This year, a lot more people have experienced loss than ever before. One of my closest friends lost her dad to coronavirus, as many people have with their loved ones, while another good friend lost her grandad on the same day, suddenly, and to other causes. My point is, on top of the deaths that normally would have happened, many other people have fallen ill and died or developed lifelong complications. I have been pretty lucky for most of my life in that I haven’t lost many people that I love. My great granny died when I was still in primary school, so although I was upset I wasn’t too aware of what was going on and I was far enough removed that it was okay. Then, in 2018 my great grandma died. That was a bit of a sucker punch. I knew her well and spent a lot of time with her as a child. I was an adult and could process it properly, but it had been a tough year for me and I was living abroad so it was pretty difficult. There was kind of an initial sting but she was 100 and it was expected. I dealt with the grief and, although I still miss her greatly, it’s manageable. But then this year my grandad died. That was the hardest of them all. He used to come round every Saturday morning and him and my dad would laugh at me and my sister about anything and everything. We’re still grieving him months down the line and every member of my family is dealing with it differently, and it made me think: what do a lot of people not know about grief? So if you’re struggling, I’m by no means an expert, but here’s some solidarity in your loss. Any way I can help you process a loved one’s death, I hope you find it here.
1. The way they die can matter
I’ve seen a few things where someone was murdered and someone else had cancer, or someone else was just old, or they had Covid. There are so many ways people can die. The ‘stages of grief’ you always hear about aren’t gonna be the same for every circumstance. The anger is likely to come a lot quicker for relatives of a murdered individual than someone who died of Coronavirus, and the anger is obviously going to be aimed in different directions. If you were prepared for it you might get through the acceptance stage quicker than for a loved one who was just fine the day before. Everyone is different. Every death is different. Every grief process is different. And that’s okay.
2. Life goes on
Yeah you’re still in a fog maybe, or you’ve not fully come to terms with it, but the world is still moving around you. There is still new music being released, new movies coming out that you really wanted to see, a nice jacket you see in the shop that you want to buy. There are bills to pay, food to buy, jobs to go to. You have responsibilities and desires, even though they might have shifted. The rest of the world might have forgotten what was a news story to them, or an obituary in the paper, or they might not have even been aware of what is such a significant moment in your life. And you can choose to tell people or you can choose to keep it quiet. But no matter what, everyone else has still got their own lives going on. Not long after my grandad died, two members on the other side of my family got diagnosed with cancer. Their inner circles moved on from worrying about us to worrying about that. We worried about both. One upsetting time doesn’t wait for the other to subside, but I know I was never told that. But it’s not just other bad things that can happen after someone dies. Babies are born, new relationships blossom, job opportunities fall in your lap. It’s okay to be happy about it. Don’t feel guilty for embracing the new while mourning the old.
3. You can never be fully prepared for losing someone
I said that the way you die can matter, but grief is grief. Even if you know that somebody was going to die, it doesn’t really lessen the grief, maybe just the order of your grief. We were told months before my grandad actually died that he was going to within the next 24 hours. That was before lockdown. One day before lockdown and we couldn’t visit him anymore. Then he pulled through and got a little bit better. Then he was allowed to go home. Then he got coronavirus. Then he went back into hospital, alone. Then he started to get better. Then he tested negative for coronavirus. Then we were told he could go home. Then, the day he was supposed to go home, he died. That rollercoaster didn’t make it easier, but just the waiting around, knowing that it is going to happen but not knowing when, really doesn’t help either. Anyway you cut it, you’re losing somebody. Whether it’s a long haul of suffering, whether it’s sudden and unexpected, or whether it was half expected but you started to have hope, the outcome is the same. Don’t feel like your grief should be less just because you knew it was coming.
4. It’s okay to cry for someone who wasn’t always the perfect person
Growing up, my dad had a rocky relationship with his own father. I won’t go into the details because it’s not my story to tell, but my grandad wasn’t perfect. My dad lost a lot of time with him and I think he’s now grieving that time as well as the dad that he had later in life. Maybe people become better people and then you lose them, or maybe you loved them and then they did something bad. No matter what it is, it’s still okay to mourn the version of the person that you loved, regardless of whatever other versions of them existed. You often see in TV shows that people refuse to go to someone’s funeral because they didn’t like who they’d become, and that is okay. It’s more than okay. But it’s also okay if you need to grieve them even if they caused you or someone else hurt, because part of them was still important to you at one time of your life. If you don’t allow yourself to grieve just because of some stigma, then you aren’t doing that stage in your life justice.
5. You don’t feel the same every day
There are some days when you might think ‘wow, I’m over it, I feel okay today’, or you might not even realise that you hadn’t thought about that person all day. But that doesn’t mean that the next day you’re not going to want to cry in a dark room. Or the next day you might feel okay again. Or you might end up getting angry with other people over absolutely nothing. Whatever you do, it’s okay. I’ve always heard about the stages of grief as though they’re linear; you get the denial, then the anger, then the bargaining, then the depression, then the acceptance. I said earlier that they might not always be in the same order, but previous stages might also come back. You can jump around from anger to acceptance and back again, you can skip some of them, you can dance around a combination of all of them forever. However you deal with it is okay, because losing someone isn’t okay.
Do you identify with any of these? Have you learnt something new from this post? Is there something else that you didn’t know about grief that you think is useful? Leave a comment below and let me know. I hope you’re doing okay.
-K xxx
Begin Again 