stages of grief | Bertram's Blog

Grief Is Neither Simple Nor Logical

March 11, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Most people, when they think of grief, if they think of it at all, tend to believe that grievers go through a series of stages, and once each of those stages have been dealt with, the person goes back to normal. Well, at least as normal as most people are or rather as they assume they are.

But going back to normal is not feasible. The truth is, there are no stages when it comes to grief. In fact, the five stages of grief model is dangerous because it makes grief seem like a checklist, as if grief were logical, but there is no logic to grief. Grief has its own timetable, its own method, and whenever we think we understand the process, grief changes its tactics. For days, weeks, months on end, a dozen emotions will attack us all at the same time making us feel that we can never get a grip. And then, for no fathomable reason, we hit an emotional trough where we feel nothing, and we begin to think that we can handle our grief after all, and then—pow! Out of nowhere, grief returns and slams us in the gut, and we go through the whole gamut of emotional and physical symptoms again. And again. And again.

Sometimes, even years later, someone who survived the death of a spouse or other person intrinsic to their life, will be blindsided by grief. A friend, whose first husband had died more than a decade before, was happily remarried, but when the daughter she had with her first husband got married, she had a full-blown grief attack. This sort of thing makes sense to those who have experienced profound grief because any major life experience reminds us of what we lost, of what the deceased lost, and so, for a short time, we are back at the beginning when grief was new.

I haven’t been blindsided by grief for a long time, though I did have a weird bit of vertigo the other day. I was simply walking down the hall (a very short hall) when I got an awful falling-elevator feeling, and I remembered . . . again . . . that Jeff was dead. I have no idea where either the vertigo or the thought came from, except that the anniversary of his death is coming up in sixteen days, so he — and my memory of that time — are close to the front of my mind, rather in the back where they generally reside.

Perhaps some people can put the deceased entirely out of their heads, but most of us can’t, at least not all the time. They were a big part of our lives for many years, and even after they died, they were a big part of our lives through our grief, our memories, our attempts to find a new life for ourselves. Who I am today exists because he lived. Who I am today exists because he died. I have no idea who I would be if I had never met him; have no idea who I would be if we were still together. But none of that matters. I have to deal with the reality of my days, and the reality is that every once in a while, for no reason at all, grief makes itself felt.

Admittedly, this recent episode lasted only a moment or two, but such moments are important, if only to remind us that our grief is never completely finished. How can it be? No matter how much we get used to the void in our lives where they once were, the void is still there. And they are still gone.

My mission in talking about grief, to the extent I had a mission, has always been to let people know that grief is normal. Even years later, if one breaks down in tears or gets a vertigo attack or whatever manifestation grief happens to take at that moment, it’s still normal.

What isn’t normal is believing that someone’s life can be the same after the death of someone intrinsic to their life. What isn’t normal is believing that grief is simple and logical and fits into a few recognizable stages. What isn’t normal is believing that grief is easily dispatched. Well, actually, all that is normal since that’s what most people believe, but just because most people believe something, it doesn’t make that belief true or right.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in grief, life. Tags: blindsided by grief, grief and death, grief and getting back to normal, grief and survival, grief upsurge, stages of grief, vertigo and grief. 6 Comments »

Closure and Acceptance

March 10, 2020 — Pat Bertram

In a book I read the other day, the character mentioned that he found closure after the death of his wife, which led me to believe that the writer had not himself experienced such a loss because, when it comes to death, especially the death of a spouse or child, there is no closure. There can’t be. The circle of grief never closes because the loved one is always dead. They are always missing from our earthly life, and the void they leave behind is never filled. There is no time when we can say, “Okay, that’s done. Let’s move along.”

At some point we begin to find the road to life again, but we will always miss our loved one and will never forget. As time goes by it gets easier and we learn to cope with the necessary changes, but there will not be closure.

Another word that is often bandied about when it comes to grief is “acceptance.” Finding closure implies an acceptance of what happened, and yet, there is not way to ever “accept” the death of a loved one. It’s not our death to accept but theirs.

Acceptance is supposed to be one of the stages of grief, but I’ve never actually gone through that stage (nor did I experience most of the supposed stages of grief for the simple reason that they do not adequately reflect the reality of grief for a life mate, soul mate, spouse or child). I cannot accept that he is dead for the simple reason that it’s not my place to accept it. Acceptance to me suggests that it is okay, and I will never believe that it is okay for him to be dead (even though I do understand the necessity of it).

If “acceptance” means accepting the reality of our loss and understanding that they are gone, then there can be no acceptance “stage.” The truth is that we “accept” the reality from the beginning, and therein lies the problem. If we didn’t understand that they were gone, we wouldn’t feel so bad. But we do understand they are gone. We feel the loss in our bones, our souls, our very beings. We feel it with every breath we take. We feel it in the emptiness of our hearts and our homes. We have no choice but to face the reality.

The only way “acceptance” works in the grief equation is to accept that we have no control over the situation. Accept that we will always miss them. Accept that we will always grieve to some extent. Accept that we’ll never be the same as we were. Accept, too, that grief is not a negative. Grief is an important adjunct to a profound loss, a way to process the unacceptable and unfathomable, a means of moving from being part of a couple to being alone.

As a friend wrote me, ‘Acceptance needs to be viewed as a continuum. Acceptance does not mean “one and done”.’

Many people who have undergone such a loss have a need for adventure, as I did. I never understood this need, but seen in the light of “acceptance” or “non-acceptance,” it begins to make sense. We feel the changes, know we need to go along with the flow of our new life, but we don’t want to accept the new status quo. We didn’t want this new life, didn’t choose it. Even more, it seems such a betrayal of what we once were, what we once had. And so we are unsettled.

To a great extent I have let Jeff go. Somewhere during the past years, I realized that no matter how connected we were when he was alive, we are two distinct people, each on a special journey. For a while, our paths entwined, but now our roads have swung into two different directions. No matter how much I miss him, miss the me I was when I was with him, miss our shared dreams and goals, there is no turning back. The future beckons, and I must go where it leads me.

Perhaps that’s acceptance of a sort. It might even be considered closure of a sort. All I know is that, like the so-called stages of grief, any jargon that is associated with grief falls short of the reality.

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Posted in grief, life. Tags: acceptance, acceptance of life, adventure and grief, closure, grief and feeling unsettled, grief is never done, grief is not a negative, stages of grief. 6 Comments »

Grief: Not One and Done

January 9, 2020 — Pat Bertram

When I was writing my second grief book, Terry, a blog reader who’d lost her husband (her best friend) and who helped proof the book, did not like my working title and suggested “Not One and Done.” At the time, I had never heard of the saying “one and done” (never even knew where it came from until just now when I Googled it), so I thanked her for the suggestion and acknowledged that she was correct about my original title not being good enough. I eventually decided on Grief: The Inside Story — A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One since it was self-explanatory.

Now, however, I do understand what she meant by her title suggestion. Too often, people have the idea that we go through stages of grief — a simple, straightforward slog toward the first anniversary, and then it’s done, the slate washed clean, and we are ready to start to live as if we’d never been married, never had a soul mate, never had a child, never loved someone who was more important to us than ourselves.

The truth is much murkier than one and done. There are no stages of grief, just a chaotic mess of emotions, physical reactions, and spiritual torments that visit us over and over again in a seemingly unending spiral. The spiral eventually widens enough so that we can see the end to the pain, and sometimes widens so much that we are barely aware of our loss, but the spiral is always there, ready to snap back into place. Even years after we reached the point where we feel we have a handle on our grief, it can come back at us as if our loss had just occurred.

Someone recently asked me if there was something wrong with him. His wife had died years ago, and he was happily remarried, but he went through a bad time at what would have been the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first marriage.

Someone else asked me what was wrong with her because she still couldn’t deal with the loss of her best friend, even though the friend had died in May.

It saddens me that people need to ask such questions. It saddens me that our present grief culture is so out of sync with reality it makes grievers think their feelings aren’t valid.

Grief is normal. Life-long grief is normal. Grief upsurges decades after the death are normal. Still dealing with grief a mere eight months after a significant loss is not only normal but to be expected. Oftentimes the second year after the loss of a spouse or a child is worse than the first because both the shock and the widow/widower’s fog have dissipated, and the truth — that you have to live without them for the rest of your life — slams home with a vengeance. This is normal. It’s all normal.

What isn’t normal is that the experts categorize our grief as to what is normal and is abnormal. Sometimes I just want to tell the experts they should hang their collective heads in shame for filling the heads of bereaved people with their ludicrous nonsense.

Even better, I wish my book Grief: The Inside Story — A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One was required reading for anyone, especially professionals and so-called experts, who deal with people who are grieving. Grievers have enough angst without having to worry about whether or not they are normal.

Admittedly, we who have lost significant people in our lives do learn to deal with their absence. Most of us eventually find a way to live that accommodates our loss. Many of us thrive. Many of us find happiness. Many of us find new loves. But always, somewhere deep in the recesses of our souls, we are aware of our loss.

Grief is not one and done. Grief is forever undone.

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Posted in grief, life. Tags: grief is normal, grief is not one and done, grief upsurges are normal, one and done, our present grief culture, spiral of grief, stages of grief, there are no stages of grief. 2 Comments »

UNFINISHED

January 6, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Amanda Ray thought she’d grow old with her pastor husband David, but death had other plans. During David’s long illness and his withdrawal from her, Amanda found solace in the virtual arms of Sam Priestly, a college professor she met at an online support group for cancer patient caregivers. Amanda thought that when their spouses were gone, she and Sam would find comfort in each other’s arms for real, but though David succumbed to the cancer that riddled his body, Sam’s wife, Vivian, survives. Vivian had been in the process of divorcing Sam when she fell ill, and after the diagnosis, Sam agreed to stay with her until the end. Since Sam plans to continue honoring his vow, Amanda feels doubly bereft, as if she is mourning two men.

Rocked by grief she could never have imagined, confused by her love for Sam and his desire for her to move near him, at odds with her only daughter, Amanda struggles to find a new focus for her suddenly unfinished life. As if that weren’t enough to contend with, while clearing out the parsonage for the next residents, Amanda discovers a gun among her devout husband’s belongings. Later, while following his wishes to burn his effects, she finds a photo of an unknown girl that resembles their daughter.

Having dedicated her life to David and his vocation, this evidence that her husband kept secrets from her devastates Amanda. If she doesn’t know who he was, how can she know who she is? Accompanied by grief and endless tears, Amanda sets out to discover answers to the many mysteries of her life: the truth of her husband, the enigmatic powers of love and loss, and the necessity of living in the face of death.

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Although the feelings of grief Amanda experiences are based on my emotional journey during my first two months of profound grief, the story itself is fiction. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to deal with not only the loss of one’s mate, but the loss of the idea one had of one’s mate. Well . . . yes, I guess I can imagine how it would feel, because I wrote the novel! I hope you will read UNFINISHED. It’s an important book because too few fiction writers portray the truth of new grief, and that lack leaves the newly bereft feeling isolated and as if they are the only ones dealing with grief’s craziness.

You can you can purchase both a print version and Kindle version of UNFINISHED (published by Stairway Press) on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1941071651/

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Posted in fiction, grief, writing. Tags: grief in fiction, important novel about grief, novel about grief, stages of grief, Stairway Press, story of new grief, Unfinished. Leave a Comment »

UNFINISHED is on Sale at Amazon!

January 1, 2019 — Pat Bertram

If you have a stack of Amazon gift cards that are burning a hole in your pocket, the paperback edition of my novel Unfinished is on sale today.

The story: Amanda Ray thought she’d grow old with her pastor husband David, but death had other plans. During David’s long illness and his withdrawal from her, Amanda found solace in the virtual arms of Sam Priestly, a college professor she met at an online support group for cancer patient caregivers. Amanda thought that when their spouses were gone, she and Sam would find comfort in each other’s arms for real, but though David succumbed to the cancer that riddled his body, Sam’s wife, Vivian, survives. Vivian had been in the process of divorcing Sam when she fell ill, and after the diagnosis, Sam agreed to stay with her until the end. Since Sam plans to continue honoring his vow, Amanda feels doubly bereft, as if she is mourning two men.

—

Although the feelings of grief Amanda experiences are based on my emotional journey during my first two months of profound grief, the story itself is fiction. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to deal with not only the loss of one’s mate, but the loss of the idea of one’s mate. Well . . . yes, I guess I can imagine how it would feel, because I wrote the novel! I hope you will read UNFINISHED. It’s an important book because too few fiction writers portray the truth of new grief, and that lack leaves the newly bereft feeling isolated and as if they are the only ones dealing with grief’s craziness.

You can purchase the print version of UNFINISHED (published by Stairway Press) here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1941071651/

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in fiction, grief, writing. Tags: grief in fiction, important novel about grief, novel about grief, stages of grief, Stairway Press, story of new grief, Unfinished. Leave a Comment »

Unfinished

January 9, 2018 — Pat Bertram

My latest novel, Unfinished, is the story of a woman who discovers that her deceased husband kept secrets from her. But she has secrets — and unfinished business — of her own. A novel for those who love drama, buried secrets, stories that tell the truth about grief, and women who find themselves when they find themselves alone.

Excerpt:

Amanda still couldn’t bear to get rid of the rest of David’s clothes, but she needed to do something to keep from dissolving into tears once more. She’d cried enough to last her a lifetime, yet tears continued to damn up, ready to spill when she let her guard down.

On the shelf above the clothes rack in his closet, Amanda found a stack of shoeboxes. David won’t need his shoes. I can get rid of them.

Inside one of the boxes, Amanda found a small doll with mismatched arms and legs and a sneer painted on the muslin face—her one attempt at making a doll for the annual Christmas Bazaar. She’d thrown it away, embarrassed by her failure, but apparently David had dug it out of the trash and kept it all these years.

Tears stung Amanda’s eyes. Oh, David, how can you be gone? You were such an appreciator—you appreciated everyone and every good they did. The world is smaller without you in it.

Holding her breath, wondering what else David had kept, Amanda sifted through the box. A few pennies. A flyer for a book sale she’d held at his first church. A couple of indeterminate designs she vaguely remembered doodling on a phone pad. A stack of notes in her own handwriting. “I’m at the Woman’s Club dinner tonight, David. There’s stroganoff and a salad in the refrigerator for you and Thalia. Don’t forget to heat the stroganoff.” “Taking Thalia to the doctor. Just a small cut, but she might need a stitch or two. Back soon.”

All her notes were the same. Stark messages with no endearments, no words of love. Amanda wished she’d told David more often how much he meant to her. They’d never been a romantic couple, and David had been uncomfortable with professions of love, but still, she should have told her husband frequently that she loved him. And now she’d never have the chance. Too damn much left unfinished.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: grief in fiction, important novel about grief, loss of spouse, novel about grief, stages of grief, story of new grief, Unfinished. 3 Comments »

UNFINISHED is Now Finished and Available on Amazon

June 30, 2017 — Pat Bertram

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Does this story sound interesting to you? If so, you can now purchase the print version of UNFINISHED (published by Stairway Press) on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1941071651/

Although the feelings of grief Amanda experiences are based on my emotional journey during my first two months of profound grief, the story itself is fiction. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to deal with not only the loss of one’s mate, but the loss of the idea of one’s mate. Well . . . yes, I guess I can imagine how it would feel, because I wrote the novel! I hope you will read UNFINISHED. It’s an important book because too few fiction writers portray the truth of new grief, and that lack leaves the newly bereft feeling isolated and as if they are the only ones dealing with grief’s craziness.

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Posted in fiction, grief, writing. Tags: grief in fiction, important novel about grief, novel about grief, stages of grief, Stairway Press, story of new grief, Unfinished. 11 Comments »

A Fresh Chance to Take the World by Storm

June 19, 2017 — Pat Bertram

While going through the first throes of grief, I was astonished by how little authors knew about the enormity of grief and its impact. In one book, the new widow cried the first night, then woke up the next morning determined to put her grief behind her, and she never shed another tear. In a second book, the only concession to grief was a single sentence, “She went through all five stages of grief.” Yikes. How ignorant (or lazy) is that? Grief is not merely a brief spate of sorrow that is easily suppressed. It is a complicated process that involves — and completely disrupts — every part of you: your mind, body, soul, spirit, ego in an ever expanding spiral of “stages”.

Because of such authors, I decided to tell the truth of grief, and so I started blogging about what I was going through. I also considered writing a novel about a woman dealing the agony of grief, but I thought it would be too hard to portray in a positive light a woman who cried all the time. It is a caveat in the writing community that if your characters cry, your readers don’t, which could be why most books featuring a widow or widower take place three to five years after the loss.

Still, I wrote a novel about a new widow and her first two horrendous months, which will soon be published:

While sorting through her deceased husband’s effects, Amanda is shocked to discover a gun and the photo of an unknown girl who resembles their daughter. After dedicating her life to David and his vocation as a pastor, the evidence that her devout husband kept secrets devastates Amanda.

But Amanda has secrets of her own.

During David’s long illness and withdrawal from life, Amanda found solace in the virtual arms of Sam Priestly, a college professor she met in an online support group for cancer caregivers. Amanda believed she and Sam would find comfort in each other’s arms for real after their spouse’s deaths, but miraculously, Sam’s wife survives the cancer that killed David. Rocked by unimaginable grief for her husband, confused by her love for Sam and his desire to continue their affair, and at odds with her only daughter, Amanda struggles to solve the many mysteries of her unfinished life: the truth of her husband’s secrets, the enigmatic power of love and loss, and the necessity of living despite the nearness of death.

The publisher (Stairway Press) says Unfinished is a fresh start for me to take the world by storm. Even better, my first readers think it’s a powerful story!

“Unfinished” is a novel of loss, love, and personal discovery. Told with realistic intensity, this story about surviving life while in the throes of soul-changing sorrow shows that grief never dies, but those left behind can learn to live again. —J.J. Dare, author of False Positive and False World

While finding your high school best friend has become a talented writer may not be a surprise, I can honestly say it has become a delight. I have now read all of Pat’s work to date and marvel at the honesty of emotion with which she writes. As a reader, I delight in Pat’s ability to develop characters, to portray our complexity as human beings. Pat’s characters in “Unfinished” challenge our beliefs with their ability to hold a dialectic, and just when you feel you know how this is going to lay down, more is revealed! And, as a therapist, I value this as I offer “Unfinished” to my grieving clients. Pat’s experience makes the reader uncomfortable at times giving us permission to embrace our grief “and let it take you where you need to go” eschewing the judgment of others about “not grieving right,” as we work our way forward [coming to see grief as a gift]. As well, it allows those not yet touched by grief to understand and support, not exhort closure, widening the book’s audience. Unfinished is an authentic gift. —Mary Strasser, MC, LPC, LISAC

So, look for Unfinished. Coming soon!!!

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Posted in books, fiction, grief. Tags: novel about grief, stages of grief, Stairway Press, Unfinished, when characters cry, writing about grief. 7 Comments »

Tears. Again.

January 5, 2015 — Pat Bertram

If you’re sick of hearing about my sorrow, you can leave. I don’t mind. I’m sick of my grief and tears, too, but I’m stuck with them.

Ever since my father’s death two months ago, I’ve been in a strange state. Not only has his death brought back the memory of the death that devastated me (the death of Jeff, my life mate/soul mate), it’s set in motion a whole new set of changes in my life. I came to look after my father after Jeff died, and now that they are both gone, I have to look to my own life and figure out where I want to go and what I want to do.

Do you really think I want to walk the Pacific Crest Trail, live a nomadic life in some sort of camper/van, or any of the other things I blog about? Of course I don’t. But the one thing I do want — to go home to Jeff, the only person who truly understood me — is forever denied me. And so I try to find new wants, which isn’t easy because I’m not a person who wants. (I never wanted anyone, either, but like a mythical being clothed in light, Jeff appeared in my life one incredible Saturday morning in August thirty-eight years ago. And then, almost five years ago, he left to go back from wherever he came.)

I’m fine most of the time. Really, I am. But today, I was with friends watching a movie — Patrick Swayze’s The Last Dance — and one woman piped up, “Divorce is so much worse than death.” I’d heard her make that same stark remark many times before, but today, I couldn’t let it pass. I said, more sharply than I intended, “You keep saying that, but it’s not necessarily true.” She went on her normal spiel about how when someone is dead, they don’t keep coming back, and I again spoke sharply. “Don’t you think I would give anything if Jeff came back? Your ex-husband has finally left you alone, but Jeff is still dead.” Her response was her oft-repeated, “But you didn’t have to deal with him rejecting you.”

I could have told her about the thousands of rejections one has to deal with when someone is dying, how they leave you every single day, how they have no time to think of you because their own concerns loom so large, how your heart breaks and breaks and breaks with the constant rejection until finally you don’t feel anything any more. I could have said a lot of things, but I wasn’t able to continue the conversation. I’d started crying when I spoke the simple words, “Jeff is dead,” and I couldn’t stop.

I pulled myself together to take my leave after the movie, but I cried all the way home, and I’m crying still.

How is it possible that almost five years later, I can be pulled back to the pain of his dying so quickly? Sometimes I wish I were as stoic as I once thought I was — I presumed I’d take his death in stride — but grief is more than simply feeling sad or rejected. It’s even more than those insipid 5 (or 7) stages of grief that everyone seems to believe in. Sure, we feel shock, denial, anger, guilt, sadness, depression, and acceptance, but most of us also feel anxiety, frustration, loneliness, confusion, despair, helplessness, panic, questioning (both as a need to know why and as a cry of pain), loss or gain of faith, loss of identity, loss of self-esteem, resentment, bitterness, isolation, inability to focus, suspended animation, waiting for we know not what, envy of those who are still coupled or who have yet to suffer a loss. And we suffer myriad physical symptoms such as queasiness, dizziness, sleep problems (too much or too little), eating problems (too much or too little), bone-deep pain, inability at times to breath or swallow, exhaustion, lack of energy, restlessness, and seemingly endless bouts of tears. (Yes, I know, those who get divorced also feel many of these things, and I empathize with them, but they do not have to deal with the angst of death, which adds a whole other layer of pain to the equation.)

My grief has mostly wound down since I’ve dealt with so many of the various aspects of grief, but still, days like today remind me that I will never be over Jeff, never stop missing him. And so I try to be tolerant of other’s condescension, try to create new possibilities, try to want something enough to make a life out of it.

And yet, no matter what I do for the rest of my life, he will still be dead. Nothing will ever change that — not my thoughts of an adventurous future and most certainly not my tears.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, grief, relationships. Tags: aspects of grief, death, death and rejection, death vs divorce, grief at five years, stages of grief, still dead. 30 Comments »

Patterns of Grief

March 15, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’d like to clarify what yesterday’s post, Challenges of the Fourth Year of Grief, was all about. I did not mean to imply that everyone’s grief is the same, that we all face the same challenges, and I especially did not mean to imply that these “challenges” are stages people are going through or will go through. I am not a therapist or a grief counselor, so of course I don’t know how a wide range of grievers feel. Nor am I dispensing advice. I do have many friends who are pretty much on the same grief track that I am, however, and all I did was express publicly the things we are talking about privately.

I certainly am not trying to undermine the grief community’s efforts to get rid of the whole “Stages of Grief” mindset. I have railed against the stages of grief from the beginning. Kubler-Ross’s supposed stages of grief do not in any way reflect what my friends and I have gone through and continue to go through, which is why I started writing about grief in the first place — to provide a more realistic view of grief, even if it is just a recounting of my own grief experiences.

Even though everyone’s grief is different, there are still patterns of similarity.

For example, most of us (most of my friends, that is, not most grievers) are being swept by an inordinate need for adventure. This need seems to be a reflection of our birth age as well as our grief age (by grief age I mean how long it’s been since our mates have died). Younger woman still have families to care for, and in older women the need for adventure seems muted (though several have admitted to being more adventuresome then when they were married). Maybe it’s the long, empty, years that stretch before me and my friends that make adventure a necessity. Maybe it’s that grief is so epic that only an epic adventure can make us come alive. I truly don’t know where this need for adventure comes from, but the truth is, most of the women I know who are on the same grief track as I am, desperately crave adventure. Again, I don’t mean to imply that all grievers go through this, but it is a pattern, and more than anything else, I am drawn to patterns.

Which is all I was doing by describing some of the little known challenges of grief — showing a pattern.

And one of the patterns I found is that during the fourth year, most of the people I know did make the big disconnect from their mates, realizing in the depth of their being that we are each on our own path, and that whatever we do or do not do cannot affect the deceased. We only have to deal with ourselves. This understanding is why so many women wake up on the fourth anniversary to find a renewed interest in life. Maybe find they are happy. Maybe find they are in love with life again. For some people, of course, this understanding comes much later, occasionally earlier, and sometimes not at all.

The truth is, no matter what the pattern of grief, your own or someone else’s, grief is hard work. Sometimes it’s nice to know how others feel. It’s especially nice to know that we aren’t alone in how we feel.

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