A while ago I was asked to do a Marc’s Musings on how different situations would affect how differently we grieve. First let me tell you this…although everyone grieves differently, I believe that we all grieve for the same reason…we grieve because we have loved and we grieve because we have lost. Some people will wonder what the sense is of loving if it’s just going to hurt some day, but to have had the privilege of loving and to have had the privilege of someone loving you back just has to be the greatest feeling and the most powerful emotion in a person’s life.
I believe that the intensity of a relationship plays a part in the intensity of grief; for example it’s different if you lose someone, such as a spouse who you see and talk to every day as opposed to someone you see once a month or a couple of times a year. And it’s different to lose a child than it is to lose a friend because you lose a part of yourself.
I believe that dependency will also play a part of how intense grief is…if losing someone compromises your ability to live with the same degree of independence, be it physically, financially or emotionally then your grief may be more intense. Certainly there are spouses who find themselves in a position of having to find work to support their families after a death and there are folks who will need to look at changing how or where they live to get the support they need to remain as independent as possible. So many changes in such a short time makes life so complicated.
I think that misgivings play a part in how we grieve. It is hard to forgive or to ask for forgiveness when someone dies. There are many families who are divided and sometimes the gaps that are created never have the opportunity to be closed. Sometimes the regret that a person harbors comes out as misdirected anger and because of all the emotions that you go through when someone you love dies, you may not understand what it really is that you are angry about…sometimes people are just mad at themselves for saying something or doing something or not saying something or not doing something that they wished they had. There’s no easy answer for that one…someday you will hopefully be able to forgive yourself. As a parent, I love my children unconditionally and I hope that if they have regrets someday, they already know that I would have always forgiven them.
Until next week,
Marc
