Western Morning News (Saturday)
Nothing prepares us for our grief after death
GRIEF is an unpredictable emotion. It follows its own deeply personal, individual path. When Prince Philip died aged 99, his passing was hardly unexpected. His funeral had been planned for decades. Latterly pictures showed a very frail man not long for this world.
Despite all that, despite age, failing health, all signs to prepare that someone’s passing is imminent, nothing really prepares us for the grief that kicks in following death. It’s an impossible emotion to prepare for.
I’m not just talking about Prince Philip here. We’ve all lost loved ones, some going before their time, some soldiering on into their twilight years, totally dependent on others.
In relationships where the person has been loved and cherished, no amount of expectation can take away the grieving process. We knew our little boy wouldn’t reach old age. The brain damage inflicted on him when he was just four months old saw to that. Watching him struggle some days made us long for his release. Life seemed impossible with him, impossible without him.
Yet when the day came, there was no sense of relief. Hubs went within with his intense pain. I let it all out. I went mad. Mad for a year. I chastised parents I saw screaming at their children, told mothers off for wheeling buggies off pavements lest a car clipped them. I howled like a wounded dog, whether I was hanging out the washing or weeding.
So when I looked at the faces of the Royal family, I really felt for them. Funeral over, they’re now on the painful road of readjustment.
Grief isn’t one dimensional. It manifests in a jumble of intense emotions. Dealing with it isn’t linear but a chaotic process of twists and turns. The emotional logic of grief is better understood, I think, if it’s thought of as a series of frantic moves to re-orientate to the world after a big loss has left one emotionally disorientated or off balance.
It’s all relative. Whether you lose a child at five, as we did, or have an early miscarriage, or lose a father at 99, it’s still a painful and unavoidable process.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a SwissAmerican psychiatrist, wrote many brilliant books on grief. She observed that facing the reality of death, their own, or others, leads to people feeling very angry, resentful, rageful. Shock and disbelief moves to denial, anger, bargaining (I’ll do anything just as long as they get better – yep I know that one too well), guilt, depression and finally acceptance and hope.
However much you might anticipate it, grief bites you on the bum when you are least expecting it. It’s not something you can fix. You have to try and learn to live with it and cope with your feelings. There’s no time limit. Losing someone can feel like yesterday even though years may have passed. The circumstances around their passing will act as a sharp reminder – decades on. I have no doubt the Queen will be brought back to the day of her husband’s passing by the smell of wallflowers, the beauty of cherry blossom.
Birthdays and anniversaries are poignant, especially so as you begin to realise that others no longer remember them. You hug those occasions to yourself, recalling how they were celebrated. And a song, an event, a perfume can trigger sadness years after the event.
“You’re not dead till you’re forgotten,” someone once said. One of the greatest joys for Hubs and I is for people to talk about Guy, remember him, remember his birthday, the anniversary of his death. So never recoil from talking about dead friends to their relatives – it’s one of the most healing things you can do. Celebrate that life through memories.
When Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria plunged herself into mourning virtually for the rest of her reign and wore black for the remainder of her life. She rarely appeared for public duties, doing so for the first time in 1863 to unveil a statue of Prince Albert. Queen Elizabeth has already performed a public duty since Philip’s death – her sense of duty and also her awareness of how he would want her to react overriding her own personal feelings. Days of coping and not coping, whether you’re royal or a regular human being, are all part of the grieving process. The density of feelings needs to be acknowledged and for the Royal family it will be unlike most families, as the man was a monument, not only to them, but to his country.
The one certainty of it all is that no day is the same, that time moves us on from raw pain. Grief, in my book, is a testimony to just how much we’ve loved someone, a medal to be worn without embarrassment. For Hubs and I, our medals have turned into gratitude for those they represent, for all that they gave us during their lives. In time, I’m sure that the Royal family will find the same.
If you need help coping with a loss, contact Sue Ryder Online Bereavement Counselling, sueryder. org or The Bereavement Counselling Service bcsplymouth.co.uk (covering Devon) or Cruse Bereavement Care 0808 808 1677.
Grief isn’t one dimensional. It manifests in a jumble of intense emotions; it’s a chaotic process of twists and turns