A friend called to tell me his wife had died. She was a very vivacious young mother who died after a long struggle with cancer. He, of course, had seen the end coming for months and thought he had already done most of his grieving ahead of time. We keep thinking grief can be handled before the fact. There certainly is such a thing as anticipatory grief, but it does not replace the grief we face when a loved one dies. Anticipatory grief is the pain we feel as we watch the process happen. In another blog I will talk about our need to tell two stories: the story of our loved one and the story of watching the process happen. Both are grieving experiences that need to be walked through individually. One does not cancel or diminish the other.
As soon as he completed telling me the details of her death, he said, “I had no idea it hurt like this. I mean the physical pain. I knew or thought I knew that there would be pain, but I thought that meant some kind of deep sadness inside my heart. This hurts physically like someone is sticking a knife in my chest. That I did not expect.”
Grief hurts, and that hurt can be a physical pain. There is no explanation for the pain. There is not even a location. One person said they, “hurt all over more than they did any where else.” That was sort of a tongue twister, but it did a good job of describing the pain. Another person said he, “hurt in places he did not even know he had.” The grief reports sound like people who have just begun some strenuous workout routine and wake up the next day feeling like they were run over by a truck.
The pain can become overwhelming. I remember a late night call from a woman who started the conversation by saying, “I am in the floor and I can’t get up.” I had never met her so I asked her to tell me her story. She said, “My husband and my son were killed in a car wreck a few weeks ago. I have been having a horrible time with my grief, but tonight it hit with such force I fell in the floor and I can’t get up. I found your book and got the operator to find your number.”
There are no easy answers to take this pain away. No pills can dull it. No alcohol can cure it. When the pills wear off and the alcohol looses its effect, the pain is still there. Grief and its pain must be walked through. There are no shortcuts. There are no magical cures.
It helps some to recognize that the pain is normal. Its presence does not mean you are out of control or “not doing well” with your grief. The pain of grief is as natural as the pain from a broken leg. It hurts because it should hurt. You have been crushed by a blow no one could ever have described before the blow fell.
It also helps to talk about the pain. Especially if the one you are talking with does not try to tell you how you should feel or try to explain it away. The woman who was in the floor when she called lived in Michigan and I live in Oklahoma. Since I could not be there in person, I asked her what she felt like doing. She said she felt like screaming. I told her to just scream and after a little persuasion, she turned loose. I have no idea how long she screamed, but suddenly she stopped and said, “Thank you, I feel better now.” Screaming might not be for everybody, but any pain, needs some kind of response. Telling about it or even screaming does not cure a broken leg either, but when we break one, most of us yell. Maybe that can help this kind of pain as well.
Copyright Doug Manning of In-Sight Books, Inc. Doug’s books, CDs and DVDs are available at www.insightbooks.com. Post originally published on Doug’s Blog at The Care Community www.thecarecommunity.com.
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