Grief doesn't go away after three days of bereavement leave

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 7 years ago

Grief doesn't go away after three days of bereavement leave

By Anna Tipping

There was no calm surrender the day my husband passed away. His death was agonising and played out in slow motion. As he lay unconscious, we watched over him in torment for hours until his body gave up his last breath. I scrambled on top of him so he could feel my touch and hear my screams before the life completely drained from his body so he knew he was not alone and that he was loved.

Diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2001, we managed it well until it metastasised to his bones. After nine weeks of external beam radiation, nine cycles of chemotherapy, several androgen deprivation therapies, there was the final blow – a trial drug that gave him pancytopenia, that need scores blood transfusions to keep him alive. And if he hadn't suffered enough, he had a heart attack and needed surgery, which also went wrong. Late last year he had a craniotomy after a fall and it was discovered he had brain metastases.

Why are bereavement, grief and the bereaved not accommodated in society?

Why are bereavement, grief and the bereaved not accommodated in society?Credit: Cristian Baitg Schreiweis

Through it all, he never complained – such was his courage and his will to survive.

And with his death, I thought of vengeance against the medical community who filled his blood and bones with poison and stole his dignity. But then I thought that I needn't do anything as karma will take care of my unfinished business.

Michael Tipping on a trip to Hawaii last year.

Michael Tipping on a trip to Hawaii last year.

After I washed his body, he was prepared for transport to the funeral home. As he was taken from his hospital room, the nurses gave me garbage bags to collect my husband's belongings and I was summarily dismissed to make way for the next occupant.

Michael Winston Tipping was pronounced dead at 2.42pm on February 27, 2016. I died with him too on that day as my heart fractured. I am left with an unresolved ache and so it is now just a beating organ. There is medical evidence to suggest that you can die from a broken heart, or it could be the sheer lack of appetite to live.

Michael was an honourable and dignified man yet denied an honourable and dignified death. He walked quietly upon this earth, yet made lasting positive impressions. A loving husband and father, the world was truly a better place with him in it. He was my everything.

His dying wish to his doctor was that he was only concerned for our beloved dog Misha and myself. In his final days, I asked if he wanted for anything, to which he replied: "Just love me and give me plenty of TLC." I lay beside him and whispered my everlasting love but we were stripped this final intimacy with catheters, cannulas and morphine drivers.

Advertisement

I was a wife for 25 years, and in a split second I became a widow. I lived with the spectre of death for 16 years since Michael's diagnosis yet never thought that death would come so violently and painfully and be so final and dismissive.

I was given three days of bereavement leave, which was scarcely enough time to plan a funeral, and then I was supposed to park my grief at the office door.

On the birth of a human being, parents are afforded three months of paid maternity leave to bond with the newborn, yet on the death of a human being there is no such luxury to mourn a life and lost love. Why is there such a yawning chasm between these two significant life events?

I was told to "take all the time you need" to grieve, but three days is an insult. I had exhausted my leave to take care of Michael in his last year and returned to work with a leave debt and in a state of debility. I feel like Edvard Munch's The Scream, where my grief is a silent scream while life goes on around me. Why are bereavement, grief and the bereaved not accommodated in society?

It is well known that the death of a loved one is the most powerful stresses in life. While bereavement is a normal experience, grief remains an extremely painful symptom where the loss and adjustment can take months and, at times, years.

Michael's death knocked me off my axis and I have been spinning aimlessly. The pain of his loss is immeasurable and a tsunami of sadness overwhelms me everyday. And so I try to appear "normal" to function at work and I fake it as my grief is too uncomfortable for other

I have felt like a pariah, as though my grief is somehow abnormal. I'm offered offensive bromides such as "at least he is at peace now", "be strong" and, my all-time favourite, "time will heal". Well, if time will heal and this is a wound, then give the bereaved real time.

There needs to be public conversation ignited over tending to the bereaved. Three days is offensive. How can I distil the loss of the greatest love I have ever known into three days?

There is no timetable for grieving – it is a process which can take years but it must be handled carefully and respectfully. We must change legislation to incorporate greater periods of bereavement to acknowledge that our grief is real and that we need time to accommodate our new reality.

This is a tribute to you, my darling. Wait for me and Mish.

Most Viewed in National

Loading