Grieving the Loss of a Loved One

Grief in the loss of a loved one is a very personal, very individual experience. There are numerous ways to deal with grief, with no two ways being alike in any form or fashion. Those who experience grief know it is a journey that lasts throughout an entire life, not an event that begins and ends. Grief touches all of our lives, through any type of loss whatsoever. Having lost my mother suddenly and having since experienced the loss of other people close to me, I write this article from a motherless daughter's and a griever's perspective as I live day-by-day with my own loss, with my family's losses.

Whoever it was that declared the act of grieving--mourning--to have a beginning, middle and an end, was writing fiction. Real life mourning does not work in such a nice and orderly way,it never has and it never will. Those stages are listed as denial, anger, bargaining, disorganization and acceptance. While these supposed official stages of grief do make some sense, it must clearly be added that if one goes through these stages, they can and do recur in any given random order throughout one's life after a devastating loss. For example, in the case of motherless daughters like myself, the grieving responses do come and they do go, but they almost always come back with a vengeance as life goes on and the needs/wants for my mother appear in force at each stage of life-each life altering change or decision as a woman. Grief continues to be reworked throughout life and it's events. One thing that is for certain, expecting grief to run a prescribed short course has led to the sad fact that so many people see the normal acts of grieving as serious issues instead of the soul's mourning for what is lost-not just the one that is lost to this world but the loss of future, of events and life together. Feeling and dealing with mourning and grief is part of life. In reality, what makes you feel insane in the midst of such loss is not so much the loss itself as it is the idea that this pain must be suppressed and cannot be talked about. The grief will find a way to seep out, slowly or in a rage.

Overcoming grief by checking off a list of stages and phases is a complete, utter myth. Instead of struggling to overcome grief, the key is learning to live with your loss. There will always be a hole in your heart for the one, or more than one, lost to you. So what are mourners to do?

The one constant key is that to continue to live and breathe,you do learn to live with the pain. That pain becomes a part of your soul, a part of the very essence of who you are as a person. There is no going around the grieving process, those that try just postpone their mourning. Suppressing and postponing mourning is not only unjust to yourself and the one you have lost, but will backfire as the feelings will find their way out at some point in time. What you do with that pain is up to you, whether you spin wildly or find outlets that truly help you live with grief and mourn for your loss. There will be days of both.

A focus on living life is the ray of bright sunshine in the gloom of grief, the wail of mourning. Accepting that there will be and should be days of dark despair as well as days of hope and growth is a perspective that will allow for mourning as well as living a joyful life in spite of deep loss.

In summary, there is no set of rules for grief, for mourning. Therefore, there is no right way or wrong way to deal with tremendous loss of a loved one. Learning to live with the loss, it becoming part of you is a step. Holding loved ones you do have close, clinging to faith in spite of pain and living each day to the fullest are ways to grieve and mourn your loss while at the same time, celebrating the life that was.