GriefPerspectives
 

What I Like About Grief

Jerry Wilson, M.Ed., M.S., CT


When I took a week off from my regular job recently to attend the annual conference for the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC), many of my colleagues unfamiliar with my specialization as a grief counselor thought it odd I should be excited about such an event. Indeed, I wondered, what is it that draws me to work in the field of grief?  Here is what I have discovered about this important work we share.

Grief Is a Shared Experience. For many of us grief brings a feeling of isolation and aloneness. There are times when we want nothing more than solitude, escape, privacy - a quiet place to be alone with our memories and our pain. The thought of facing others—whether family, friends, or coworkers—is unbearable. Yet, we must, day after day, dragging ourselves out of bed and leaving the safety of our secluded homes to enter the marketplace of well-meaning others who try to offer support but who somehow often miss the mark.

Along the way we meet a few who seem to understand. Something in them speaks to us. Sometimes it is the gentleness of the voice or a kind touch. We intuitively know that they do not have an agenda or an expectation that we behave in a certain way. They are able to listen and we feel heard. These few people are safe, so we feel we can be with them, knowing that they “know.” And, it is okay.

Sadness is a difficult emotion to hide. Our bodies feels heavy and weary, our shoulders slump, our heads drop, we drag our feet and walk with a labored gait.  Eyes show a deep sorrow to anyone who catches our gaze; we do not smile.  Even among those who do not know us, the signs are obvious. For our families and friends, they may be feeling some of the same things or they are wishing for us that we would feel better. As much as we might like to, we cannot hide our grief and we cannot grieve without others being aware of our pain.  Grief is a shared experience.

Grief Brings Perspective. In working with grieving people, the topic of unfinished business often arises.  Even in the best of cases when we give voice to all of our goodbyes and there is time to plan for death, we come up short, and in our grief, we find those things that we wish we had done differently, or we discover words we wish we had said.  Yet, in our healing we reconcile these events and learn to come to peace with the past.  In addition, we vow that we will not live our lives with any more unfinished business.

This is most true when we lose someone very close. I find in talking with those touched by death, that even when the bond is not close, any serious consideration of the lost relationship brings a new awareness. For one, it is the message that life is fragile and its end can arrive unexpectedly, while for another, it is an acknowledgement that he or she should tend to health. Yet another realizes that there are now fewer years left to live than the number of years already experienced.  Those who have journeyed with grief have a heightened sense of what is important and what is not. Grief brings perspective.

Grief Wakes Up Our Emotions. For many, grief presents a wash of emotion seldom experienced. The depth and breadth of feeling encountered in grief is overwhelming. Sadness, fear, shame, loneliness, anxiety, anger, longing, tiredness, depression, shock, and disbelief are a few of the emotions “cataloged” in grief, but there is much more taking place.

Feeling is a word not only used to describe an emotion (i.e. “He got his feelings hurt.") We also use this word to identify how the body may be experiencing discomfort or pain, such as "I am feeling sick." We may even use forms of the word to note a physiologic response to touch, such as, "She felt his hand placed firmly on her shoulder."  It is no coincidence that the word feeling (as it relates to a body sensation) and the word emotion are interchangeable because emotions begin in our bodies.  This is true for depression, anxiety, sadness, fear, happiness, enthusiasm, enjoyment, and grief.

As a therapist, I want people to connect with their emotional self. In the journey from childhood to adulthood, people learn to give cognitive or clinical names to the collections of emotions that cripple life. One begins to lose touch with the actual feelings (in our bodies) and come to think that solving our emotional problems is only a cognitive exercise. Big emotional responses are sometimes frightening, but emotions are a vital part of the human experience.

The emotional pain of grief need not be feared, but rather, viewed as part of one’s natural healing. In grief, the emotional self becomes alive as grief awakens our emotions.

Grieving People Want To Feel Better. I have yet to meet a grieving person who does not want to feel better. Yet, first there is a hurdle that many must overcome—to feel better too soon does not seem to honor the love and the life of the deceased. Laughter rarely comes, not just because little seems funny but because someone important has died and we falsely believe “feeling good” is disrespectful.

Nevertheless, with time, laughter comes again. When people laugh in grief groups, for example, they often declare that experience to have been the first time they laughed since their loved one died. Grief groups create a “safe place” where others understand and share a common purpose. Grief’s challenges demand change, and the group provides a venue to discuss and even “practice” those changes. People choose to attend grief groups, in large part, because they want to feel better.

Grief Provides an Opportunity for Growth. In the midst of grief, life seems to have ended for the survivor as well as the deceased. Life seems hardly worth living. However, as healing begins and new light and life once again seem possible, many realize that the opportunity, now, is to make new meaning of life.  First, we look to make meaning of the life that was lost – yet, more importantly I think, we begin to make new meaning of the life still ahead for us.
Grief provides an opportunity for growth.

Finally, what brings the greatest reward and challenge for me in working with bereaved people is that each person’s journey is unique. I never tire of hearing the stories and of having the privilege of learning about the special relationships that exist in the lives of those who have lost someone they care about deeply.  Each of these lost relationships is a testament to love; though often deeply sad, grief is proof of love. Grief reminds us that we have both loved and been loved. This knowledge is a prize to be cherished, honored, and not forgotten.
Copyright ©2014 by Jerry Wilson. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Author:
Jerry Wilson is a Marriage and Family Therapist Intern and is Certified in Thanatology: Death, Dying, and Bereavement, working in group and individual therapy in Long Beach, California. His career began as a middle school teacher and administrator, and then he spent 25 years working in information technology. After becoming a widower, he returned to school to earn his masters in counseling and pursue his marriage & family therapist’s license. Jerry's "Reflections on Bereavement and Loss" can be found on his blog, www.ahealinggrief.com.

Cipolletta, S. & Oprandi, N. (2014). What is a Good Death? Health Care Professionals’ Narrations on End-of-Life Care. Death Studies, 38, 20-27.
 
In this brief research report, Cipolletta and Oprandi detail the results of a focus group-based study of Italian health care professionals working with patients at end-of-life. The 37 participants in the focus groups work in a diversity of health care settings (hospital, clinic, extended care and home-based hospice) and represent the spectrum of health care professionals (physicians, nurses, psychologist, nursing aids, etc.) Researchers recorded, transcribed, and analyzed the group sessions using a qualitative research method called Grounded Theory.
 
Interestingly, the researchers found no clear consensus among the participants of what constitutes a “good death,” though the participants listed some themes present in such cases. Participants listed the importance of the physical context and of maintaining body integrity, pain and symptom management, completion and respect of the dying person’s will, considering the patient as a whole person and not only as a disease or case, and allowing families to stay close to the patient. After analyzing the group interviews, the researchers concluded, “This difficulty is probably due to the discomfort that many participants expressed when dealing with death and dying” (p. 25).
 
In reporting their results, the researchers also noted the importance of ongoing training, pointing out that professionals with the most training (physicians) seemed to have the most difficulty with concepts related to the end-of-life. Additionally, the researchers heard participants in their study indicate the need for ongoing training in dealing with patients and families at end-of-life.
 
Death Studies is one of three journals available as a free benefit for members of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. To access the journal or to learn more about ADEC, visit www.adec.org.


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Professional Bookshelf
 

O’Rourke, M. (2011). The Long Goodbye: A Memoir. New York: Riverhead Books.
 
Some readers will recognize Meagan O’Rourke’s name as a prolific contemporary author of poetry and short essays whose work has appeared in New Yorker and The Nation. So while there is no shortage of new books in what I call “my grief story” genre, a volume by such a writer deserves a look. This explains why I picked this volume up to review in the first place.
 
With great poignancy and self-reflective insight, O’Rourke plumbs the depths of her own experiences during her mother’s diagnosis, treatment and dying from cancer. She honors her mother’s life in the telling of the story and professional caregivers will nod knowingly as the tale unfolds: the anxious days of waiting for test results, the exhausting trips for treatment and the debilitating nausea that followed, and the difficulty O’Rourke confesses in facing early bereavement with no rituals.
 
The last of these descriptions touched me particularly, as regular readers of this feature would probably surmise. Early in the volume O’Rourke reminds her readers of the commonality of grief and then opines the privatization of bereavement. Our culture has become more open about everything from incest to sex addiction, she opines, but we do not want to talk about the sadness of death.
 
“After my mother’s death, she writes, “I felt the lack of rituals to shape and support my loss. I was not prepared for how hard I would find it to reenter the slipstream of contemporary life, the sphere of constant connectivity, a world ill suited to reflection and daydreaming. I found myself envying my Jewish friends’ practice of saying Kaddish, with its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person. As I drifted through the hours, I wondered: What does it mean to grieve when we have so few rituals for observing and externalizing loss? (p. 13)
 
This is a poignant, compelling story that at times is difficult to read. The rawness of experience, the ending of O’Rourke’s own marriage in the midst of her loss, and the difficulty with which she and her family grappled with her mother’s care and death is not easy reading. However, it is just the kind of story every professional working in end-of-life care and bereavement must read thoughtfully. (Reviewed by Bill Hoy)

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