stages of grief | Bertram's Blog

A New and Embarrassing Stage of Grief

June 24, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I’ve gone through so many stages of grief since the death of my life mate/soul mate that I’ve lost track. To be honest, I’m not sure there really are such things as “stages.” There simply seem to be varying states of mind that come around repeatedly in an ever-loosening spiral. Still, “stage” is an understandable term for an incomprehensible process, so I use it to describe each new phase of my grief, such as this latest manifestation.

A couple of things have happened lately to catapult me into a new and embarrassing stage of grief.

The first thing that happened was I finished watching the movies my deceased mate had taped. Viewing the movies was the final task of my Grief Work, and it exacted an emotional toll I hadn’t expected. As I watched each of tapes, I was aware that the last time I saw the movie, he was by my side. I remember the things we said, the looks we gave each other, the connection we felt. These once-loved movies now seem dull and bland as if a vital spark is missing. And it is missing. He is missing. Watching wasn’t hard at the beginning, when I started my self-imposed grief task, but it took more than two years to go through all the tapes, and the sadness built up, sort of like a cinematic water torture.

But that is finished. In the future, whatever feelings the movies instill in me when I watch them won’t be so achingly raw. Time, life, and new experiences will pad the movies, and separate me from him just a bit more. Once that thought of increased separation would have brought me pain, but now I know it’s necessary if I ever hope to live a full life.

The second thing that happened is that I do not have as many mixed feelings about his death as I once did. Many people insist that grief is for us, not for the deceased, but I’ve been greatly troubled by his death — for him. He didn’t seem to have much of a life. He’d been sick for so long and in such pain that he was often housebound and couldn’t do much. He was also relatively young. Hadn’t reached retirement age. Even worse, too many of his dreams never came true. It seemed to me that he got cheated out of so much, which was hard for me to bear. On the other hand, I was glad his suffering was over. Sometimes I even thought he got the better part of the deal since he didn’t have to hang around as I do to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. But when those pieces are roughly pasted together, I will get a chance to start over, and he won’t. Conflicts such as these complicate grief. But the other day while walking in the desert, I had a revelation — well, two revelations — that helped alleviate these particular conflicts.

First, I realized that when I was dead, I’d no longer care that he died before me, so if it is inevitable that someday it won’t matter that he died so soon, perhaps it doesn’t matter as much now. Second, I realized that if somehow we are eternal, existing before this life as well as afterward, then his death and mine would happen simultaneously in a cosmic sense. (If life is eternal, then there is no time, right? It all exists now. And so right now we are both alive/dead, though he is . . . perhaps . . . more dead than I am. Or thinking of it a different way: my potential extra decades of life will happen in an eye blink of eternal time, so from his current point of view, I will follow immediately after him.)

Finishing my final grief task and resolving my mixed feelings has more or less ended my sorrow. (At least for now. Sorrow at the death of the person who connected you to this earth never completely disappears.)

And after the sorrow? Well, this is the part I am embarrassed to admit. I am disgruntled and dissatisfied. It seems as if such profound grief, great yearnings, and impenetrable sadness should dwindle into something more noble than discontent. Besides, disgruntlement should be something I can control, but as with every other stage of grief, it seems to be outside of me. Or inside of me. Either way, it’s not of me. It’s just a stage to pass through on my way to whatever lies on the other side of grief.

***

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.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: conflicts complicate grief, grief task, grief work, mixed feelings about the death of a spouse, stages of grief, what comes after grief. 8 Comments »

The Loosening Spiral of Grief

June 18, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday I wrote about The Unchanging Face of Grief, and how a journal entry I wrote exactly three years ago mirrored what I was feeling — Just drifting. Marking time. Hoping . . .

But the truth is, there is a vast difference between yesterday’s feelings and those of three years ago. Three years ago, when I wrote that entry, I had accomplished most of what I needed to do immediately after the death of my life mate/soul mate. I had him cremated as he wished, opened a new checking account, disposed of most of his effects and a lot of “our” things that weren’t worth storing, got myself to my father’s house to look after him since he could no longer live alone. There was nothing I needed to do, that day three years ago, and the great pain of grief provided insulation from the normal irritations and aggravations of life, offering me the illusion of freedom. I just drifted in a fog of pain, spending hours in the desert, thinking not much of anything. Just wandering. Marking time. Hoping my life was actually going somewhere and wouldn’t always feel so stagnant.

People often talk about the “stages” of grief, as if grief were a staircase you ascend, step by agonizing step, until you climb out of the pit, but grief is more like a spiral that slowly unrolls, returning you over and over to the same places, each time with a bit less pain and emotion. At the beginning, these changes from vast pain to numbness, from despair to hope, from determination to helplessness come so quickly, it’s as if you’re inside a slinky that some over-active child keeps tossing around. You don’t even have time to acknowledge one state of mind before you’re in a different state.

My spiral of grief is still unrolling, but now, after more than three years, the changes come slowly and have little power. And the upsurges of angst are over quickly. But this feeling of waiting, of stagnation, seems to be ever present.

I don’t seem to be going anywhere with my life. I remember at the beginning, I was anxious to be done with my grief so I could embrace my new life with arms outstretched. I expected wonderful things to happen, and why shouldn’t they? Doesn’t it make sense that great happiness should come to balance out such great pain? But here I am, long past the worst of my pain, and I still seem to be running in place.

Admittedly, I am stuck in place geographically, unable to make plans except for a few days in advance since my father’s health takes precedence, but my life has more often been a life of the mind instead of action, and that mental life seems stuck too. Even worse, the waning pain of grief no longer protects me from the aggravations of life. (And right now there seem to be more aggravations than normal.)

I have had a couple of revelations out walking in the desert though, so perhaps I am not stagnating as much as I think I am. A few days ago, I was talking to my deceased mate, complaining about all the aggravations I have to deal with, and telling him that when I was free to live my own life, I still wouldn’t be free since I have other commitments to consider. A few minutes after I shut up and the walking lulled my mind, the thought entered my head, “Don’t consider other people. Do what you want.”

(I’m pretending this thought came from him in response to my complaints, but more probably it came from my subconscious.) Doing what I want is easy. Figuring out what I want is hard, but maybe someday it will come to me as I wander.

Another revelation, that I’m not sure I understand, is that life is a tool that we write with, much as we write with a pen. I’m still thinking about that one.

Despite the feelings of going nowhere, I am still trying to keep open to “somewhere.” Still trying to embrace life. Still trying . . .

***

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: grief and feelings of waiting, grief and loneliness, grief and marking time, grief at three years, grief journal, spiral of grief, stages of grief. 6 Comments »

Grief and Lingering Feelings of Resentment

March 14, 2013 — Pat Bertram

During the past three years, I have chronicled my journey through grief, trying to make sense of the myriad emotional and physical stresses one has to deal with after a major loss, such as the death of one’s child or life mate/soul mate. I’ve explained that grief is not the simple and almost clinical state that Kübler-Ross’s five (or seven) stages of grief seems to indicate. Instead, there seems to be an infinite shading of emotion in the process we call grief.

Some of us do 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.

Except for sadness, I thought I’d pretty much dealt with most of grief’s effects, but recently I’ve become aware of lingering feelings of resentment. I’m mostly over the resentment of those who are still coupled, with only an occasional twinge of self-pity when I see couples out walking together, and I thought I’d come to terms with my resentment of his long illness and his leaving me here to deal with grief alone, but apparently a pool of resentment still lies deep within.

I am thin-skinned, taking offense at things that were not meant to be offensive, feeling hard done by when things do not turn out my way, railing against real or imagined unfairness. Of course, we all feel this way at times, but grief seems to take minor faults and magnifies them into major stumbling blocks. The death of the one person who connected us to life also makes us (well, me anyway) feel as if life should be granting us special privileges to make up for that great loss, but life doesn’t work that way.

I’m not proud of this resentment, but there it is. The good thing is that grief’s effects are now mostly making themselves known one at a time rather than all at once in a horrifying and cloudy kaleidoscope of feelings so that I can pay attention to the resentment, and perhaps get beyond this stage to a more even-tempered state.

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Posted in blogging, culture, grief, life. Tags: dealing with grief, dealing with resentment, grief and resentment, journey through grief, stages of grief, the process of grief. 2 Comments »

The Mythic Stages of Grief

February 20, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Joseph Campbell was the first person to write about the motifs and archetypes underlying myths, stories, and spiritual traditions. Christopher Vogler, in The Writer’s Journey, further developed this idea of the “hero’s journey,” making it applicable to writers, both in their stories and in their lives.

The hero’s journey is an endlessly fascinating structure because it is endlessly malleable, able to fit any character, any story, any life. We are all on our own mythic journey through life, but our lives are so much more complicated that the life of a character in a novel because we are dealing with quests within quests within quests rather than a single straightforward journey.

Growing up, falling in love, marrying, parenting, writing, making art, growing old are all quests of their own, though each quest is a but a step on our journey though life.

My most recent mythic journey has been the journey through grief. Grief has been, perhaps, the most mythic of all my quests, each of the stages clearly delineated. (In fact, these mythic stages of the hero’s journey are much more applicable to grief than Kübler-Ross’s stages.)

All of us who embark so reluctantly on this journey through grief are true heroes. It takes a hero’s courage and commitment to deal with everything grief bombards us with and come out on the other side stronger, wiser, and accepting of whatever comes our way.

The mythic stages of our heroic journey through grief:

1. Ordinary World. A hero’s journey begins with the normal world, and in the grief quest story, the normal world is the life we shared with our life mate/soul mate.

2. Call to Adventure. His (or her) dying calls us to grief’s adventure, though death is too traumatic an event to be dismissed as a simple call to adventure. There’s no warble of a bugle call; it’s more like the shriek of a smoke alarm that cannot be silenced.

3. Refusal of the Call. We are frozen with grief, reluctant to continue life alone, refusing to see that perhaps continuing alone could be an adventure.

4. Meeting with the Mentors. We go to grief groups for support, and we talk to others who have also lost their mates. Some of us go to bereavement counselors or read about grief to learn how to deal with this horrifying new world.

5. Crossing the threshold. We commit to grief, to whatever changes will come because of it. We allow ourselves to feel without blocking out the pain because we know that is the only way to find our way through the angst to a more peaceful time.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies. Grief encompasses all these aspects. Grief tests us, our strength, our commitment to life, our beliefs. Grief is an ally, changing us so we can become the person we need to be in order to survive in this new world. And grief is an enemy, bringing more pain than we could have ever imagined.

7. Approach to the Innermost Cave. Grief takes us further away from our ordinary world of a shared life. This is a stage where we regroup. We find a respite from grief for a few days or weeks, leading us to believe that perhaps we can do this after all.

8. Ordeal. Although all of grief is an ordeal, at this particular stage of grief’s journey, the greatest ordeal is accepting that we are alone, that although he is dead, we have to continue living. We thought getting through the initial raw pain of grief was our greatest agony, but now grief throws us even more anguish with the realization that he is never coming back. This new life without him is forever.

9. Rewards. There are many rewards for going through grief. We seize the sword of courage, we find the elixir of patience, we discover the crucible of greater insights. There are consequences, of course, and generally we pay for any rewards with a huge upsurge of grief.

10. The Road Back. The road back is not easy, especially when it comes to grief. Although we can never return to the ordinary world from which we came since that world was shattered forever by his death, we do return to an ordinary world, a world where grief is a companion that merely shadows us, rather than being the trickster that taunts us, the enemy that torments us, the shapeshifter that bewilders us.

11. Resurrection. The hero faces death and is resurrected, and in the case of grief, we face the death of who we once were. We realize we are separate from our life mate/soul mate, that he has his journey and we have ours, and hence we are reborn into a new life. A life that is ours alone.

12. Return with the Elixir. We all bring back from grief certain gifts, whether wisdom or patience or simply the knowledge that we survived the worst ordeal of our lives, and often we share this gift with others. Many of us end up taking care of aged parents, exhibiting a patience we never knew we had. Some of us write or paint to show the world our truth. Some of us go into grief therapy to help others. My magic elixir — my gift, my blessing — has been the unexpected ability to decode grief and write lyrically about the process, such as recognizing the mythic stages of grief and writing this post describing grief as a heroic journey and quest. A strange gift, indeed.

And so life’s journey continues . . .

***

Posted in grief, history/myth, life, writing. Tags: dealing with grief, going through grief, journey through grief, mythic stages of grief, stages of grief, the hero's journey. 5 Comments »

Why I Write About My Grief

October 6, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I started writing about grief not only to make sense of my own feelings, but also as a rebellion against a society that reveres happiness at all costs. I’d never heard of the sort of all-consuming grief that I experienced except for those who were considered unstable, but I knew I was completely well adjusted, so anything I felt had to be normal.

To be honest, I never had any intention of getting personal in this blog. I launched it to establish an online presence for when I got published. (After starting this blog, it took a year to find a publisher, although I’d already been on the quest for several years. After acceptance, it took another six months for my books to be published, but I made it!) Those first years of blogging, I wrote about my efforts to get published, what I learned about improving my writing, the novels I read and what I learned about writing from their inadequacies.

After my life mate/soul mate died, everything changed. I’d intended to keep my grief to myself and continue writing innocuous little posts, but I kept stumbling over people’s ignorance of grief. I found this ignorance in people I knew. (I will never forget those blank looks of incomprehension in people’s eyes when, sobbing, I told them about my loss. Sometimes they looked at me as if I were an alien species, or some kind of strange bug.)

And I found this ignorance in books I read.

One novelist dismissed her character’s grief at the death of his wife with a single sentence, “He went through all the five stages of grief.” Anyone who has gone through the multi-faceted grief of losing a soul mate knows that there are dozens of stages of grief (or none at all). You spiral round and round, in a dizzying whirl of emotions, not just shock and anger and sadness, but frustration, bitterness, yearning, hope, helplessness, confusion, loneliness, despair, guilt, questioning, angst over loss of faith, and you keep revisiting each of these emotions, hanging on the best you can, until ideally, you reach a place of peace and life opens up again.

Another novelist had her widow cry for a night then put aside her grief and get on with her life. Believe me, you can’t put aside such grief. It’s not just emotional but also physical, a ripping away of his presence from your soul, a deep-seated panic when your lizard brain realizes that half of your survival unit is gone, a body/mind bewilderment so great you can barely breathe. You don’t control raw grief. Grief controls you.

Not only did I discover that few people had any idea of the scope of such grief, most people selfishly urged the bereft to get on with their lives because they couldn’t bear to see their mother/sister/friend’s sadness.

There is something dreadfully wrong with a society that expects the bereft to hide their grief after a couple of months simply because it makes people uncomfortable to see outward shows of mourning. Seeing grief makes people realize how ephemeral their lives really are, and they can’t handle it (which leaves the bereft, who already feel isolated, totally alone with their sorrow.) It also cracks the facade of our relentlessly glass-half-full society.

Although I am a private person, not given to airing my problems in public, I thought it wrong to continue the charade that life goes on as normal after losing the one person who makes life worth living. So, over the past two-and-a-half years, I have made it my mission to tell the truth about grief. Even though I have mostly reached the stage of peace, and life is opening up again, at least a little bit, grief is still a part of my life. There is a void in my world — an absence — where he once was, and that void shadows me and probably always will. Although his death changed the circumstances of my life, thrusting me into an alien world, grief — living with it, dealing with it, accepting it — changed me . . . forever. It has made me who I am today and who I will become tomorrow — strong, confident, and able to handle anything that comes my way.

Would I prefer to have him in my life? Absolutely. But that is not an option. All I can do, all any of us can do, is deal with what lies before us, regardless of a society that frowns on mourning. It takes three to five years to find a renewed interest in life after such a grievous loss, so the next time you see your mother, father, sister, daughter crying for her/his spouse, deal with it. Just because you’re no longer tearful, be aware that even though you have lost the same person, you have not lost the same connection. If it makes you sad to see her mourning, think how much sadder it is for her to experience that sorrow. Hug her, be there for her. Don’t hurry her through grief. She’ll find her way back to happiness in her own time.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the conspiracy 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.” All Bertram’s books are available both in print and in ebook format. You can get them online at Second Wind Publishing, Amazon, B&N and Smashwords. At Smashwords, the books are available in all ebook formats including palm reading devices, and you can download the first 20-30% free. Print books can be ordered from your favorite bookstore.

Posted in being me, culture, grief, life. Tags: death of a soul mate, grief and loss, how long does grief take, mourning, stages of grief, surviving the death of a spouse. 11 Comments »

Grief Bursts

November 16, 2011 — Pat Bertram

From the beginning (the beginning of my grief, that is) I’ve talked about various aspects of grief, even the parts I thought made me look weak. Today’s topic — grief bursts — is one I was going to keep to myself, but it’s an important one so I’m going to risk seeming weak once more.

I’ve often said that the trouble with grief is that it doesn’t stay gone. You think you’re doing well, settling into your new life, accepting your situation, and then zap! It hits you, generally when you’re least expecting it. One of the worst of these zaps occurred after my life mate had been dead for five months. I dreamed that he died, and in the dream I woke to discover that he was alive and getting better. I could feel the tension of grief draining out of me, and it felt good to just be . . . me. I awoke for real with a smile on my face, glad he was still alive, and then I was sucker punched by the truth. I felt the way I did the first time I realized he was dead, and it set off an upsurge of grief that lasted several months.

Then last spring, at about the fourteen month mark, I was walking, collected and serene, down a suburban street carved out of the desert, and I was blindsided by lilacs. He loved lilacs, and we’d planted lilacs all around our property. The year before he died, the plants were tall enough to create an oasis of privacy, and when they bloomed, we’d go outside and bask in the heavenly scent. When I came to the desert, I never expected to encounter lilacs, but there they were, growing wildly in a vacant lot. That familiar scent, coming toward me when I was unsteeled against a grief upsurge, did me in for a couple of weeks.

The last big upsurge of grief that stayed with me for more than a day or two came at the eighteen month mark. I still don’t know why — there was nothing in particular that set it off, and a year and a half doesn’t seem like a special anniversary, not like the first year anniversary or the second. Eighteen months just sort of hangs innocuously in the middle. Or it should have, but it didn’t. Well, I got through that grief upsurge like I did all the others. (How? Glad you asked that. The only way to get through a grief upsurge is to feel it, process it, and when it begins to abate, let go.)

Mostly now, I’ve settled into uncoupled life. I miss him, of course, and yearn desperately at times to talk with him, but I’ve accepted as well as is possible that I have to continue on with my life. I feel like myself again (meaning I don’t feel weighted down with grief all the time, nor do I hold myself tensed against possible upsurges of pain).

What I do experience are grief bursts — brief bursts of grief, with all the angst I felt at the beginning, that last but a minute or two. These bursts come a couple of times a day, generally after I’ve been concentrating on a project (such as writing a blog or reading a book), and in the moment when my mind is not otherwise engaged, I remember that he’s dead, and grief bursts over me. I cry for a minute or two as if my heart will break (though I know it won’t. It’s already been shattered and glued back together, stronger than before). And then I’m fine again with no lingering aftereffects.

Of all the strange stages of grief I’ve experienced, these grief bursts are the strangest. Like being skewered with a burning poker and then healed a second later. This particular stage, or so I’ve been told, can last a long time. Even decades after a significant death, you can experience bursts of grief. I’m sure, like all the other phases of grief I’ve gone through, these bursts will diminish in frequency, perhaps even diminish in intensity, but oddly, this is one stage of grief I don’t mind. It reminds me that he was worth grieving for, that his absence from this world matters, that he once was part of my life.

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Posted in grief, life. Tags: death, grief, grief bursts, loss, stages of grief, uncoupled life. 18 Comments »

The Silent Language of Grief

July 24, 2011 — Pat Bertram

The so-called five stages of grief are so ingrained that most people think that’s all there is to grief. You deny, you get angry, you feel pain and guilt (and sometimes you bargain for the return of your loved one), you feel depressed, and finally, you accept. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? A brief checklist of stages, and then you get on with your life.

But grief is not that simple. First, those stages were described by Kübler-Ross to show how people come to terms with their own death and perhaps that of a loved one. It bears little resemblance to how people grieve after the death of a long time mate. Sure, we bereft have moments of anger, times of depression, some feelings of guilt, but most of us undergo a completely different set of stages, such as shock, bewilderment, hopelessness, loss of identity, anxiety, panic, isolation, loneliness, yearning. (For most of us, not anger or guilt but a vast yearning to see our mates once more drives our grief.) We also have physical changes to cope with that aren’t addressed in the Kübler-Ross model, such as immune system deficiencies, stress, dizziness, nausea, changes in brain chemistry, hormone disturbances, loss of equilibrium, and a higher death rate from all causes than non-grievers.

Still, whatever stages of grief a person goes through, there does come a time when you accept the truth deep in the marrow of your being — he is gone forever. You think this acceptance signifies the end of your grief, but do you want to know what often lies on the other side of acceptance? Heartbreak and tears. Sure, there are times of peace as you become used to your aloneness, but acceptance feels like another death, and it needs to be grieved. (It’s one thing to know he’s never coming back, and another thing to KNOW it. This acceptance is why the second year of grieving is often worse than the first year.)

Grief is a way of processing information. We know our loved one is absent, but is it possible to comprehend how very gone he is? To understand the nature and finality of death? Perhaps not, but by feeling the pain of separation and releasing it through tears, we can come to accept (however unwillingly) the idea that our loved one is gone from this earth.

It’s been sixty-nine weeks since my life mate — my soul mate — died of inoperable kidney cancer, and I still have bouts of tears. I was always a stoic and believed in facing reality, but this is one reality I cannot comprehend. I try to conjure him up in my mind, but he is forever out of reach. Forever gone.

According to Voltaire, “Tears are the silent language of grief.” When we have no words to describe our loss, when we have no way of comprehending the incomprehensible, all we have left are tears to communicate to us the depth of that knowledge and the depth of our loss. And so I weep.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: acceptance, death, grief, Kubler-ross, loss, loss of a mate, physical symptoms of grief, stages of grief, surving grief, Voltaire, yearning. 33 Comments »

Surviving a New Stage of Grief

June 6, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been working on my grief book, typing what I wrote immediately after the death of my soul mate. Suddenly it seems as if the past sixty-two weeks have melted into oblivion and I’m back there again, newly bereft, wandering in a fog of pain, wondering how to cope with the massive changes in my life. I know I have come a long way because the revisited pain seems bewildering to me. Did I really feel all that? Did I really survive such a terrible time? Apparently I did, because here I am, mostly back to normal. I’m still lonely, though, and the loneliness surges unbearably at times.

Loneliness is the newest stage of my grief, as it is for so many who are coming out of the first numbing months of grief. I don’t know how to cope with this vast loneliness, but I didn’t know how to cope with any of the other stages of grief, either. I just embraced the pain, the anger, the sorrow, and waited for a gentler time. So that’s what I will do with the loneliness. Embrace it and wait for it to subside. Waiting is not all I’ve been doing, though. I’ve been making an effort to be with people, which helps, and so does writing. I’d forgotten how quickly the hours go when one is immersed in words.

I still wonder if anyone will want to read this grief book when it is published. It is so intensely personal. And painful. Yet people who have read my blog posts about grief have found some comfort in them, so perhaps this book will serve the same function. Even if no one is interested in reading my daily struggles to come to terms with the death of my mate of thirty-four years, the book is important to me. It’s a way of binding my grief into a neat bundle so I can get on with my life, though I have been told one never truly gets over such a loss. But we do survive, and that is ultimately what my book is about — surviving grief.

Posted in grief, writing. Tags: death, grief, loneliness, loss, stages of grief. 15 Comments »

Advice to the Newly Bereft

February 2, 2011 — Pat Bertram

A couple of newly bereft joined the grief group I go to, and seeing how lost and bewildered they are showed me how far I have come these past months. I’ve reached a modicum of peace (though I still have moments of intense grief) and I don’t feel quite so lost and bewildered.

The Kubler-Ross formula for grief is so ingrained in all of us that we think those are the only stages of grief, but I have discovered dozens of phases more universal and potent than denial, guilt, anger, depression. Loss and bewilderment are two such phases. They are major components of grief, though I haven’t found them listed anywhere as a stage the bereft have to deal with.

The worst problem of grief, of course, is that someone who was a vital part of our life is dead. The second worst problem is that we are flooded with so many emotions, topped off with excruciating pain, that it is almost impossible to sort everything out. All these emotions gridlock the brain’s synapses, and we are left feeling lost and alone and totally bewildered. Where did our loved one go? How can he no longer be here? How can the world continue without his presence? How can I continue without his support and love? How can he be so very gone?

That “loss” everyone tells us they are sorry for is not our loved ones. Our loved ones are not lost, not misplaced; they are dead. We bereft are the ones who are lost. Whatever place we thought we had in the world is gone, perhaps forever. The world is different without our loved ones, and this is especially so if the dead we loved was a life partner, a soul mate. They’d become such a part of the fabric of our lives, of our very being, that when death rips them from us, we no longer recognize ourselves. We wander lost, bewildered, in this alien world. Some people manage to find themselves again, others become so changed they never find their way back.

I’d gone through the typical stages of grief before my life mate — my soul mate — died. I’d denied, raged, bargained, accepted, so that I thought I was “over” him, that after his death, my life would continue, sadder, but not much different. The depth of my grief, my loss, my pain, my bewilderment stunned me. I’d gone through all the stages of grief, so I should be okay, right? Wrong. Real grief begins where those so-called stages of grief leave off. Those stages of grief were first noted as the way people learned to accept their coming death, and they bear only a shadow of a resemblance to what those left behind experience.

My life mate and I used to talk about who had it worse — I thought he had it worse because he was the one suffering. He thought I had it worse. It turns out he was right. His suffering is over, but mine will last the rest of my life. My grief will continue to change, to go through additional changes, will abate, might even be forgotten at times, but it is now a part of my life.

And he is not.

That is the crux of the issue, the cause of all that bewilderment, pain, and loss. How do you live with someone who is no longer there? How do you live without them? Here’s how: you find comfort wherever you can, however you can. (Besides drink and recreational drugs, that is.) No matter what you do to get through the worst of your pain, no matter how crazy it is, be assured that others have done it, too. Hug the urn with his ashes, carry his identification, smell or cuddle or wear his clothes, talk to him, scream for him, cover the wall with his photos, write to him, write blogs about your grief. Do whatever it takes to get you through, because, as hard as it is to accept, you are still alive.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: comfort, dealing with grief, death, finding comfor, grief, how to get through grief, Kubler-ross, loss, loss of a soul mate, stages of grief. 6 Comments »

I Am a Ten-Month Grief Survivor

January 27, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I mentioned to someone the other day that it’s been ten weeks since the death of my life mate and that I didn’t know how I managed to survive that long, then it hit me. It hasn’t been ten weeks. It’s been ten months. How is it possible to live almost a year with half your heart ripped out? I still don’t know, but I do the only thing I can: live.

After the nine-month mark, I had a respite from grief. I liked the symmetry of nine months of grief (gestation) before being born into a new life, but as happens with grief, the respite was merely that — a respite. A couple of weeks ago, the need to see my mate one more time grew so great it felt as if the yearning would explode from my body like the creature in Alien. The feeling came and went for a while, and now the creature has gone back into hibernation. But still, the yearning lingers.

I’m learning to live with the remnants of my grief. From others who have also borne such a loss, I’ve come to understand this is the next phase of grief — not soul-destroying pain as at the beginning, but blips of varying intensity and frequency. I know I can deal with this new stage of grief because I have been dealing with my grief all along, but still, a part of me rebels at the necessity.

Planning signifies hope and is supposed to be a sign of healing. Strangely (or perhaps not strangely; perhaps it’s to be expected ) every time I make plans, I have an upsurge of grief. Plans take me further away from him and our life. They remind me of similar things we did together, and they tell me that from now on, he won’t be sharing new experiences with me. Still, I am not holding myself back. I need to fill the hole he left behind, and new experiences are one way of doing that.

In the past four months I’ve gone to various art galleries. I’ve seen Mesoamerican antiquities, aristocratic clothing through the ages, local artists, classic art work. I went to a wild life sanctuary where they take care of captive-bred animals that zoos don’t want. I went to the beach. In May, I’ll be going to a writer’s conference where I’ll be a speaker.

All this shows that I’m moving on, and yet . . .

And yet he’s still gone. That goneness is something I struggle with — how can he be dead? I wanted his suffering to be over, so I was relieved when he died, but somehow I never understood how very gone he would be. I don’t want him to be gone, but he’s not coming back, and there is not a damn thing I can do about it.