Delayed Grief

            There are good reasons for not dealing with grief. We have to go to work if we want to keep our job. The children have to be taken to school and helped with their homework. We have to go shopping and cook if we want to eat. 

            We have to do the laundry. Pets have to be walked. There is work to be done in the yard and on the house. Bills have to be paid, cars repaired, and somehow we have to find enough time to sleep. We don’t have any time left to grieve.

            In the face of adversity, we are taught to stand up and be unemotional. We are told to appear decisive and in control in front of others. We are told to be full of faith and believe that everything happens for a reason. And male or female, we feel we should be strong enough to handle grief on our own.

            Grief doesn’t give us that option. Grief is a community event.

            Ignoring grief is like a leak in our roof. We can take care of it now, or we can wait as it seeps through the ceiling, gets into the walls, and warps the floors.

            Grief is not a wound that will heal on its own. It will not fade away over time. We can say that we’re too busy, too distraught, or just don’t want to deal with it, but grief is going to hang around until we open its box and deal with the contents.

            Unfortunately, our society has forgotten what it used to do to help people cope. There is one really good reason for not delaying grief: people are willing to help us now. They won’t be later.

            If we bury ourselves in our work and put off grieving for one, five, or twenty years, don’t expect people to be as understanding as they were at the beginning. In the minds of most people, time equates to recovery, whether or not we’ve actually done any grieving. 

            People expect us to grieve in the first month and be moody, angry, sad, and depressed. We have their permission to cry and fall apart, and no one will think the less of us. In the first month, people will respond with compassion and bring over food, help with chores, and listen to us talk. Then they go back to their busy lives, and we’re left on our own.

            We are going to be broken for a while. If we’re feeling emotional, then we should be emotional, otherwise people will think we’re unfeeling automatons. We need to share what’s going on inside if people ask. They wouldn’t inquire if they weren’t willing to listen. We need to set our pride aside and let people help if it’s something we’d like.

            If we shut grief down, we may also shut down all our emotions, and our interactions with people will become hard and brittle, our compassion for the suffering of others will go flat, we will turn our backs on love and end up isolated, alone, and bitter.

            When her husband died, my friend Kimberly said she wanted to face everything that grief had in the first year—all the crying, despair and loneliness, all the holidays, anniversaries and birthdays—and then she wanted to move on. I think she will because she is determined and has a community of friends supporting her as she travels grief’s road. 

            If we ignore grief and put it on the back burner, it will simmer, get thicker and harder, and then it will be a royal mess to clean up.