As a grief counselor who also works full time at Hospice Family Care, I see my share of grief and loss.  A principle that touches everyone who experiences a loss is this: We do not know how to respond to loss.  We can deal with death and violence and tragedy in our world, but when major loss becomes personal, we are never prepared to deal with it.  From childhood we learned coping skills that are myths or based on intellectual ideas about how to deal with grief.  Throw in some behaviors that distract us and you have the sum total of how we know how to deal with grief.  The trouble is that myths, intellectual reasoning and certain behaviors do not provide lasting healing from the wounds of grief.

There is no shock or life disruption like a loss due to a loved one’s death.  We live with certain expectations and one of them is that the good in life will continue.  The death of a loved one rips them out of our life and leaves a whole in our heart.  We do not know how to handle that.  A variety of emotions hit and we feel we are on a roller coaster of emotions.  There is guilt, regret, sadness, maybe some anger, along with fond memories and even some laughter.  Even if we believe our loved one is in heaven, we ask ourselves why we feel so bad.  Our grief says, “I miss you and I love you.”  Every fiber of our being says, “I want you here with me.”  Nothing satisfies that longing in our soul.  Grief is a hurt inside.  It hits everyone.  It is a shock and even when we know our loved one is dying, we are never prepared.

We wander though our obligatory duties like funeral arrangements and such with little focus and a lot of sadness.  We feel numb.  It is automatic behavior as we put one foot in front of the other and move forward.  When our mind and our body are not in the same place at the same time, we are distracted by our grief.  It is a if our emotions are frozen in time and that is why we feel numb.

When our emotions begin to thaw and time goes by, we sometimes feel worse and we wonder why.  People ask me if they are going crazy.  No, you are not crazy, you are normal. As the emotions begin to thaw, you can begin to recover and heal from the grief.  As much as we hate to experience it, the best way to heal is to experience the pain.  Telling the truth to ourselves about our feelings is essential to healing and recovery.  It is then that we realize we will laugh again and enjoy life again, but we will also experience pain and sorrow as well.  Just as life is not continuously happy, it is not continuously sad either. 

A good first step to to talk to the person who died.  You have found yourself doing that anyway, right? So tell them how you feel.  Sometimes it helps to talk to a favorite photograph of them or go to the grave site, but talk and express you true feelings both positive and negative. 

Can you get better and life feel normal again?  YES.  Time will never heal your wounds, but what you do with the time can help a lot.  It will never be okay for your loved one to have died.  You will always miss them.  Acknowledge that and let it be okay with you to feel that way.  All your questions will never be answered.  Let that be okay with you too.  Release those feelings and you will begin to heal. 

Express you feelings to others in a loving and truthful way.  If it is a bad day for you, tell people it is a bad day, but you do not need to dwell on it or detail it to them.  Acknowledge the feeling and move on it is not important how they respond but is very important you are not stuffing your feelings.  Reach out to a friend that is a “heart with ears”.  Find someone who is a compassionate listener and never ties of hearing your story.

Tell your story often until you get tired of hearing it.  You will heal and recover and move on with life, but give yourself time.  The deeper the loss the longer the journey to recovery will take.  Set out to take small steps toward your recovery and you will heal and laugh again.  Seek a healthy group that really deals with grief and you feel you are gaining ground.  Too many groups provide opportunity for people to share but are never changing or growing or healing.  Avoid those groups and find one where you feel you are getting better.  You may want to find a good grief counselor too.  I recommend a Grief-Recovery group or Grief-Recovery trained counselor.

Keep on living and loving as best you can.  With a little help from the right people, you will find balance and purpose in life again.