When someone close to you dies, how can you start to make sense of the different emotions that show up even when several months have passed?
This was a question I received from one reader whose parent died six months ago, and they struggle in particular with “positive emotions” following the loss.
Grief can be peculiar in nature, because it affects our bodies and minds in various ways when we’re trying to get used to the loss while managing a life that goes on.
When I give talks on grief, I sometimes invite participants to imagine that, when they go home, they find their sofa missing from the living room. How would that feel? If there’s no explanation for the absence, people say they’d feel confused, anxious, and even angry – who took the sofa? Even if the absence was expected (maybe it’s being replaced), people say it’d still feel strange to come home and it’s no longer there.
You can imagine how much more difficult it is to deal with the death of a loved one. Even the small things can bring a flurry of emotion. A vivid memory I have is of her standing in my bedroom doorway, about six weeks before she died, still carrying on but obviously in pain. She asked me to prepare the music for her funeral – there’s a request you never see coming – and I paid really close attention to her voice.
It dawned on me that she would soon be a memory, and just as I was sinking into that feeling, she cracked a joke and we laughed. It felt like I was being trained for grief in real time.
In the blink of an eye, she became a memory, and 16 years later I still have tears in my eyes when I think about her standing in the doorway. The grief never goes away; in my case, I just learned to befriend it.
In the late 1990s, researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut published their model of grief called the “Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement”. The model describes healthy grieving as an oscillation between two broad forms of coping: “loss-oriented” and “restoration-oriented”.
This helps explain why grief can bring both “bad days and good days”. I prefer to think of them all as “coping days”.
Contrary to some people’s views, denial and distraction can be helpful, especially in the early days following a loss. Denial can help keep the pain from becoming overwhelming, and distraction gives us a break from the initial heavy weight of grief. These can cause problems if they’re prolonged over time; however, there’s no one way of looking at grief, since every experience is unique and the context of the loss is important.
When we find ourselves swinging back and forth between “good days and bad”, that’s a natural and healthy part of grieving – it’s an indication that both mind and body are trying to adjust to the new reality.
We run into trouble if we think of it as a rule that grief should be a linear process. For some people, it can be; for many, it’s anything but.
If possible, it’s helpful to be kind to ourselves and allow whatever comes up to do so. You might be crying over the death of your loved one on Tuesday, laughing at a show on Friday, and feeling angry on Sunday – or it could all happen on the same day.
We are all shaped by loss, yet often struggle to understand what is happening to us, perhaps because we speak so little about loss.
If you find yourself “all over the place” after the death of a loved one, it can feel uncomfortable and alien, but it’s a natural part of your whole system suddenly having to deal with a different world.
I would highly recommend A Matter of Death and Life (2021) by Irvin and Marilyn Yalom, which is a beautiful example of how two people try coming to terms in real time with the knowledge that one is approaching death.
It’s heavy-going at times, but it shows how Irvin – a renowned expert in grief and existential therapy – struggles with the pain of losing Marilyn, someone he loved since his teenage years.
We cope as best we can and, in time, perhaps we learn to live alongside the loss, carrying the memories and the love with us the rest of the way.
Sandy Clarke has long held an interest in emotions, mental health, mindfulness and meditation. He believes the more we understand ourselves and each other, the better societies we can create. If you have any questions or comments, e-mail lifestyle@thestar.com.my. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
