As part of my work as a funeral celebrant – I invite grieving families to think about how they can support each other moving forward, thinking about how the life ahead might be without the person they loved so much in their lives.
It’s not like you have a choice.
But it can be tempting – because it’s so exhausting – and perhaps especially for people who prefer their lives to be orderly – to think that if you do ‘the right things’ you can get past the pesky business of being sad and ‘move on’.
You can try to do that, but I wouldn’t advise it. Grief throws googlies. It was the fifth anniversary of my sister’s death yesterday, and it was one of the hardest and saddest ones for me, for some reason. It’s not as if I don’t regularly grieve her loss. Rarely does a day go by when I don’t think of her, remember her, miss her.
I am fortunate in several ways. In my ‘other’ work (for Sussex Wildlife Trust) I am blessed with lovely colleagues who are very supportive and understanding. I have a wonderful daughter. And I have a really good relationship with my sister’s gorgeous children – so we tend to hang out together on her ‘death day’. Call our mum. Look at photos. Eat a meal we used to love to eat with her (roast chicken, although she didn’t eat the chicken part). Remember her fabulousness as well as her eccentricities. And there are quite a lot of those in our family.
There isn’t a linear path to getting over the death of someone you love. Even if lovely new people and events come into your life – it’s quite likely that grief will be your companion, in different shapes, and to a different extent, until you die. Being angry may well may be one of the feelings you have about it. But that doesn’t chase it away.
And that’s ok. It’s not something to be embarrassed about. It shouldn’t be stifled. As psychiatrist Dr Parkes said: “The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love”. And ultimately, I would argue, it’s worth it.