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?