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I hope you find something here to comfort your grieving heart. Please visit any time.
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THE MANY FACES OF GRIEF
My Personal Journey
What wound did ever heal but by degrees? William Shakespeare
On this page
Losing Sleep
The First Time Around
The Trap of Comparisons
I'm Grieving As Fast As I Can: Thoughts on Closure
Gifts that Hide in the Dark
They Live On
Work In Progress
A Note of Thanks
E-mail and Secondary Pages
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LOSING SLEEP
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I like to read about writers and writing. I recently read that if my writing doesn't keep me awake at night, it won't keep you awake during the day. At times, my desire to write about grief approaches madness, or to quote author Annie Dillard: Writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world. Both of these thoughts about writing are true for me. I have lost many hours of sleep writing for this grief web site and I have spent countless hours alone in a small room recalling the real world of grief.
I started writing about grief in March 2006, two months after my mother died. Looking back, I'm not sure how I did it, but I am glad that I began writing so soon after her death. I could not have captured the raw pain of new grief if I had waited. I had to write as I was experiencing it.
I believe my writing reflects a natural evolution--first the pain, then the well meaning, but unhelpful, things people say to grievers, followed by how to help others. I had to experience the first Christmas without my mother before I could write about grief during the holiday season. I was sorting through some pictures and found a photo of a beloved cat. I added the pet loss page because I remember the intense grief I felt when my dear old friend died. The pages of this site were created one by one, over time, as I grappled with the emotions of my grief. I've tried, most of all, to write with honesty and compassion.
I blocked out some things that happened during my mother's final illness because they were too painful to remember. My psyche wasn’t ready. But, as time passes, certain events are coming back to me as I am able to accept them. It is my task in grief to put them in some kind of perspective, so that I can let go of the images of suffering for the sake of my healing.
For example, the night after my mother’s surgery she called out for her own mother. It was December 22—the 48th anniversary of her mother’s death. The Cardiac Care nurse reported this to me the next morning and I asked her how she responded to my mother. “Well, of course your mother was confused. I told her that she was 85 years old and her mother had been dead for decades.” Then she added, “When she stopped asking for her mother I knew she was less confused.”
I told Mom’s concrete-thinking nurse that there were at least two other explanations: 1) She was in pain and she was symbolically calling out for comfort. Of course she would want her own mother, and 2) Maybe, just maybe, she was asking her dead mother to come, be near and wait for her. The nurse rolled her eyes and looked at me without comprehension.
From On Grief and Grieving by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, page 107:
Why is the concept of visitation so hard to believe? Imagine that you’re a parent who had loved and cared for your child. You kept her fed, healthy and safe while she was growing up...You shared her excitement and fears of high school, college, marriage and becoming a parent herself.
Now go forward sixty to eighty years into the future. You’ve been dead for decades, and your daughter, the same one you helped through all her scary moments in life, is now dying herself. Wouldn’t you meet her if you could? As the veil between life and death is lifting, wouldn’t you want to reassure her she’s going to be okay and you’re still there for her? When you think of it this way, maybe the idea (of visitation) isn’t quite so far-fetched.
Many people believe that when they die, everyone they have ever loved and known will be there to greet them in death. That is why they believe no one actually dies alone.
These words comfort me. I hope they comfort you, too.
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THE FIRST TIME AROUND
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The “firsts” without my parents are over—the first birthday, the first anniversary, and the first holiday—and yet they are not. As long as I live I will have new experiences—firsts for me—that I want to share with my mother and father. In some ways, grief gets harder. Most people expected me to be sad for a while after my mother died, but more than two years later, it is time to get back to business as usual. Or is it?
There is not a birthday (theirs or mine), anniversary, Mothers’ Day, Father’s Day or holiday that goes by that I do not feel sadness. Even Halloween brings memories of Mom making me a costume for Beggars’ Night, but some holidays are sadder than others. Dad died on February 13. We were making his funeral arrangements, the surreal experience of casket shopping, as I call it, on February 14. Each Valentine’s Day brings back that sad time. No February 14 will ever again be the sweet holiday of flowers and candy for me.
I still avoid Mother’s Day card displays in the grocery store. I also cringe at the SPAM E-mail advertisements that I receive in the month of May telling me what perfect gift to buy Mom on her special day.
One of the hardest times for me since Dad died in 1994 was in the fall of 2007 because Ken Burns aired his documentary series about World War II. Dad was a WW II veteran. I wanted so much to talk to him about the series and to ask him what he thought about its accuracy. What was the war like for him?
I was fortunate, however, because he liked to write and he left a memoir of his Army experiences. I posted it on a PBS affiliate site and it made the documentary event more meaningful for me. In a strange way, I never felt more removed from—or closer to—my father than during the weeks that the Ken Burns series appeared on public TV.
The PBS link does not open a new window. Use your back button to return here.
All the grief literature tells me to plan ahead for significant and difficult days. It does help. This year my sister Alice and I met for lunch the day before Mom's birthday at Mom's favorite restaurant. We didn’t talk exclusively about our mother, we didn’t have to, but we both knew why we were there.
I have not attended a wedding or a funeral since our mother died, but my sister has gone to several funerals and a wedding. It is helpful, especially in the beginning, to go with a friend or family member for support and sit in the back. If the service evokes memories that are too much to endure, you can slip out quietly without drawing attention to yourself.
You can also offer people guidelines about your comfort level by saying, “It’s OK to talk about ( ___________ ).” Or, if you are not up to that, you can say, “Today I just want to be with you and enjoy your company. Tell me what is happening in your life.” Friends and loved ones will appreciate the direction you give them, especially if they don’t know what to say to you because you are new to grief.
Funerals can be especially hard because they will remind you of the funeral of your loved one. If the death was recent, you may want to skip funerals for a while, sending flowers or notes instead. If you decide to attend a funeral, please don’t go alone. Bring a friend or family member for support. Leave if you become overwhelmed. Only you can decide what is right for you in your grief. Follow inner guidance.
I have read that the problem with death is absence. No matter what the special occasion is—birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, summer vacations, or personal milestones—grief will always be there to cast its shadow. You can plan ahead to do something special or decide to spend the day alone with your own observance. Sometimes, just knowing you have a plan on how to cope with a difficult day will help ease the pain and stop the dread. However you decide to mark the occasion, or not, please make a conscious decision ahead of time on how you are going to get through the actual day.
I have no children so on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day I write thank you notes to my parents because, as Thornton Wilder reminded us, the greatest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude. This act of writing to my parents may seem peculiar to some but it comforts me and when it comes to grief, comfort is all that matters. I miss my mother and father and I always will. No, I don’t fall apart on a regular basis anymore, and yes, I am healing, but I will never forget. Why would I want to forget the ones I loved so deeply?
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THE TRAP OF COMPARISONS
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A few months after Mom’s death, I began doubting the validity of my grief. There is so much tragedy in the world. I would hear of the deaths of children, or 20 year-old American soldiers, and I would think of their grief-stricken families and of all the lives that ended too soon. Did I have a right to intensely grieve for a woman who had a long and fulfilling life? After all, I’m middle-aged. Wasn’t it time that I outgrew the need for my mother?
The answer, of course, is no, we never outgrow the need for love and when a person we love dies, we grieve. I had fallen into the trap of comparing my loss to the losses of others. I’ll give you an example on a smaller scale. Let’s say that you have a migraine headache and I have an ulcer. Telling you that my stomach hurts does not make your migraine any less painful. When it comes to physical ailments—and grief—pain is personal and subjective. Grief hurts.
I love books and I am often amazed that I am drawn to the book that I need at the exact moment I need it. Here is a brief passage from On Grief and Grieving by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler that illustrates this fact. It appears on page 30:
When you compare losses, someone else’s may seem greater or lesser than your own, but all losses are painful. If you lost a husband at seventy, there will be someone who lost a husband at forty-eight. If you lost a parent at twelve, there will be someone who lost their parent at five years old—or at fifteen years. Losses are very personal and comparisons never apply. No loss counts more than another. It is your loss that counts for you. It is your loss that affects you.
Your loss is deep and deserves your personal attention without comparison. You are the only one who can survey the magnitude of your loss. No one will ever know the meaning of what was shared, the deepness of the void that shadows your future. You alone know your loss….
….Your task in your own mourning and grieving is to fully recognize your own loss, to see it as only you can. In paying the respect and taking the time it deserves, you bring integrity to the deep loss that is yours.
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I’M GRIEVING AS FAST AS I CAN:
Thoughts on Closure
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I don’t like the word closure, yet it is used a lot in relationship to grief, especially by TV
and newspaper journalists: Students seek closure after a school shooting, or families want closure after the murders of their loved ones. The word comes from the Latin clausura meaning a finish or conclusion. I often wonder why media types insist on using it to describe grievers so soon after public tragedies.
The desire for closure can influence us on a personal level because grief disturbs people. It is very uncomfortable for some friends, co-workers, and even other family members, to be around sorrow. They want to fix us—and quickly—so we can wrap it up, bring grief to a conclusion and get back to our former selves. In our efforts to be considerate, we try to comply with this notion of closure and "snap out of it" because we don’t want to disrupt someone else’s day, or event, with our sadness.
The pressure to finish grief creates an added burden for us. Not only do we need to grieve, but we also need to grieve as fast as we can and move on. In other words, we need to find closure. But how do we put an ending on the permanent loss of the one we loved so much? The answer is we don’t.
There is, however, a type of closure that can give us some perspective on the loss and assist us in our healing. It can range from learning as much as possible about the details of a fatal accident to finding a way to say goodbye when there is no body. This perspective allows us to work through the what ifs and if onlys surrounding the death, and all the other questions or doubts that keep us awake at night. Please visit Give Sorrow Words from the navigation bar at the top left of your screen for more on perspective. Once there, click The Gift of Forgiveness.
Understanding the how and why by filling in the gaps allows us to begin mending our own broken hearts, but there will always be unfinished business. We can never finish everything because grief is not some type of defined work project with a specific date for completion.
My mother did not want to have open-heart surgery. She wanted to return to her own home and let nature take its course. After the surgery, she never regained full lung function and she never got off the critical list. She suffered a lot and she died thirty-three days later. My sister and I struggled with the what ifs after her death: What if she had gone home without the surgery? What if we hadn’t persuaded her to undergo such a major procedure? Would we have had more time with our mother then?
Months passed. With the passage of time, and honest conversations, we were able to gain a more realistic perspective. Before the surgery Mom was independent, living alone, driving a car and still working full-time as a librarian. All of her pre-op tests indicated she would make a full recovery. She told us before surgery that she wanted to be around for a few more Christmases. We explained to her that surgery would give her that chance. Until her final hospitalization, she was living like a woman thirty years younger than her chronological age. We had no way of knowing that she would respond post-op exactly like the 85-year old she was.
After the surgery, when she could no longer make her own decisions, my sister and I were guided by one question: Is this (treatment, medicine, procedure) the loving thing to do for our mother? At the end, we loved her enough to stop aggressive treatments for all the complications and she peacefully took her final journey Home. This perspective—that we made the best decisions we could for her with the information we had at the time—is the only type of closure I will ever have about my mother’s death.
Grief is a mirror that we hold up as it reflects our loss back to us. We learn to live with the loss, and even smile again, but it doesn’t go away. As long as we live, we never bring the grief over the death of a loved one to a close. There will always be a reflection of loss gazing back at us in the looking glass.
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GIFTS THAT HIDE IN THE DARK
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I have read about the “gifts” of grief and at first, the idea repulsed me. Mom’s death was not a gift! It helps me to remember that I grieve because I loved her. If I hadn’t loved her, I wouldn’t hurt. It is through this pain that change occurs and, if I am honest, grief has changed me in some unexpected ways.
I am just now beginning to find meaning in my aloneness. I am contemplating work as a hospice nurse. I appreciate little things more and take fewer things for granted. I have greater patience with other people and myself. I say thank you more often. I am most grateful for the notes that I receive from grievers. Knowing that my writing comforts others is a genuine gift that hides in the dark.
And yet, I would trade, in a heartbeat, every new life direction, every note of thanks and every change of attitude if I could have my parents back. I didn’t go searching for these gifts of light. They found me in the darkness of my loss.
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THEY LIVE ON
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The actor Sean Connery received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007 for his contributions to film. He was almost 80 years-old at the time. Connery accepted the award with his usual humor and dignity, but I will never forget what he said at the end. To paraphrase, he thanked his deceased parents and wished that they could be present for his award ceremony. He said that his parents’ memory continued to enrich his life and that he thought about them every day. He finished by telling the audience that he loved his parents, missed them and looked forward to seeing them again.
I listened to his acceptance speech and I thought if Agent 007 could publicly proclaim his continuing love for his parents then I could, too. He gave me permission (although I know now I don’t need permission) to say I love you, Mom and Dad. I miss you both and I always will. Perhaps then the greatest gift of grief is carrying my parents in my heart—not as two people fixed in time or memory, but as individuals who continue to inform me and enrich my life in ways I cannot yet imagine.
As I have written in other places on this web site, I have a love-hate relationship with poetry. The works of Helen Steiner Rice get on my nerves. When it comes to grief, I’m just not that evolved. Over time, and to my surprise, cards and poems that used to rankle me now offer comfort. There is an odd sort of comfort (and hope) thinking about my parents waiting for me to come Home.
I’ll end this section with a verse from one of the sympathy cards that didn’t console me much when Mom died, but holds a world of hope and promise for me now:
Although you will miss her
And mourn that she’s gone,
May this thought bring you peace—
That in you she lives on.
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WORK IN PROGRESS
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There is a piece of Eastern wisdom that tells me we teach best what we need to know. Creating the Grieving Heart® web site forces me to examine my own grief. As I hold the mirror of grief up to you, I see my own reflection because the only grief I know is my own. I hesitated to include this page because it is, after all, just one woman’s journey.
Grief is unique. How can my experiences possibly matter to you? I finally decided to add it with the sincere intention that sharing my personal story helps you sort through your own loss and grief and, in some way, assists you in your healing.
Because my grief is ever changing, this site will always be a work in progress. Thank you for spending time at The Grieving Heart®. I hope you found something here to comfort you. Please visit again.
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A NOTE OF THANKS
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In a section called All the Wrong Places, I wrote about the dangers of sharing our grief with insensitive strangers. I had a hurtful experience shortly after Mom died and it took me a long time to recover from it. With the help of Marty Tousley, a certified bereavement counselor, I discovered that it was safest to grieve with those who loved me, or those who loved my mother, or both. Thank you, Marty, for your wise and compassionate advice on this situation—and so many others!
I also need to thank my sister Alice. Even though we live 130 miles apart, and we lead very different lives, I do not know how I would have coped the first year after Mom’s death without her unique support. As sisters, we share a childhood and a place in time when we were young. Yes, we each had a unique relationship with our mother, and we grieve differently, but it is the rich collection of shared memories that is so important to my healing. Thank you for your generous spirit, dear sister. I love you, too.
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My E-mail: TheGrievingHeart@aol.com
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In search of my mother's garden, I found my own. Alice Walker
© Copyright 2008 Christine Jette. All rights reserved.
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