Welcome! Perhaps you found this blog because you recently lost a spouse. If so, you are specifically in my prayers, as I pray for everyone who reads these words. May this blog bring you comfort and help in your time of grief.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Differences in Grief Experiences

For my forthcoming book for widows and widowers, I'm writing a section that examines various factors that contribute to the wide range of grief experiences we face. As I'm working on my list, I wonder if you might help me define some additional factors that I can include in my list.

To explain a bit further, it's obvious that there are some similarities in people's experiences of grief. Everyone deals with stages of sadness, anger, and fear. Everyone faces some level of depression. Everyone who has lost as spouse has spent some time evaluating the marriage and thinking through things that might have been done differently. These commonalities in grief are helpful to examine, which I do in the pages of my book.

But I also want to explore why grief experiences are so vastly different among widows and widowers. Your grief is not like my grief, nor like anyone else's. What contributes to this? Here is my list, currently "in progress."

A) Differences based on the nature of the marriage relationship. Were husband and wife very close, or were they more distant - maybe even conflictive - with one another? Were they married a few months, a few years, or a few decades? What roles (finance, household duties, childcare, etc.) did the other spouse assume, which now fall to the widow(er)? Were there unresolved marital issues that now weigh heavily on the widow(er)?

B) Differences based on the current life situation. Are the children young, teen-aged, or grown and out of the house? Does the widow(er) live with financial security or financial uncertainty? Were husband and wife retired or just starting out in life? Does the widow(er) have family members who live nearby and can provide helpful support? Does the widow(er) have good friends to talk with or ask for help?

C) Differences based on the nature of the spouse's death. Was it a sudden accident that didn't allow any time to prepare, or was it a long illness that allowed some time to grieve even before the point of death? Was there some kind of injustice involved in the death (murder, accident that was someone else's fault, medical mistake)? Was the death due to suicide?

D) Differences based on faith in God. Does the widow(er) believe that God can help them through the difficult days of grief? Does the widow(er) believe in the Bible's descriptions of heaven? Does the widow(er) feel certainty that their spouse is in heaven, or is there some doubt about where their spouse may be?

I'm sure there are other factors that affect each person's individual experience of grief. Please give some brief feedback about other things I might include in this section of my book. Thanks so much!

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Grief as a Line

I'm developing an illustration, and I'd love to hear YOUR feedback below.

I'm thinking about the time it takes to grieve, and how it varies from person to person based on a wide range of factors. I'm a visual person, so I'm trying to develop a way to describe these variations visually.

Let's visualize the "grief process" as a line. At some point on that line is the point of death. However, death may not be at the beginning of the line. When a woman learns that her husband has only a few months to live, she really begins that process of grieving even before his life ends; she starts to work through the shock and the anger as she comes to grips with the reality of his imminent passing.

Still, "death" is a definite point somewhere on the line. But for the woman mentioned in this example, she has already started grieving, so it may take her a shorter period of time to reach the end of that grief journey.

However, for someone who loses a spouse to an accident, he or she has no advance time to begin grieving. The point of "death" is at the beginning of the line, and for these people, the grief journey often takes quite a bit longer. This was definitely true in my own experience.

Then I think of an older man whose wife died a long, slow, death due to cancer. He was ready to remarry just a few months later, because he had already done most of his grieving while his wife lay in hospice care. His adult children, however, were still grappling with their own grief, and felt unprepared when their father announced he was ready to remarry. Every person in the family was grieving; they were just in different places on the line of grief.

To further this illustration, I think of things which may make the line longer or shorter. If a couple is very young, that lengthens the line because there is additional grief over the death of the future. If an injustice has led to a death, that often lengthens the grief process. If a couple has had unresolved issues, or financial difficulties, the grief process may be longer because of the other emotions that arise. Yet on the other hand, if a couple has lived a long life and has felt prepared for the point in which one of their lives would end, the line might be shorter. If a person feels certain their loved one is now in heaven, that sense of peace may make the line a little shorter. If a widow(er) trusts that their future is secure in God's hands, that often shortens the process of grief a little bit.

Part of why I'm grappling with this illustration is that I counsel a number of people who wonder, "Is what I'm going through 'normal'?" When it comes to grief, there are so many absurdities that we almost always feel that something must be "wrong" or that we're not grieving "normally." I have used this visual of a line with a few widows and widowers, and have found that it helps illustrate why people's grief journeys are all different, and why there is very little way to compare one person's grief with another.

So please tell me...does this illustration help you visualize grief a little better? Do you have suggestions for how I might sharpen this visual image so it can become even more helpful?