There’s no handbook for grief, everyone finds their own way

GRIEF. A small word for such a very big and difficult subject. But there is no measure of more or less grief, one year over another, for any individual.

Grief is the same on Midsummer’s Day as it is on Christmas day. It’s grief. The long relentless road of trying to learn to live with a loss. For so many this will be the first Christmas. Along with a string of firsts in the year. The first without someone they loved.

Days such as Christmas become markers of time, a yardstick against which to measure one’s grief – worse or better than last year?

Some time ago I had the good fortune to meet Julia Samuel OBE, a grief counsellor with expertise in child bereavement and family counselling. She had just published a book, Grief Works, a beautiful compilation of different stories of people in very different circumstances dealing with grief.

I couldn’t begin to comprehend how she was able to manage holding a family together while she supported them through their worst nightmare. She has decades of experience and expertise.

To some extent it was about putting in place well-rehearsed coping mechanisms as well as the psychological and emotional understanding that grief is a process, not bounded by time or short circuited by a change in circumstance. Subsequently I felt it was about her being able to face grief head on for those she was supporting – as yet unable to begin to develop their relationship with it. She knows the twists and turns of grief.

How everyone gets to their own point of acceptance of loss is totally different. Two elderly widowers I know meet for regular lunches and chats. As members of the same “club” I think they feel able to share confidences in a way they can’t or don’t want to with other friends or family.

Soon after my mum died I bought a puppy, which of course was a brilliant distraction, but despite her best efforts she didn’t actually change the shape or process of grief.

Grief is about time and process. It takes its own course. Christmas may be easier or less so this year. At the start of the year, I went to a 10-year anniversary memorial service. The contrast in the church and afterwards, a decade apart, was extraordinary.

What had been a desperate monotone, cold and utterly miserable day had given way to a full colour celebration of life. It was life affirming, funny and warm. It didn’t take away from the fact our friend had died far too young and he was no longer here. But somehow we had navigated and shape-shifted around the void of grief.

It was a relief, and a recognition that “this too shall pass” is true.

Everyone needs to find their own way. Fortunately there is help at hand in many guises along the way. One anniversary, Christmas and birthday at a time.

Annabel James is founder of agespace.org, for anyone caring for elderly relatives