| Product: |
My Experience Of Bereavement |
| Date: |
17/11/06 (358 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: A process we all need to go through, though in its own time.
Disadvantages: Many don't grieve for years, because it's too painful.
BEREAVEMENT
In all of our lives, the only certainty for all of us is that one day we will die. It always seems strange to me that we, in western civilization, hide it under the carpet, like it is an embarrassment, and when we really experience it, there is no one to help. There are professionals of course, but they are there mostly to listen. I used to be a Samaritan and understand how that works, you listen, you mirror back thoughts, but you make no comment, you are there to listen not to judge.
I wrote on this subject a few years ago, and what I found was that there are hundreds of people out there with similar stories to mine. Mine is not extraordinary at all, in fact death creeps up on everyone, but what I did find talking to these people, one of whom I received an email from today, was that they do learn to move forward, they do face their demons, and life does continue even though part of you is left in the past. My story is just written to help those that question “Can I move on after losing someone ?”. “How come everything goes on as if nothing happened ?”, and all the thousands of things I asked myself at the time that my story begins.
--oOo--
My husband died in bed next to me when I was 31 years old. Until that age, I had never known anyone that had died, and it was a really strange experience for me. The ambulance men asked if I wanted to spend time with him and I said no because after seeing him dead, I actually began to believe in souls and spirits. You see, what I saw was the shell of the man I married. He had actually left. I have had a near death experience that has confirmed my belief as well, though at this time in my life when I had no idea that death would touch my life, the certainty of his spirit having left was so strong that it really has never changed.
The funeral directors called. I had to make plans to bury a man I did not even believe was dead. It was as if we were talking about someone else. It is all so quick, all so final. I had to cope with seeing his boss and handing in the work he did the night he died because I did not want it to be wasted. All they could say was that I would be looked after financially and that hurt. How can you make up for a dead husband, for the silence in the house where once there was music, for the emptiness, the numbness ?
The days that followed his death were bad ones. The funeral directors made a mistake with the service arrangements and apologized profusely but my husbands sister was running around the house screaming, and I called the funeral director into the living room and gave him a cup of tea and a cigarette even though he told me he was not supposed to smoke on duty. He needed it. There was no one there to be practical for me. I had to be the practical one.
Over the years since he died, I found that I don't cry. I have a few crocodile tears about petty things, but don't really cry. Then one day a couple of years ago, I was in my car and suddenly did not know where I was, and started feeling a blankness that I really cannot describe. Only a person that has been there can understand. I went for help at a nursing station, and the people there sent me to a psychiatric unit of 20 patients. After a day of being there, the tears started and would not stop. Words came from my stomach as if I was vomiting them, and it was all about my husbands death, the last thing I expected 19 years down the line, but there is was. I had not grieved.
I thought my acceptance of his death was grief. I thought that maybe because I cannot take emotional rejection very well, that I had coped with the death very well, whereas in fact I had hidden it somewhere inside where I did not have to cope with it. I had carried on with my life, knowing there was a big hole in the person that I was but not knowing why.
My reason for writing this is that there must be millions of people who do not understand that thing we call grief. There must also be those who accept death and do not grieve and go through their lives thinking that they are okay, but wondering about the person they have lost from time to time. In my experience, I could see in my minds eye photos of my husband, but never gestures or movement. Now I can. Now I have grieved, I feel complete in this sense for the first time in 20 years. It's a strange concept, but one that I have discussed with others that have lost near relatives, and the movement factor does seem to play some role in it, as if time has stopped for that person until the final acceptance of their death. For example, there are others that have died in my life who perhaps I have not yet grieved, because I still see them as still photographs, and talking to others with similar experiences tells me that it works this way with them as well.
If I can help any reader to come to terms with grief and to face it and be a listener to them, or help them along the way, then I will be glad to in my life because I now know how much grief hurts.I really do hope that this review helps, when one human being feels alone and isolated and has questions they want answers to. Sometimes, when you are alone and grieving, you read books on various stages of grief. I did but I found nothing helpful and thought for me it was all over and done with until that visit to hospital. I had had counsellings. I had had all the usual help which was available though nothing prepared me for what happened years down the line. What I learnt was that you can get through it. You can heal, and relationships you are in can survive it. It is the understanding of it which is the most important aspect. Tending to hide behind smiles, tending to look after other peoples problems instead of seeking what mine were camouflaged that grief for far too long. My mother and my father are dead now. My father, I have grieved, though my mother still sits as an object in a photograph, as do others that have died and that I have not quite come to terms with, but at least I understand the process now, and perhaps in time will be able to grieve those that I place in the back of my mind because for the time being, it is safer like that.
Strangely enough it all seems common sense to me now. My husband's family, in an effort to protect me left me out of many parts of the necessary formalities that help you to accept death. For example, I had no idea until I wrote a couple of years ago where they had placed his ashes. It's not that I wanted to visit them, just that something inside me needed to know. What the hospital taught me was that the grieving process will take its' natural course, and should not be forced and this really was true in my case.
My advice to those people who know someone who has lost someone close is to treat them normally. Don't cotton wool them, or think a few weeks down the line that the healing will have passed. Be their friend just as you were before. Many friends avoided me because they simply did not know what to say and that is far worse and hurts more.
My advice to anyone finding themselves in the situation of loss is not to try and grieve, nor to try and avoid the grieving process, but to just be themselves, and if they find later in their lives, as I did, that they have strange feelings and do not understand them to talk to their family or partner, and not make the mistake I have seen many make of isolating themselves, and breaking up good relationships by not sharing their feelings, blaming other things simply because it's easier. Yes, it certainly is a strange experience, though talking things through with loved ones can help. Hiding things inside you for years is really not healthy, and believe me, I know that grieving is painful, although what follows the grieving process is an acceptance, and the possibility of remembering without pain the joys that those departed ones put into your life, and the ability to move on. It is within that acceptance that people find peace.
Rachel
Summary: Help for those who seek it, or those who have people around them that have lost someone dear to them
|
|
