Alice Wellington, Ph.D. Retired Licensed Clinical Psychologist
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Grief and Loss Thoughts

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Week 2 Grief Defined

While loss and grieving are a part of this human journey, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the depth of grieving that comes with great loss! Not even the academic world of psychology, which is the leading branch of study of human emotions, or even my practice as a psychotherapist with others who were grieving. Mainly because grieving is not academic or understood vicariously, it is not an event or observable reaction that can be described or grasped, though we all try. For me, analogies come the closest to doing any kind of justice to a concept that can’t be understood with mere words. And loss and grieving are two such concepts. The analogy that comes to mind for me in articulating my great loss is that it’s like losing a portion of my body. My husband passed away last Spring, we had been married just shy of 35 years, but had started dating 4 years before our wedding, so we were best friends for 39 years. During our lives together, we experienced both pain and pleasure in our relationship as we got to know each other through our own journeys, and in sharing the gamut of the human emotions together we eventually developed a rhythm to life together in our marriage. I came to feel like he was “a part” of me, almost like a physical extension of my own body. So just as a person might take for granted that their right arm will always be there, when it’s gone you wonder if you’ll be able to function without it, or even want to, but somehow you do. That is the best I can offer right now for this experience that is indescribable, grief.


Week 3 EG’s Grief description

“Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert
Before my loss, I knew that grief was impactful, I just didn’t know how impactful. Shortly after my husband’s death a dear friend sent me this quote by Elizabeth Gilbert. It is the best description I’ve read of what the experience of grief is like. Just the acknowledgment from my friend that grief is almost indescribable was comforting. I’m sure the temptation for a lot of us is to somehow fix the pain, or lesson the pain of a loved one. But now I know from my experience the validation of the pain is the most helpful at somewhat “reducing” the pain. Because to know that someone seemed to understand the enormity of the loss lifted the weight of feeling alone in this solitary journey of grieving.

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Week 4 Grief The Deep River of the Soul

“When you move through grief in an intentional and ritual-supported way, you’ll feel pain, but it won’t crush you; your heart will break open, but it won’t break apart. If you can send your grief – in tears, in rages, in laughter, or in total silence – into your shrine, you and your heart will become conduits through which the waters of life can flow. If you let the river flow through you, your heart will not be emptied; it will be expanded, and you’ll have more capacity to love, and more room to breathe.” Karla McLaren “The Language of Emotions”.

I think what surprises me the most about grieving so far is how unexpected and sudden the reality of loss is triggered. Sometimes a passing thought, a song, or a food smell will awaken my grief. Intellectually, I know the benefits of grieving, but it seems my ego wants to avoid the pain. My body, however, in it’s wisdom remembers something big is happening and reminds me through these sudden bursts of grief to express how bad it feels. As I allow the grief expressions, I experience greater expensiveness and relief. What I have gained from Karla McLaren’s writings is to allow grief when it comes, without fear of it’s potential overwhelm. I truly believe the body knows what to do, even when the ego argues against it’s wisdom. Because in those same triggers, sometimes, just as sudden, they bring joy to the grief. Joy that my heart loved so deeply.


Week 5 Grief as Personal Activism

I’ve witnessed how loss and grief have transformed other lives, I guess I'm somewhat surprised at how much it's transformed mine. This author describes it well: “I have come to have a deep faith in grief; have come to see the way its moods call us back to soul. It is in fact, a voice of soul, asking us to face life’s most difficult but essential teaching: everything is a gift, and nothing lasts. To realize this truth is to live with a willingness to live on life’s terms and not try to deny simply what is. Grief acknowledges that everything we love, we will Iose. No exceptions. Now of course, we want to argue this point, saying we will keep the love in our hearts of our parents, or our spouse, or our children, or friends, or, or, or, and yes, that is true. It is grief however, that allows the heart to stay open to this love, to remember sweetly the ways these people touched our Iives. It is when we deny grief's entry Into our Iives that we begin to compress the breadth of our emotional experience, and live shallowly… Grief is a powerful solvent, capable of softening the hardest of places in our hearts. To truly weep for ourselves and those places of shame, invites the first soothing waters of healing. Grieving, by its very nature, confirms worth. I am worth crying over: My losses matter. I can still feel the grace that came when I truly allowed myself to grieve all my losses connected to a life filled with shame.”

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Week 6 Color

I’m fortunate to have incredible family and friends in my support system. A few days after my husband passed away, my cousin Chuck traveled 10 hours to come and offer his support to me and my sons. His efforts touched me deeply! He sat with me, and listen to me, and reminisced with me, reliving memories we shared and enjoyed. Just before he left, he related that his own experience with loss caused him to focus on what was missing rather than on what he had. He described life shortly after his loss as a colorless world of gray. Then he explained that looking for color was how he found hope. He said he wished someone had told him to look for color sooner, then admonished me to look for color amidst the gray that would inevitably be there. He was right! Thanks Chuck! One thing I’m learning about myself is that often my focus determines my perception, and that impacts my sense of hope. There’s nothing to like about being a widow, but I’m still a mom, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a cousin! That’s a lot of color!!!


Week 7 Two Qualities of Grief

It has been said that “close friends are ‘family’ you choose”. My friend Trudy is such a “family member”. (I tease her that we were sister separated at birth.) Trudy and I have been taking long walks throughout our friendship where we sort through life’s trials and curiosities, and explore the psychology of humanity. I’ve come to call them “Walk N Talks with Trudy”. Throughout the last year and a half of my husband’s illness and after his death our Walk N Talks kept me grounded and helped me heal as I’d share my emotional rollercoaster with her. She’s experienced a lot of loss in her life and is currently going through her own grieving experience. Her questions are often simply, “are we suffering or is this pure grieving?” I found that there were times when it was one or the other quality of grieving, but sometimes both. Here’s how we came to distinguish them. Pure grief for me is spontaneous and I feel a deep sense of loss in my whole body, but there doesn’t seem to be suffering, only sorrow. Tears flow easily and my body knows what to do. There is little sense of suffering pain, mainly reality of loss. But suffering grief is painful in that my sadness is more about regret and hopelessness. My heart aches because of my thoughts, and as a result my body loses energy, and depression is heavy. Because of these Walk N Talks, I learned to give myself compassion that both types of grief are apart of my human experience, and it helps me to know when my grieving seems to come more from my head so I could find resources, like my friends and family, to help me cope and find truth. And then also to know when grieving is pure, beyond my conscious level so I can allow the natural human realization that I have lost what I loved so deeply.

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Week 8 Projects

Shortly after my husband’s death I had an urge to clean my house and rearrange things. Everywhere I looked I could see “projects”. As I look back, part of me is puzzled by the intense need for projects, and I was a little judgmental of myself for wanting to change things so soon after his death, but I believe I have a little more clarity now. For those looking in from the outside, it may seem obvious or maybe even wrong, but in the midst of grieving, looking from the inside looking out, it’s pretty fuzzy. With hindsight now 11 months after his death, I believe part of my motivation was to make order out of emotional chaos.

The loss of my husband was and still is hard to grasp, both mentally and emotionally, it’s intangible. So cleaning and doing projects gave tangibility to that intangible side of my experience. I believe there is another element to this drive, and that was, and still is, to distract. Loss of my husband was overwhelming on a lot of levels, he was my life partner, my soul mate, my lover, but also my travel buddy and friend. He helped me accomplish the life we had and dream of our future adventures.

Recently I flew for the first time by myself since his death, and I was acutely aware of his absence at the airport. He wasn’t there to sit with my bags while I went to the restroom, or to grab us both a coffee while we waited. He wasn’t there to think of the things I forgot. My flight schedule had a three hour layover and I began to feel his void pretty quickly, but something took over unconsciously, and I became fixated on buying a pair of bluetooth earbuds. Once I got them I had to figure out how to make them connect, and surprisingly felt a little grateful that they didn’t work right away so I’d have a “project” to occupy my time. It dawned on me about midway that I was distracting from the pain of his absence, but rather than judge myself for not facing the pain, I just thanked my humanity for knowing what I needed in that moment. I reflected later in private on my “choice”, and then I could allow the pain of his absence when I was ready.


Week 9 Stages of Grief

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified a pattern to grieving in those who were terminally ill. Her observations have been generalized to all grieving and loss experiences, with some consistent parallels. However, according to an article I read recently, she is quoted as having wished the stages she recorded had not become a formula for “normalcy” for all grieving. But humanity loves formulas and it seems we are all looking for that measuring stick to feel “normal” by. I’m guilty of the same!

My husband’s grief seemed to follow the stages identified by Kubler-Ross. After his died, I knew some of what to expect in terms of the elements of grief, i.e. denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, but it didn’t look quite the same as my husband’s. It’s so much messier and undefinable than those 5 simple words. I’d like to offer my version of this progression so far, referring to the same words as a point of reference.

First I’d say the “denial” piece for me is better described as “numb”. The word shock has been used, and that is somewhat descriptive, but numb was more of my experience. Numb for me means almost no feelings, no thoughts, no anything. Almost like an auto-pilot for putting one foot in front of the other. I had someone tell me I looked like I was trying to be strong. From the outside “numb” may look like many things, but “trying to be strong” is not what’s really going on. It’s just that my body kept moving, breathing, living when my husband’s did not.  And in some ways, if felt like it shouldn’t. But that’s almost too big for the mind to comprehend.

Anger is probably a good all encompassing word for the “season” of emotion that seems to follow “denial”, but a more accurate phrase for my experience might be bursts of frustration and incredulousness. I found myself almost spontaneously and frustratingly saying, “Where are you?”, “Why aren’t you here?” or “GOD!!!” which meant “this is just wrong!” My husband wanted to live, he just wasn’t ready to die, and the energy that I felt was “injustice”! So, yes anger can describe it, but the anger for me didn’t last 24/7, but came in bursts of spontaneous realizations, and involuntary questions and words.

I didn’t and haven’t yet experienced the bargaining “phase” since his death, but I feel like I did before he died. For me the bargaining didn’t take place in a dialogue with God, but more of a holding my breath, hoping the next scan or blood test wasn’t going to tell us his progression was worse. Strange as that sounds, for me it was more like a child’s “wish” for a special gift or piece of good news.

The depression portion swirled with the anger for me, in fact anger would become a tool generating energy to break the sluggishness of depression. I learned in graduate school that depression, to a degree, is anger turned inward, like swallowing a grenade so the destruction wouldn’t hurt those around me. I can’t say that is actually what it’s like, but I can say that if I were to describe depression, I’d say it’s like “slow motion” that is perhaps related to suppressed anger. I found my mind was alert and “sparking” on all cylinders, so to speak, but my body felt like it was covered in tar or molasses. No matter how hard I tried to walk faster or move quickly, I couldn’t make it happen. Again, it wasn’t a 24/7 thing, but would just show up unexpectedly, and sometimes last for a couple of days, but thankfully I’d get a break, have some energy before the next round.

As far as “acceptance”, I believe I’m still working on that. I still have bouts of “numbness”, bursts of frustration, moments of holding my breath, and slow motion episodes, but the duration of each and frequency is decreasing with time. So maybe acceptance for me are those stretches of “normalcy”, when I feel like I have lightness and hope again for the day or week ahead.

Please feel free to add your descriptions!

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Week 10 Bo

A special pet came into our family’s life 10 years ago. A puppy named Bo (who eventually grew into a 80 pound mass of muscle that still acts like a puppy, watch out for his tale!). He quickly became my husband’s sidekick. Bo would follow his master everywhere, and for special outings, he’d get to accompany my husband to “the farm” and run his heart out while my husband “played” around on farm equipment. As my husband’s illness worsened, Bo seemed to know something was wrong. In the last few months of his life one of the daily symptoms my husband experienced was stomach issues, like nausea and indigestion. It took us awhile to see just how bonded Bo was to his master, but we eventually connected the dots discovering when my husband had his worst stomach issues, so did Bo.

My sons love Bo as much as my husband did, and they believed Bo would really struggle with his death. Their own grief did not cloud their compassion for their furry “brother”. So they helped Bo snuggle up to their dad on the couch, which also gave my husband a chance to love on his faithful pal one last time. Bo had been holding a periodic vigil at the feet of his master in his final days, but we didn’t know how that final snuggle for Bo would comfort our hearts as well. The next day, my husband passed. And when Bo sensed our grief at that moment, he came close to hold that vigil for all of us. My sons again felt like Bo needed to say goodbye, and so they hoisted him up on to the couch and he lay his head on my husband’s hand, then on his thigh. He didn’t stay long, but he seemed to say “goodbye” and from then on his stomach issues seemed to almost disappear.

Here in the past month, I’ve been feeling more of my own “anniversary” sense of loss, it was this time of year that we knew my husband’s life was almost over, in fact, it was a year ago next week that we saw his oncologist for the last time as he started Hospice. I know human bodies carry memories, so I imagine our pets’ bodies do, too. I’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks that Bo has had some stomach issues. I can’t help but wonder if he is in some way experiencing that anniversary grieving with me, perhaps sensing my grief and holding vigil with me!