It’s interesting to see the twists and turns life throws at
you. One such “turn” in my own life
happened fifteen years ago from this summer.
I was in my later 20’s and a
few years into my social work career. The future looked hopeful. One day, while I was with my mom cooking
dinner, she turned to me and said, “Dad was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney
cancer.” At that moment I didn’t know what to think or feel. The grieving process for my dad had just
begun.
As the days and months followed, I watched my father
progressively get worse. He was in and
out of the hospital working so hard to fight this horrid disease. I noticed his body getting weaker each day as
we fed him though a feeding tube. He was
losing the battle and there was nothing I could do about it. The sorrow
intensified as I said goodbye a little each day. Towards the end, I listened to his pain as
the tumors close to his heart gave him small heart attacks. Then the moment
came….He was done fighting the battle.
Someone once told me that loosing a loved one suddenly is
harder than loosing them to an illness.
I was troubled by that statement.
It saddened me to think that they only took their experience and
feelings into account. Life should not be
a contest that we are trying to outdo someone on the struggles that we’ve been
through. Grieving is grieving. We do it
in our own way and time with varying feelings and expressions at different
levels according to the loss. In other words, we never grieve the same way
twice or like another person. So no, it’s not harder, it's different.
Grieving is a part of life.
We do it with any kind of loss. In
fact it is necessary and healthy. It
helps us understand our situation. I remember a few years ago when I was
looking to buy a new car, I decided that I would trade in my old Corolla. I had grown attached to that car. It was green, a standard stick shift (which I
love to drive), and I had been through a lot with it. It was even given a nick
name- the Turtle. My heart hurt a bit as I drove away from the car lot knowing
that piece of my life was over. Even
though the grieving was on an absolute different plane and field from dealing
with the death of my father, it was still a loss and something I could allow
myself to be sad about.
Grieving gives us the ability to let go of what we are
losing or have lost and then heal in order live a healthy life. In the case of my car, from the moment I knew
I was trading in “the Turtle” I had to grieve so that I could be excited about
my new car. For me, it was necessary to
move on. All our experiences change us
in some way or another. Grieving is the
process that enables us to reset our life.
Sometimes we need to change our thinking patterns, directions we were
going in life- such as goals- and the way we do things. Allow it. Life changes and we must too. It
takes time and self-discovery. On their website, the American Cancer Association
stated, “Many
people think of grief as a single instance or short time of pain or sadness in
response to a loss... But grieving includes the entire emotional process of
coping with a loss, and it can last a long time. ” [i]
I started to wonder why we don’t let ourselves grieve the
amount of time necessary. It’s almost
like if we grieve too long then there is something wrong with us. There are times I still grieve the loss of my
father and I don’t think that makes me a “messed up” person. That led me to wonder why some people don’t
allow themselves to go through the necessary steps. Grieving is expressed in many ways. No way is better than the other. And sometimes losing the “small” things can
be more challenging than losing the “big” things.
Most people are aware of the 5 steps/stages to grieving or
loss: 1-Denial and Isolation, 2- Anger, 3- Bargaining, 4- Depression, 5-
Acceptance. Some people go through all
the stages and others may hit only a few. And we hardly ever go through them in
order. And sometimes we may feel when we had already been through a stage it
comes back (sometimes even years later) and we have to go through it all over
again and sometimes with a whole other set of issues. Life is messy and so is
loss.
The amazing thing about this whole process is that it is just
that… a process. We get to do it our own
way and time and there is no need to feel pressure from others. They can help
us understand our feelings but don’t get to tell us how we are “supposed” to
feel. (We, likewise, need to offer them the same respect and allowance.) We
need to permit ourselves time, space, and the ability to be sad, angry, in
denial, at peace and the list goes on.
Emotion is not bad. It is
good. That is why we are blessed with
it, even though it may seem like a curse at times. What we choose do with that emotion is what
makes the difference. I feel the more we allow ourselves to work through the
process, in a thoughtful and prayerful way, the better off we will be.
[i]
The American Cancer Society (2016). The
Grieving Process. Retrieved on August 7, 2018 at https://www.cancer.org/treatment/end-of-life-care/grief-and-loss/grieving-process.html#written_by
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