Coping with grief and loss is hard. Many people find that life comes to a standstill after they lose a person who once walked with them through life. But it is essential to remember that the life you’ve had with these loved ones does not disappear. They disappear, but the memories remain.
In a fantastic film by Wim Wenders, “Wings of Desire,” there is a final replay: “Ez war einmal und wird es sein.” It means: “There was once, and therefore there will always be.” There is great comfort in this notion. We take our loved ones with us throughout the remainder of our own lives. Not in the physical sense, but emotionally and spiritually they live on in our hearts. With this concept in mind, and through our grief, we continue to express our love for those we can no longer physically reach.
That is a natural process that you must not override, but it will be. People will make insensitive statements, such as “It’s time to move on,” which are difficult for a grief-ridden person to hear. Such statements are dismissive and reflect an attitude that you should put the life you have had with your husband or wife, or parents behind you start living a new one.
What you need to know about coping with grief and loss
Isolation and relationships
Many people feel that they are socially isolated when they are faced with grief. This is because often people do not know what to say to offer comfort or fear upsetting you further by mentioning the loss. Still, others will sympathize and try their best to coping with grief and loss with you through this tough time.
You must be able to accept that they are trying to help you. When you lose someone you miss their presence – that’s natural. Loving someone comes with this cost, but it is a price worth paying. You may try to avoid close relationships with others because you cannot bear to experience such pain again. But this is a lonely and painful way to live life.
Instead, focus on embedding the life that you have had, with the one you are living and the one you will have in the future. For example, losing a spouse means that you move on, despite feeling as though you exist in an amputated state. Regardless of how beautiful or imperfect your relationship may have been, there is life after loss.
Grief takes time
Of course, you should not maintain a memory room for the one you’ve lost or go on through your days as if they are still living. Keep in mind that grief has individual timelines, and they’re often long. In our busy world, we might try to make that time shorter than it is.
For most, the first year is the worst, but that does not mean that the grief goes away after a year. It may take several years before you emerge from the cloud of sorrow. While you will never stop missing your loved one, you eventually learn to miss them in a way that makes it possible for you to continue living life. Gradually, you will begin to exist again: spending time with friends and family, pursuing hobbies and planning for the future.
Living on vs. moving on
There is a difference between living on and moving on. When you simply “live on,” your life characterized by your sadness, you are purely existing but not truly present in your life. If you are at this stage, it does not mean that you will be there forever.
On the contrary, when you are ready to “move on” and accept coping with grief and loss, you will have a better understanding of the world around you. You will know what it is like to suffer a significant loss and in turn, you can learn to cherish each moment you have with your loved ones. This experience may also help you to guide others through their grief.
Grief is unique
Our grief is as unique as we are and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. Men and women in particular, often have vastly different methods for coping with loss. I once knew a married couple who had recently lost their daughter. The mother grieved loudly, with episodes of crying and a visible sense of overwhelming sadness and despair.
The father, on the other hand, remained quiet. He threw himself into his work, and the two rarely spoke of their loss with one another. They were both coping with their loss in their own ways; however, the mother could not understand the father’s reaction. She viewed his quietness as a lack of response and determined after reading a self-help book that stated it was essential to cry and get hold of the “hollow thread.”
Perhaps crying is the most common reaction and while coping with grief and loss. But, it is not the only way to grieve. One should take great care not to establish that one particular response is the right one.
Recover but do not forget
Many people throughout history have researched what grief is and have determined what needs to happen to “recover.” The prevailing mindset today is not that you must leave something behind you, but that you must embed the life you have had with your deceased loved ones into your life after the loss. The perception is also typical in Christian theology.
Care is a part of life and worry hurts, but sadness is not a disease, and you do not need to relieve yourself from it as soon as possible. It is not helpful if someone tells you that you must leave your life with your spouse (not to mention your child) behind you. This way of thinking is a profound violation of those in mourning.
There is an English sociologist, Tony Walter, who sums up this theory by advising not to detract from grief, but let it become part of one’s self-understanding. By doing so, you improve the relationship you have with yourself as well as with others.
Coping with grief and loss: the mourning process
In the 1970s, the Swiss psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, wrote a famous book, On Death and Dying, about mourning processes, referencing talks with hundreds of dying people. Based on these conversations, she described how dying people often pass through these five phases:
- Denial
- Peace
- Bargaining
- Acceptance
- Depression
Her theory gets taken so literally that some believe that a dying patient who does not respond accordingly, as in the stage of anger and rage against her destiny, has something wrong with them, that the patient does not understand that she shall die. That often happens when the human psyche is mapped out, and unfortunately, there are some who think that we have now a recipe for how things happen — every time. It’s too square.
The Power of Religion
For me, there is comfort in believing that God takes care of our loved ones, as well as those who are grieving for them. We are not alone in this existence. We can leave those we miss in God’s custody. We can ask him to manage what we cannot. Both the one life we have lost and our own, which at first seems to be utterly devoid of meaning. Many others also find that turning to religion in times of despair can offer comfort.
Different Beliefs
Many do not profess to participate in a specific religion but have a spiritual perception that leads them to believe there is more between heaven and Earth than we humans understand. Others are attracted to Eastern religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, and therefore believe in reincarnation, where the soul of a dead person leaves the body and is reborn in a new body.
There are also some who believe in soul migration: rebirth after death to a new life here on earth. Still, others go for a mixed religion, somewhere between Christianity and Buddhism, which is entirely their own. During conversations about grief, I tread carefully to confirm neither nor deny people the beliefs of others. When a person has great sorrow, you must remain empathetic and try to understand their beliefs to offer comfort.
Coping with grief and loss – final thoughts
There is a difference in remembering and preserving your loved one in your heart and imagining that your loved one is still living. People say they sit in the cemetery and talk to their deceased loved ones; it’s a tool that they use, but if it gets too concrete, you create the presence of the dead as a fantasy fox.
Some people, who have lost a loved one, embed the memory of their loved ones so profoundly in their minds that they create a constant dialogue and truly begin to live in a world of fantasy. That is not a healthy approach and does not allow you to overcome your grief. Think of the phrase from “Wings Over Desire”: “There was once, and therefore there will always be.”
The dead are still dead, but they live in my memory, and memory cannot lead the dialogue. You can always remember the way that life was, but you must live in a new reality where you embrace the absence of your loved one.
