Tuesday's Trust - The Greatest Grief

Tuesday's Trust

The Greatest Grief

Every grief is different and comes with its own extenuating circumstances. A homicide may involve police interrogations, courtroom proceedings, and years of additional legal issues before closure can finally be obtained. Some never experience closure. A loss from suicide may result in years of unresolved guilt or anger in addition to the grief. Loss of parents may result in foster care for younger children along with additional legal issues. Each loss carries with it a set of unique issues pertaining to that specific type of loss, even including financial hardships and relocation requirements. However different, however similar, grief is still grief.

After losing his father to renal failure and his teenage daughter to a freak vehicle accident, my uncle David stated, quite profoundly, "When you lose a parent, you lose your history. When you lose a child, you lose your future."

One thing still holds true: Any loss results in great grief.

Although I'm not sure I understand why it matters, there seems to be an un-uttered question resounding in the mind of everyone who is grieving: Is the grief I'm experiencing the greatest of all grief? Is my grief greater than everyone else's? As bad as our grief hurts, we can't imagine it could be any worse under any other circumstances. So we ask, who grieves harder, or longer, or more deeply?

It's as if we need to know: On a grief-scale of 1 to 10, where is my grief? Is this normal? We seem to need something to measure it by. Something to reassure us that what we are going through IS normal.

So, whose loss is greatest? Which truly is the greater grief? While in a small group discussion recently, these same questions arose. Who grieves harder or longer? Is the widow's grief greater than the parent? Is the mother's grief greater than the father's? Is grief greater when it's because of suicide? Or homicide? Or multiple grief?

The answer is really quite simple. The greatest grief of all is your own. It doesn't matter what anyone else says, or how anyone else tries to measure the loss. You aren't the first person to experience grief. But you are the first person to experience YOUR grief. Someone you loved deeply is gone. You can't bring them back. That's the aching reality of it all and there is no greater grief than that.

There is also no greater hope than the hope we have in Jesus Christ. For we rely heavily on His promises that life is eternal and we will be reunited with our loved ones again. This doesn't mean that we won't continue to grieve, missing our loved ones presence in the here and now, but our HOPE lies in the reunion in that place "where there is no more sorrow."

Jesus said, "Love never fails." That means it can never end. It is eternal. For love to be eternal, life must be eternal! As your love for the one no longer with you is eternal, find hope in His promise that "Love never fails."

May this greatest hope give you strength in your greatest grief, and may God bless you and bring you peace.

~thanks to "Grieving Mothers," Facebook

Picture and Post, thanks to "Grieving Mothers" on Facebook

Thursday's Therapy - Unpackaging The Princes' Top 10 TRUTHS about Child-Loss Grief -Truth #5 Everybody is different, so Everybody's Grief is different

Thursday's Therapy

Unpackaging The Princes' Top 10

TRUTHS about Child-Loss Grief

Truth #5) Everybody is different,

so Everybody's Grief is different.

We know that our grief will never end. We will mourn for our children every day for the rest of our lives. We will never return to normal. But we will live again... Life will be forever colored by what has happened. For every parent who loses a child, one life ended and another life is indelibly changed...

Events of bone-crunching intensity inevitably leave us different. The emotional journey people take to regain equilibrium, to be able once again to feel good and value life, to reform themselves so that their loss is somehow integrated into the fiber of their existence--that is the process of mourning.

~Judith R. Bernstein, When the Bough Breaks, (highlights mine)

*****

And that process of mourning for us child-loss parents will look similar to one another in some ways, and very different from one another in other ways.

Some of the differing variables in the ways our unique grief may impact us child-loss parents:

• Length of time of grief
• Intensity of grief
• Impacts of grief on one's coping methods (For example, some parents feel compelled to move from their house in which they raised their deceased child, while other parents may feel compelled to stay in the same house in which they raised their child after the child's death.)
• Behaviors by which one prefers to express the deep grief (For example, some parents like to frequent the cemetery to do much of their mourning there. Others prefer the privacy of their home, or in their car.)
• Unique details of the child's particular death
• Uniqueness of one's relationship to the child

• Age of the child at the time of death and the degree of dependence on the parents
• Degree of closeness of parent to the child
• Intensity of the relationship between the parent and the child
• Developmental age of the child, and what particular dynamics were going on relationally between the parent and child in regard to that time in the child's life. (Our child was going into her junior year in college, the time that is typical developmentally for establishing more and more independence and decision-making apart from the parents even though still greatly dependent on them in many ways.)

▪Degree of Functioning (Some people cannot do their life's work at all anymore or may be able to do only a small percentage of it. Others may find work a relief and almost are able to escape into it.)

• Physiological Differences - Some parents who were dealing with a challenging medical condition before their child's death may find their condition worsened or more debilitating with the added stressors of their child's death. Some parents may be accident prone after their child's death.
• Types of emotions parents experience, how these are exhibited, and how they are processed may differ. We were expecting sadness and depression, and those we got, but along for the grief ride around year two of our grief came the unexpected emotions... agitation, anger, and anxiety ... or as Tommy calls it "The Triple-A Emotional Club." (Such emotions are very common to PTSD.)

*****

Trauma as shattering and cataclysmic as losing a child...leaves indelible imprints on our lives. We are not the same having traveled that road as we would have been had we been spared that journey.

~Judith R. Bernstein

*****

Everybody is different. Everybody's grief is different. We each find our own ways to navigate through our unique grief. Being able to establish the necessary boundaries and actions needed to attain safety are crucial. Having the freedom, the support, and the ability to accommodate our limitations is crucial. Respecting one another's uniqueness in processing grief is critical.

Love, respect, and support for one another in any ways we can, will go a long way in supporting one another in grief. Showing care and concern for the other's unique needs in expressing grief can effectively "lift just a corner" of one another's grief burden. Such love and support is an incredible gift amidst our grief and will facilitate our bonding to one another even, and especially, amidst our differences in the ways we find we need to grieve.

*****

When a child dies, the very ground on which we depend for stability heaves and quakes and the rightness and orderliness of our existence are destroyed. Nothing in life prepares us; no coping skills were learned. Parents who lose children are thrown into chaos. The loss of a child is shattering, unique among losses.

~Judith R. Bernstein

Picture thanks to FotoSearch.com

Quotes by Judith R. Bernstein, Ph.D. were taken from her book, When the Bough Breaks: Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter