widowed

12/31/2013

Don’t Say “Happy New Year” after a Death

Do I wish my grieving friends “Happy New Year?” There are more helpful things to say, depending on how long it has been since their loved ones died.

If your friend’s loss is recent (and by “recent” I mean within a year or even up to 15 months), then no. “Happy New Year” is probably not the right thing to say in the first year (or two), even though you do wish your friend to be happy. Grief is not a happy feeling, but when it is new and raw it is the feeling your friend needs acknowledged. More thoughtful responses will be better received. Some things I appreciated hearing as a “new” widow of three months:

  • “I wish you well in the year ahead.”
  • “I know it is difficult starting this new year without him. I miss him, too.”
  • “Would you like to talk about how you two usually celebrated New Year’s Eve together?”
  • “We’d love to have you welcome in the new year among friends. Would you like to join us?”
  • “I’m sorry he isn’t here to begin this year with you.”
  • “You’re in my thoughts this New Year’s Eve. I know it isn’t the same.”

If the loss is more recent, the bereaved may not want to be included in “party” atmospheres — they are hurting too much to celebrate — but it is essential to invite them! Whether they accept your invitations or not, it is better for grieving souls to turn down a dozen invitations to social gatherings than not to receive them at all. Even if they repeatedly refuse your invitations, KEEP ASKING.

As the world celebrates moving forward from one year’s date to the next, those mourning the loss of loved ones who died in the “old” year face the devastating reality that their dear ones will never “touch” the new year. Even those who have already spent nearly a year adjusting to their changed lives will face a new 365-day period of acknowledging their lack. For weeks, maybe months, every time a widowed spouse pens the year onto a check or a parent-bereft child painstakingly pencils the date on a school assignment, a grieving soul feels the “betrayal” of hand and tool writing a time their loved ones will not experience with them.

If your friend’s loss struck longer ago (and by “longer ago” I mean at least a year or more), then “Happy New Year” may be a welcome greeting. If your friend is moving forward,  taking steps geared toward the future, finding joy and fulfillment in life again, then by all means say “Happy New Year!” But be sensitive to how your friend is really feeling. Some who mourn lost loved ones may “look” like they’re “doing better” through the holidays — at least in public — but even those who’ve “gotten used to” their losses find holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries to be difficult times.

12/18/2013

(Part 2) Grief Can’t Tell Time, but It Obsesses over Calendars

As I said in part one, grief can’t tell time, but it  can — and does — obsess over calendars.

Some calendar-activated grief triggers are predictable and public, like holidays and other annual events. No matter which of the 365 days begins a mourner’s first year of grief, your friend who has lost a loved one will soon ache through the first holidays in mourning.

Notice I didn’t say “the first holiday in mourning”? No, I said “the first holidays in mourning.” Plural.

Whether your friend mourns someone who died on January one, Leap Day, the Fourth of July, or New Year’s Eve, for the next year, every first holiday without the loved one will be difficult.* Whether it’s a national holiday or less celebrated annual observance, if the day is highlighted on calendars or merchandised in stores, chances are the days leading up to it will be filled with anticipatory pain.

As each holiday approaches throughout the year, acknowledge your awareness of the loved one’s absence. It’s easy to do. Make a phone call, write a brief note, send an IM,  email, or text. It can be simple: “I know this is your first Christmas without John. You’re in my thoughts and I’d love to hear yours. I’m here for you.”

Then follow through. Be there. Call or text, asking for the opportunity to hear memories about the deceased or their holiday traditions.

There will be private calendar triggers for your friend’s bereavement, too. Annual family events like birthdays and  anniversaries or family reunions can be unbearable to the newly bereaved. As much as I needed and craved time with extended family after my mother’s death and then again after my husband’s, it also hurt to be around them. It didn’t feel right without Mom or Hubby. Family dynamics had shifted. Nothing felt the same.

A couple from church visited one day with a long question that surprised me. “Will you tell us your birthday, your [late] husband’s birthday, your children’s birthdays, and your what day is your anniversary?” The wife pulled a 3×5 card and a pencil from her purse and she wrote each date.

A couple of months later, one of my out-of-state daughters called to say she’d gotten a birthday card from the couple, and I recalled their earlier question. Since then, they have sent each of our children a birthday greeting, and they’ve acknowledged my wedding anniversary. They have texted awareness of holidays, too.

“Little” gestures such as these offer big comfort and consolation all year.

___

*[This doesn’t mean the same holidays will be “fine” once the first year has passed. Sometimes the second year — when shock has faded and the survivors’ new reality has set in — can be as hard as (or harder than) the first year. Holidays — whenever they fall — are hard. Remember: For your friend who lost a loved one, all of life’s celebrations have been forever altered.]

12/09/2013

Console the Bereaved with Concern, but Curtail Curiosity

Showing heartfelt concern when someone dies offers comfort and consolation. Exhibiting curiosity does not.

“The Curious” are more interested in displaying their own pain (or discovering that of the bereaved) than they are in relieving or lightening the mourner’s load. They may say things like:

“Tell me how she died.” Surviving loved ones should never be pressed to discuss this most personal, devastating event. Whether the passing was a bittersweet, peaceful, expected transition or a wrenching, abrupt and untimely, traumatic cataclysm, these details–even if made a matter of public record on the evening news–are intensely private.

“When are you going to move?” No matter how well-intended, this question assumes and imposes the burden of considering yet another upheaval in an already overturned life. Ideally, those who grieve should not make major life decisions within the first year of their loss–and when they do, those decisions are theirs to announce only when and if they wish.

“The same thing happened to my third cousin’s neighbor’s ex.” The grief-afflicted soul thinks, “So what? I don’t know them, and I’m hurting worse than I’ve ever hurt before.” The worst and most relevant grief is a person’s current grief.

“What kind of life insurance did he have?” or “What are the terms of her will?” Unless you have an already established relationship as the survivors’ attorney, accountant, or certified financial planner, questions such as these are off limits! Period.

“When are you going to stop being sad?” Even happily remarried widows and widowers “still” feel sadness over the death of their late spouses. Bereaved parents will “always” mourn the children they’ve lost. Love–and grief over lost love–has no expiration date or timetable.

“What are you going to do now?” The newly bereaved are already overwhelmed. Don’t point out the need for them to make further decisions–which aren’t your business anyway.

In contrast, “The Concerned” set aside their own importance, remembering the goal is to help their grieving friends. They interact to witness and validate the pains of the bereaved survivors they would comfort. Their words sound more like:

“Do you  need to talk about how she died?”
“Is there any way I can help you with any planning you need to do?”
“I’m so sorry for what happened.”
“Can we help you meet any immediate financial needs?”
“Would you like to talk about your feelings?”
“I’m here to support you in whatever you decide.”

Go ahead and show your friends the concern you feel for them in their grief, as long as you aren’t indulging your curiosity to do so.

12/06/2013

On Grief and Recovery: Holiday on the Drive and Stepping Back into Community Tradition

For as many years as we’ve lived in our neighborhood, its main throughway has hosted an annual Holiday on the Drive at the beginning of every December. Last night, after a six-year absence, I returned. (I can’t recall the reason we didn’t attend six years ago, but I’m all too aware of why I stayed away since then — until last night.)

As in years past, no cars hurried north or south. Instead, the street filled with merchant booths and food carts, church outreach tables and school sports boosters, moonwalk castles and live performers. Seasonal lights and decor shone in competition with the brightness of little faces queuing up at the park gazebo to whisper wishes in a certain red-and-white clad, elderly bearded gentleman’s ear. Families and couples strolled, pushing strollers and trailing leashes; teens in twos and threes roamed; babes (and dogs) in arms reached for things they saw (and smelled). Holiday music flowed from speakers and shop doors; horse hooves clip-pe-ty-clopped ahead of a laden carriage; dishes and glassware clinked as waiters called out orders; silvery peals of laughter — especially from the children — tied all the lovely din together.

I saw no holiday sweaters this year in the balmy (73 degrees Fahrenheit) evening air. Even if we’d had a bitter, humid cold snap, like the last time I attended with my husband, the warmth of community camaraderie would have kept me glowing. It, like its predecessors, was a happy, forward-looking event.

And that is why, until last night, I couldn’t face it during the years since my husband died.

It’s easy for most people to understand why we didn’t go while my husband was so ill, even if they didn’t comprehend the nature of his malady. After all, illness is illness, and if you’re too sick to do a thing you shouldn’t be pressured into it. People (for the most part) “get” that. They’d not shake their heads at a feverish person for choosing not to hike in either arid deserts or snowy mountains.

Some friends and neighbors understood why I didn’t — couldn’t — go that first year. Less than three months into widowhood, I was still in shock.

What those outside a family’s grief may not “get” is that grief makes you heartsick.

While I was “fevered” with actively grieving my husband’s loss, I wasn’t capable of stepping into that warm, familiar, comfortable climate of tradition — not without  him. But now, heading into my fourth Christmas season as a widow, the fever has broken, the acute breaks are mending, and I finally felt ready to step back into tradition, albeit stepping at a different pace now.

I kept thinking, as I walked along last night, there was something else I wanted to do, something I ought to do — besides share the night with my husband. At home hours later, I remembered I’d wanted to take a picture. But like many tasks along my widowed journey, I forgot.

Next year I’ll remember to pull out my phone and snap a picture. Maybe I’ll even bring my dog.

12/04/2013

Avoid Blaming or Shaming Someone Who Has Lost a Loved One

This post topic may seem obvious. After all, who would be so cruel as to dump blame or shame onto someone who is grieving? Unfortunately, it happens. Whether by deliberate intent or unwitting ignorance, it piles deeper distress upon those already experiencing the worst moments of their lives.Shame smiley blackground

Intentional blame is easiest to recognize and, sadly, is most often inflicted by another loved one. (Generosity requires I attribute such meanness to being overwrought by grief.) Intentional shaming and blaming  is accusatory and attempts to “punish” the bereaved or the deceased. It can be based in logic or completely without foundation.

“If you’d fed her the right way, she’d have never gotten sick.”
“If he’d been behind the wheel then he’d still be here; we should be burying you instead.”
“She’d have never gotten sick if you hadn’t taken that job.”
“He was healthy as a horse until he met you.”
“She’d still be with us if she hadn’t been such a lousy housekeeper.”

Unwitting or accidental blame is harder to recognize and, for the most part, is ascribed by well-meaning  but thoughtless friends, coworkers, and family.  It usually takes the shape of questions meant to better inform the would-be comforter. It can also be stated in misguided attempts to show “understanding.”

“Why didn’t you take him to the doctor at the first sign of trouble?” (Implies: if you had taken him then, he’d be fine now.)
“How come you sent her to that store that night?” (Implies: if you hadn’t sent her, she’d be fine.)
“Don’t you know CPR? So why’d he die?” (Implies: knowing CPR would have meant he’d survive.)
“If it had been my little one, I’d have found another doctor.” (Implies: mourner “should” have known more/better/different treatment was needed.)
“I’m glad I made my teenager take a defensive driving class.” (Implies: if you’d made yours take the class they’d still be okay.)

Questions and statements such as these only make the bereaved feel worse.  By stopping to think of the hidden implications of questions and comments you make to someone whose loved one has died, you can guard against unintentionally inflicting deeper pain.

(For anyone who has already willingly assaulted survivors with accusations, please reconsider. Apologies can mend some wounds, including your own.)