Passing Through Pain When Loved Ones Die

Passing Through Pain
When Loved Ones Die
by Donna Douglas

Goodbye. Its a long journey between learning of a death and saying goodbye. And, in between are many months of real work, spinning emotions, and exhaustion.

And, on the other side of goodbye, the sun does shine. The memory of the person who's gone remains. The deep ache in our heart grows smaller. And, we are healed.

Coping with the death of someone you love is not an isolated journey; people cope with loss every day all over the world. Yet, it's a trip we all must make on our own.

And, there's no express run. Along the route, we are angry, we yell in outrage at our belief system which has let us down, we despair at being left behind, we are guilty for what we haven't said or done, guilty for even being left to live. We search for a reason, bargain with the powers-that-be to turn things around. We're exhausted, lonely, bewildered. We're afraid.

Sarah, 17 and Paul, 14 lost six friends a year ago when a Friday night car-train crash killed three high school and three public school kids in a small Canadian town.

Sarah recalls: "I found out from my parents on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon I went to the mall with my friends. You could just see the anguish - everybody was just walking, not talking. Reporters were trying to interview people. Adults were sad, too. On Monday, the day of the first funeral, nobody talked. It was bad. Everybody looked so much older, like they had grown up on the weekend. Next day, the sixth kid died. It was so much. It was so overwhelming."

Paul looks back on the loneliness he felt because he was in another community visiting his dad when he heard. "I walked around with friends out there. Sunday I sat around crying. I went home to my mom. Monday it was a big relief to really talk to people. I went to the guidance office and stayed there all week. I wasn't speaking to Kim, one of the girls who died, but I got dressed to go to her funeral, but I couldn't go. My friends said I should go to say I was sorry. The first days at school, it was like a morgue. Nobody talked, we just cried.

The third day was a bit better. By Friday people had cried it out."

And after the crying ... then what?

Anger. Denial. Bargaining. Guilt. Anger. Fear. Fear.

And so it goes ... one day the pieces of the puzzle seem to be fitting into place. The next day tears overflow before the day even begins.

Going through funerals, seeing dead friends in open caskets, watching hearses carry coffins, watching coffins lowered into the ground, smelling flowers, trying to remember a special grin on a face or the sound of a voice, the panic when you think you're forgetting.

We're the video generation... things happen fast. Whole weeks pass by in a half-hour TV show. The sheer pace of our lives is the single biggest hurdle to the grieving process. It takes time. Lots of time. But Canadians live at a fast pace. We respect someone mourning a loss for a couple of months, but then it's time to get going again.

We find it confusing to be still hurting months later when society tells us it's time to pick up the pieces and live again.

Society gives us lots of other messages too, and most of them contribute to blockage of the grief journey. "Don't cry ... bear up well ... depression is unacceptable ... accept the loss ... don't be angry ... don't, don't, don't."

Grief counsellor Alene Clark says that "pressure" we feel to maintain a bold front, to smother our feelings and carry on as if everything were normal can cripple us emotionally.

Things aren't normal. Normal takes on a different picture after a death.

The loss is always there, along with the good memories. And, if given enough time to grieve (up to three years in most cases) we're healthier for working through each feeling and healing ourselves as we go.

Rev. Kay Rice likens grieving to being in a tornado. "It's a spiral of feelings that include disbelief, denial, anger, depression, acceptance.

"Nobody tells us it's okay to be angry. Often we get blocked right there and that's dangerous. We need permission to grieve and be still grieving months later."

So many things crumble when somebody we love dies. Our faith in the future, in an anticipated order of things, takes a real nosedive. Suddenly we realize that we're vulnerable, that we don't have ultimate power over our own lives, that we have no guarantees

about our own future. Confronting that knowledge is coming face to face with he ultimate loss in our lives - our own death. And it's coping with all the losses in our growing lives that prepares us to deal with our own death.

Grieving the loss of someone important to us makes our own mortality that much more real. It's really scary.

Alene Clark says adolescence is a particularly agonizing time to cope with death. The charisma of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny is gone. The reality of death is plain and cold. "A teen needs a belief system that will help him or her cope," says Clark.

I'm thinking of her too.

When we're so crippled by our own grief, it's hard to help others. But the feeling better comes from helping and sharing our grief with others.

Drop in and visit the family of the person who died. If the person was young, the parents are no doubt missing that atmosphere. Kathy reflects on the losses since the death of her daughter: "In a way it hurts when her best friend comes bouncing in and she's not there. But it's better than not seeing her friends at all. I miss her other friends. Two kids dropped in one day and we looked at picture albums and talked. You miss the atmosphere, the fridge door opening and closing, the noise while they made up some treat. I made sure Debbie's friends received things that would remind them of her."

Taking that atmosphere back to the home isn't going to bring back painful memories ... the memory of a dead person doesn't go away. Sharing tickets for a school play, stopping in to visit and talk about the person who died can help you and the family member. Saying how you are feeling is the best approach ... "I was working on my car Saturday and sure could have used Dane's ability with engines" or "Marty was so funny when she was reciting limericks; I miss her this year while we get ready for the school play."

Fear freezes us on the steps of a funeral home. What do we say? How do we handle the tears of other people?

With our own.

Saying nothing but "I'm sorry ..." is more comforting than any attempt to find a reason for the death. There are no miraculous words, no phrase that's going to help.

Just holding a hand, giving a hug, looking into someone's eyes will let them know you care.

Kathy says there were many helpful gestures made by her daughter's friends, things that brought comfort and let her remember her daughter in a happy context. The class wrote and shared poems, the school planted a tree on her birthday. People called and sent flowers on the first day of school, knowing it would be a hard time. People remembered once again their sorrow. Those gestures were beautiful and gave comfort.

"When I'm at my lowest, the memorials to Deb are a reminder of what I don't have. But, those memorials for the people who knew her are significant."

The human connection is very important. Knowing that someone is thinking of you really helps a grieving person.

"Screw up your courage and go. Don't avoid those people. Say 'I'm sorry, I'm thinking about you.' Establish the connection. It's so much better. It's worse to be avoided." says Kathy.

Ask how a person is and be prepared to listen, saying nothing. Listen again and again, holding a hand, or touching a shoulder if it feels comfortable.

A five year old girl whose best friend had died, perhaps in her simplicity was most comforting. When asked what she said after visiting the mother of her friend, she replied, "I didn't say anything. I sat in her lap and we just cried."

Shovel a walk, rake leaves, take some cookies, share an old letter, any kind of caring gesture is going to help.

Tears are a tender tribute to lost affection. Paul and Sarah both testify to the value of tears. Sarah talks about the first of her friend's funeral. "People who used to seem like real jerks, weren't. One boy with a bunch of boys wouldn't get into the car after the funeral because he was crying. One of his buddies got out of the car, put his arm around him and then they both cried."

With the tears comes the healing. Sarah and Paul reflect on their whole grieving process. "We became better friends. We opened our arms up to love people and we knew how to be friends."

But having a belief system is no guarantee that grieving is easier.

Kathy, a committed Christian, whose pre-teen daughter died of cancer last year, says belief or not, it's hard work.

"Often people within the church believe that if you're a Christian and you believe in the crucifixion and resurrection you can go from one to another painlessly.

'You're fortunate you've got your faith!' It's a common comment and it's horsefeathers. You've got to work it through. You have to accept and carry on and it takes a long, long time."

Talking helps, but one conversation isn't going to be enough. And talking with someone who's feeling the same pain is more helpful than listening to someone who's trying to make you feel better by telling you how you should be feeling.

Disbelief. Anger. These feelings register with a bang. Kids aren't supposed to die. Your parents were supposed to become grandparents. You can't accept that someone you love and need might die. It's just as hard to say goodbye to an older person you really love because your loss is just as real, but, anger takes hold when it's an unexpected death of someone you counted on.

Refusing to believe that someone we saw yesterday is gone today is part of the whole grieving process. We deny that it happened, or that a sick friend is really not going to get better.

While most people feel this, we show it in many different ways. Some people go into frenzied activity - sorting, cleaning, new projects, others will drink and party, laugh and joke, protecting themselves from reality. Someone else may just refuse to believe it.

Anger that goes undealt with, gets turned inward and we can become so angry within ourselves that it turns into depression. And depression is a normal part of grief. It's exhausting to work through and deal with the tornado of emotions that's whipping at us.

Depression may occur months after a death, when all the struggle to work through a loss just seems like too much.

We can be angry at the situation, Harold Kushner, a rabbi whose son died in his teens. Kushner explores anger and blame in a wonderful book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People. "Being angry at other people scares them away and makes it harder for them to help us. But being angry at the situation, recognizing it as something rotten, unfair and undeserved, shouting about it, denouncing it, crying over it, permits us to discharge our anger without making it harder for us to be helped."

Anger is all tied up with finding someone to blame it on, and in the end deciding you are at fault. Or your parents. Or the system.

"My anger has finally emerged," says Kathy. "And there's nobody to blame."

'What kind of God would let this happen?' 'Life's the pits.' 'Why should I care? What does it matter?' That sense of upheaval, interference in our lives when somebody dies turns into anger because we feel someone must have caused this. Someone must have let this happen. Kushner takes it farther for us ...

"Laws of nature treat everyone alike," he reasons. "A drunk driver steers his car over the centre line and collides with the green Chev rather than the red Ford. There's no message in that. There's no reason for those particular people to be afflicted rather than others. These events don't reflect God's choices. They happen at random and randomness is another name for chaos.

"They don't have exceptions for good people. A bullet has no conscience; neither does a malignant tumor or an automobile gone out of control. That's why good people get sick and get hurt as much as anyone. No power reaches down to interrupt the workings of laws of nature to protect the righteous from harm."

Kushner asks us to consider what would happen if bad things happened only to bad people. Would the world be any better off? "Would I be able to go out in my shirtsleeves in cold weather and not get sick? Could I cross the streets against the lights in the face of heavy traffic and not be injured? Could I jump out of high windows when I was in too much of a hurry to wait for an elevator and not hurt myself?"

It wouldn't work.

He doesn't believe in a power that doles out a weekly quota of malignant tumors by consulting a computer for the person most able to handle it.

Don't

"It was God's will."
"Your faith will take you through."
"I know how you feel."
"Let me tell you about __________ 's troubles."
"At least he didn't suffer long."
"How fortunate you have other children."

These cliches give more pain than comfort, yet they're the most common things people say to a person who's burying a loved one.

Searching for something meaningful to say often leads us to blurt out things we don't really mean.

Silence is better.

Don't refer to how quickly the person died, or how little they suffered ... attempting to minimize the loss only worsens the pain.

Don't carry on with the person as if nothing ever happened, thinking that by mentioning the dead person you'll bring back sad memories. Something has happened, things are different, they always will be. Nobody ever forgets the person who died. Ask how the person is doing and be prepared to listen to the answer.

When you do talk, be natural. Don't avoid saying the person's name or using the words dead or death. Mention the name of the dead person with a happy incident or memory ... it's cheering and its sharing a thought. It helps survivors to realize that their loved ones were important to others.

Despite all the rationalization, anger is always on the surface. Sarah and Paul testify to the mess of their schools in the days following their friends' deaths. Students took their anger out on walls, lockers, books.

It doesn't help. But, who do you blame?

"What did I do to deserve this? is really the wrong question," says Kushner. "Better, 'if this happened to me, what do I do now and who is there to help me do it?"

Anger manifests itself in strange ways. Sarah feels anger towards the lone survivor in her community's tragedy. "I feel angry at her that she lived. That's not fair of me to feel. But she lived and people I cared about died."

Paul feels anger towards the parents his friend whose grave is yet unmarked. He's angry that people won't be able to find the grave in the future. He's angry that the family doesn't seem to care enough to mark his friend's last resting place.

Mixed in with anger is fear. All of a sudden there's this realization that we don't have total control over our lives. The fear of saying and doing the wrong things when we're around the family of the dead person, fear of seeing adults break down and cry at a funeral (or after), fear of not being able to control our own destiny can literally suspend us in inactivity.

We might want desperately to put our arms round a friend's mother when we see her at the shopping centre. But, instead we duck into the nearest shop. Fear keeps us from expressing our loss lest we make her cry, or bring back unhappy memories.

We're scared to go to the funeral and scared not to. We lose our faith in the world's fairness and we realize that one day we too will die. We're afraid because we're not ready.

There's another emotion which creeps up on us while we're feeling angry, afraid and guilty. Jealousy. We become jealous of other people who aren't hurting like we are, jealous of others who aren't suffering a loss.

The dead person can take on almost holy qualities in the eyes of those remaining. That romanticizing is a process which protects us from the loss, says Alene Clark.

"We tend to idealize. It's comforting. By giving ourselves permission to grieve, to feel our feelings, we hold onto the person by idealizing or romanticizing their memory. As we grieve we work that through and things start to take perspective again."

Finally, after much work, much talk, many tears, there comes a final stage in our grieving process.

Goodbye.

We are able to accept that our friend, our loved person, is gone. We are able to believe the car accident, the sickness, the bullet that took them away.

The anger, the frustration will always be there. But, by accepting that it has happened, by feeling all our feelings we've had, our minds work through the grief journey and we come out of the other end of the tunnel.

"What is my life all about? What is my belief system? Does it stand for me in this greatest of all losses?"

Alene Clark says feeling healed doesn't mean forgetting. "I still think of them. I wish they were here to share a certain moment. But that sick, heavy, deep pain is gone."

Saying goodbye is often hampered by a feeling of disloyalty. "When you say goodbye you're only letting go of the pain. You've got the memories and feelings to cherish," says Clark.

In saying goodbye, it's often helpful to think of the dead person and tell what you'd like to say to them today.

Paul: "I'd tell them I love them. That I wish they could come back." Sarah: "I'd tell them they were important. That I cared. Being able to say that helps you let go."

The grief journey isn't straight. We may turn back and re-experience many times feelings we thought we'd already worked through.

But, taking time for ourselves, and being able to forgive the world and the people in it for not being perfect, will give us room to forgive ourselves.

Consider

In the bottom of an old pond lived some grubs that could not understand why none of their group ever came back after crawling up the stems of the lilies to the top of the water.

They promised each other that the next one who was called to make the upward climb would return and tell what happened to him. Soon one of them felt an urgent impulse to seek the surface; he rested himself on top of a lily pad and went through a gorgeous transformation which made him a dragonfly with beautiful wings.

In vain he tried to keep his promise. Flying back and forth over the pond, he peered down at his friends below. Then he realized that even if they could see him, they would not recognize such a radiant creature as one of their number.

The fact that we cannot see our friends or communicate with them after the transformation which we call death, is no proof that they cease to exist.

Walter Dudley Calvert in Beyond Sorrow, by Herb and Mary Montgomery

I feel so bad

Feel bad. Let yourself feel bad. For each person who's grieving the loss of someone they loved, healing takes time.

Number one priority is to let yourself feel the feelings that you have. Denying they exist, or trying to talk yourself out of them, is cheating yourself of a process you need to go through.

Feeling better takes time. But here are some "go-aheads" for helping your grief process.

Talk about it. Say the person's name. Bury only the body, hold on to the memory. Name your feelings. Saying "I feel angry or I feel sad or I feel guilty" will help you know what you're feeling and work through your thoughts.

Write. Sarah said she wrote endlessly in the early months after six of her friends were killed. Keeping a journal of random thoughts, or writing poems can be very therapeutic. They give you something for yourself and they give you something to share later if you want to.

Listen to music. Paul said he found heavy metal groups good because the strength of the music was a good way to feel his anger. Others have found comfort in songs by John Denver, the Beatles, Bruce Cockburn, Bob Dylan. Paul: "I found a song called Time really helped. While I listened I felt like there was a battle going on inside. It helped me get rid of my emotions, helped me cry."

Read. There's a list of books that people have found helpful.

Talk. Talk to friends, to people you like, to people who make you feel good. Ask more questions of more people than you ever have before. Talk to other adults about how they deal with death. There's reassurance in finding that there are different answers, that in each there is some truth for you. Take it and build your belief system.

Go back to an earlier loss in your in life. What helped you through that? Can you use any of those things now?

Give yourself permission to grieve.

If you feel you're getting bogged down, that you're not making any progress, go to a qualified grief counsellor. They're usually available on a variable fee basis and can be found through local mental health associations, churches, or bereaved family organizations.

Cry. Sarah reflects on the importance of sharing emotions."If other adults cried, it gave me permission to cry. The funerals I attended where people cried were much better. If the parents weren't crying, I felt I couldn't."

Sarah and Paul grieve the deaths of their six friends. They share their experiences from different vantage points, at a different age. But their message is the same.

Get it out. Get angry. Express yourself. Get it over with. Do it as it happens. It will change you.