christmas and birthday cards)?
  • Do legal residents mourn departed kin more than people without papers do?
  • Do felons (or their families) deserve less respect and support when someone they love dies?

Of course not.

Grieving has no limits graphic compiled by Harmony Bruce

Grieving has no limits graphic compiled by Harmony Bruce

Grief is an outcropping of love. When death severs us from those we love, grief pours from the wound. Like love, it cannot be legislated into neat little boxes on government-issued forms. What can be, and should be, and now has been legislated, is greater ability for people to decide who will deal with the business and legal sides of their final goodbyes.

Whatever the mourner’s legal status, whatever the legal definitions of relationships between people, it’s not up to anyone else to concern themselves with the details. For the rest of us, our job is to simply say “I’m sorry” and to show up without comment, bringing with us only our kindness — whether that’s demonstrated by casseroles, consolation, or (if appropriate) even cash.

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*To see the first post in the taboo topics series, visit
Taboo Topics When Someone Dies–Part 1, Politics

06/16/2015

Grieving Lost Minds: Go Purple for Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month

“Have you lost your mind?” For most it’s a rhetorical question, but for 47 million people, the answer is a tragic yes.

I’m not talking about “losing your mind” in heated moments when stress clutters thinking or when you’ve reacted rashly during a brief lapse in judgement.

I’m also not talking about the fog of grief that messes with your mind after loved ones die (although as a new widow I felt I had lost it).

I’m talking about dementia, a general term for impaired thinking caused by brain damage — dead brain cells. Whether dementia patients suffer because of injury, illness or age, they have literally lost parts of their minds. And that loss inflicts a unique grief.

I’ve written and rewritten this post for two weeks because, as much as I wanted to put the information out there, the topic is too close to home for me.  (More on that later.)

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, June is “Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month,” and purple is its color.  You can find more information, including facts and ways you can help, by visiting their website here:
http://alz.org/abam/

Global facts and national statistics are important, but the devastation of dementia  is personal. It erodes people of every age, and it damages the health and well-being of patients’ families, too.

The grief and frustration of dementia come from living with two (or more) symptoms of life-impeding mental deterioration:

  • short- or long-term memory loss
  • illogical thinking or diminished reasoning
  • skewed sensory perception
  • unfocused attention
  • mangled communication

In many cases, patients recognize their own decline and grieve what they know they’ve lost. Let them know you recognize areas of cognition they still have.

Let them know you will “be there” to step in with them in whatever areas they need help in.

Let them know they can count on your friendship.

Other sufferers don’t recognize their own impairment and may resent the necessity of being cared for by others.  Caretakers need as much support as the patients.

I did.

My familiarity with “brain awareness” stems from other dementias which afflicted beloved, once-functional minds in my family.

I cared for Mom when breast cancer metastasized into her brain, and I catered to (and placated) her father when age dulled and bent his once razor-sharp mind. I listened as relatives on the other side of the country tended to spouses with mental deterioration from specific illnesses. I worked alongside family (and a wonderful home health aid) in dealing with my almost 95-year-old great-aunt’s diminished mental capacity.

And I endured the 24/7 stresses of my barely middle-aged husband’s mental deterioration.

He was 45 when symptoms appeared. At first, I didn’t realize my hubby’s occasional absent-minded lapses were evolving into debilitating short-term memory loss. One month he was “distracted” while paying bills,  and he mailed checks to company A (in amounts for company B’s invoices) inside envelopes addressed to company C. He returned from work or short errands with our car displaying an increasing number of dings, scrapes, and dents. (I later learned his spatial processing was amiss. More than once he “emptied” large, full trash cans “into” smaller, already full wastebaskets. Not successfully.)

By the time his boss called to express concern, things were worse. If asked to perform simple, familiar tasks in their necessary 1-2-3-4 sequence, my husband would dig right in — beginning with four, but completing it poorly. On good days he might then remember to do the first step (now out-of-order), but items two and three? — not at all.

A few months after that call, my husband began what we both hoped would be temporary medical leave as we sought answers and treatment for these (and other) increasingly bizarre symptoms he displayed. He was 46 when a neurologist, one of many doctors we’d seen, made a casual remark including the phrase, “… aside from your husband’s obvious dementia …”

(If my life had a soundtrack, this is where the record needle would SCREECH.) The voice in my head screamed, WHAT?!

I didn’t hear the rest of the neurologist’s sentence. I had to ask him to repeat it. 

Dementia?! That’s for old people, I’d always thought.

I had a lot to learn, and the school of experience was a harsh teacher.

Here’s what I wish I’d known then about how to support people who do or don’t recognize their own dementia — and how to support their exhausted, emotionally drained caretakers:

  • Give them a break. When one person cares for another round the clock, it gets to be too much. TOO MUCH. A change of face can give a boost to both the patient and the caretaker. Even if the patient is confused by the change in routine, even a brief respite can make a world of difference. Offer to sit with the patient (and show up) so the caretaker can get out and about. Or if health permits, take the patient to the store or out for a walk so the caretaker can tend to self-care or other tasks difficult to do with the patient.
  • Don’t take “no” at face value. Your help is needed, whether it’s asked for or not. I don’t mean for you to bully your friend into accepting the above offers, but be persistent and creative in finding ways to help that your friend can live with. If they won’t let you bring in dinner, send them a gift card (or even just a note of encouragement) in the mail. Do something.
  • It’s not worth fighting over. Patients with brain impairment see the world in illogical ways. Their warped perceptions are as vivid and real to them as yours are to you. Arguing to “make” them see reality is both pointless and cruel; it further upsets and agitates everyone, including those with already confused minds. Humor them whenever possible.

Here’s an oversimplified example I’ve fictionalized (by altering details) from one true situation. The father in this scenario, a retired teacher, is anxious and fidgety. “I don’t want to be late. They’re waiting for me.”

His adult children ask, “Who’s waiting, Dad?”

“I have parent conferences today. I need my students’ files so I can get their grades out.”

Each time the son says, “Dad, you retired ten years ago. You don’t have any students. You don’t have to go anywhere,” his father becomes more agitated.

When the daughter says, “Dad, it’s great that you don’t want to keep anyone waiting. You’re always on time. The parent-teacher conferences are done now. You turned in all the paperwork and grades before break started,” Dad (hopefully) is appeased, at least temporarily.

  • Safety first. Having said what I did about humoring the dementia patient, help the caretaker ensure safe practices. Enlist a doctor, home health aid, trusted friend, or neighbor to take away car keys when judgement or reflexes make driving unsafe. Install safety locks and/or alarms on doors and windows for patients prone to wander at 2:00 a.m. Remove the knobs on the stove in homes where a burner might not be turned off again. Lock up prescriptions for those who may think it’s a new day every time they doze off and take a week’s worth of morning medicines before afternoon.
  • Listen up, and let the tears flow. Crying can offer a healthy release of emotion for both patient and caretaker. The loss of mental function creates ripples of grief as caretakers mourn a myriad of associated losses. Future dreams are abandoned when a loved one’s personality dies bit by bit, changing their dear one into a helpless or demanding “stranger.”
  • Repeat. Whatever support you can offer will be appreciated and will make a difference, but as their loved ones’ ongoing deterioration chisels increasing degrees of independence and personality from them, your friends will need your help again.

And again.

Till death does them part.

Then the caretakers will need your understanding — again — as the permanence of new grief kicks in.

When that happens, don’t tell them how happy they should be their loved one no longer suffers.

Don’t ask if they’re relieved their responsibility is finally done.

No one should be made to express or justify grieving emotions until (or unless) they feel ready to do so. Just be with them in the meanwhile.

#ENDALZ #GOPURPLE

___

Each summer solstice, the Alzheimer’s Association sponsors The Longest Day to raise awareness (and funds). For information on this year’s team-oriented event (June 21), visit
http://act.alz.org/site/TR?fr_id=6650&pg=informational&sid=20684

 

05/10/2015

Mourning on Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day hurts. I don’t like dwelling on the downside of death (although that may seem like a strange thing from someone who writes about grief), but the best way for me to get through every second Sunday in May is to close the blinds and hunker down in solitude.

Sometimes the light of love (and its loss) shines brighter against the darkness of grief.

Sometimes the light of love (and its loss) shines brighter against the darkness of grief.

It wasn’t always like that. As a kid I picked flowers, drew cards, and poured adulation on Mom. As a young adult, then a new bride, and eventually a mother myself I appreciated her (and my grandmas and aunts) more deeply than before. My cards and gestures of appreciation (which once seemed so grand) paled next to Mom’s lifetime of service — though my daughters’ creative endeavors for me melted my heart.

After Mom died, Mother’s Day went dark. I still went to church that day, but mostly for my children’s sakes. (I wanted them to see me attending weekly even if I didn’t feel like it, and I knew they and their peers had practiced a song for all the moms.) I enjoyed their lovely hugs (and songs) and cards and “interesting” breakfasts in bed that one day of the year.

But the moment memories of Mom meandered into the day, renewed mourning overtook me.

Over the years I’ve learned to live with my mother’s loss, but there were always certain days per year — like Mother’s Day — wherein the pain of being a daughter without a mother hit me again. Hard.

Those hits became all-out assaults after my husband died. The pain of being a wife without a husband knocked the breath out of me.

This is my fifth widowed Mother’s Day. It’s easier … and yet it’s not. (My plastic smile will be a little more convincing as I smile at the children singing at church this year, but I know better than to bother wearing eye makeup.)

If you know someone grieving this Mother’s Day, let them know you’re mindful of their loss. Let them know you’re thinking about them. Let them know you know this year is different than it was.

Don’t say you know how they feel, because you don’t — especially if you’ve never suffered a similar loss. Only bereaved mothers, for instance, can nearly understand the raw feelings of other mothers who have buried a child. Acknowledge the unique, personal, presence of their grief.

Some people need interaction with others to distract them from tender days like this. Reach out and invite them!

But if they ignore or decline your invitation or phone calls, don’t take it personally. They might be like I am, needing to hunker down this year, but also appreciating messages of support. (I’m keeping the “Please do NOT disturb” sign on my door all day.)

Whether they take you up on your offers or don’t bother responding, let them know you’re aware and you care.

05/03/2015

Pets, People, Death, and Grief

(I’ve composed this post — in my mind — dozens of times since February, but couldn’t bring myself to word it while my 13-year-old dog’s kidneys were failing. She rallied for a miraculous while, but this week her energy and appetite declined. For her sake, I had to let her go. Now that she’s gone, I can’t not put it into words.)  

Two weeks after her diagnosis, my dog rallied for several weeks. Each extra day was a gift!

Two weeks after her diagnosis, my dog rallied for several weeks. Each extra day was a gift!

If your friend lost a beloved pet (or person), remember that grief is the body’s natural (though awful!) response to losing someone with an emotional connection.

  1. Pets are not people,
    but
  2. Pets are people, too.

Huh? Didn’t I just contradict myself? Yes.

And no.

Pets are not people. Their bodies have different biological rhythms, their life spans (for most species) will run out long before their humans’ lives do, and they are 100 percent physically dependent upon the people who care for them.

Kind of like children. Their bodies have developing biological rhythms that differ from those of their parents (think of newborn sleeping, eating, and um, diapering needs), their life spans (with tragic exceptions) will outlast their parents’ lives,  and for years they are 100 percent physically dependent upon the people who care for them.

As we care for our pets, our children, our elderly relatives, our spouses, and our family-by-choice friends (whose bonds of kinship in some cases exceed those crafted in blood or in law), we join our hearts, minds, and extremities (hands, paws, wingtips, scales, fins …) with theirs.

We and they become family. We serve them, they serve us. We love them.

And when they leave us, they take that joined part of our hearts, our minds, and even the feelings of our extremities with them.

We mourn them.

As with other losses we’ve experienced, we can draw upon our own pain to help us better understand those who are mourning. But we must never, ever compare our losses or one-up “my grief is harder than your grief.” Ever.

I’m mourning my dog. Every part of my house and every part of my day reminds me of her absence. It HURTS. But as much as I love and miss her, this grief is not the same grief I felt after my husband’s death or my mother’s. It’s a different, less intense grief.

And yes, each “new” grief brings back a degree of the shock and the pain of each “old” source of bereavement.

Several people who dearly, deeply love their pets made comments they intended to help (but that did the opposite). When I needed to express my grief over the man who fathered my children, I didn’t appreciate hearing anyone say they “knew” how I felt because they’d had to put down a sick dog once several years earlier or they were dreading “going through” what I was experiencing when the inevitable happened to their pets.

My daughters didn’t appreciate similar comments comparing their dad’s death to the passing of friends’ cats, either. I don’t mean to imply that the loss of a pet is insignificant, because it does matter. When you learn a friend’s beloved fur baby has passed, by all means, speak up and share your condolences! (“I’m sorry about Flipper. She was a good goldfish.”)

But don’t rush in to judge or suggest courses of “replacement” — and this applies to the loss of  a person as well. (Do NOT ask whether — or when — they’re going to get another dog, cat, spouse, or child. Do NOT ask how soon they will start visiting animal shelters, dating, or “trying again” for another baby!)

Comparing losses or rushing to “replace” those we’ve loved doesn’t work. Think of it like this: Would it be better to lose your dominant hand or one of your legs? Which of your senses would you choose to lose? Who would you prefer to mourn when death steps into your circle of loved ones?

All loss hurts. All grief has to be worked through.

Let your friends know that you know they are hurting. (“I’m sorry about Donatello. I know you’re going to miss that sweet, stubborn donkey.”)

Be there with them. Bring tissues or chocolate or music or whatever your friends will find soothing.

Share your memories of their beloved. (“Remember the time Bunny chased that obnoxious salesman away? Good ole rabbit…”

Send word. Drop a line of text, a Facebook comment, an email, or (gasp!) an actual note or letter. They’ll be appreciated.

Many of my kind human friends have already done that for me. I thank you. You are amazing, and your compassion has brought sweetness into my saddened heart as I mourn my beloved, ever-faithful fur friend.

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“Helping Your Child When the Family Pet Dies” by the ASPCA includes some validating suggestions and further links at the bottom of its page.