A Sudden Temporary Upsurge of Grief is an intense, unexpected wave of emotionality that can come on sometimes long after the death of a loved one.On an ordinary afternoon walking through Wal-Mart in search of those affordable staples everyone finds at big-box stores, I passed a family having typical squabbles with each other — teens arguing with their parents, a young child begging for a sugary snack — all tense and irritated. I nodded, agreeing with myself that I was glad to be past that age and stage of life, acknowledging that this is what families normally do when they get in each other's hair.
Then it hit: A wall of abject pain slammed into me, full of loss, longing, loneliness, and heartache.
The sense of agony was stunningly electric. I felt attacked. I could neither think nor talk. In terror and horror, I abandoned my shopping cart, staggered to the parking lot and managed to fall into my car, all while struggling to catch my breath. After about 20 minutes (which seemed like 20 years), the sensation receded, leaving me agitated by the vestiges and residuals of a hyper-aroused mind, body, and spirit. I had been hit with a blindside wipeout of grief, known as a STUG.
A STUG is an unwelcome, unexpected tsunami to the natural tidal rhythms of grief.
Researchers call what I experienced a Sudden Temporary Upsurge of Grief, a term defined by grief expert Dr. Therese Rando in the early '90s. It is an intense, unexpected wave of emotionality that comes on occasion to someone who has experienced the loss of a loved intimate, sometimes long after the person's death.
As a psychologist with many years of clinical practice, I have held others through similar experiences. Because of my professional life, I smugly didn't expect to have this awful reality in my orbit.  Silly me, thinking that I was sufficiently removed from my wife Karen's death in 2016 to be immune from this kind of event.
Quite Alarming and Frightening
For each of us, an ordinary day is characterized by a mental scaffolding called the assumptive world, defined as the personal organization held of the way the world works. The assumptive world is a psychological structure, containing everything a person assumes to be true about the world, the self and others.  It is our automatic, unconscious and generalized body of knowledge, learned through cumulative experience and history.
A STUG is outside of this scaffolding and comes as a threatening invasion. It happens unexpectedly and without warning when someone is fine and in the rhythm of a typical, ordinary day. There may be a trigger to the attack — or not. Innocuous memories or sensory experiences, such as a smell or a sound, can evoke this wave of juicy, raw emotions. After a substantive time has passed following the death, and the acute pain of grief subsides, the dramatic and unwelcome experience of a STUG can be quite alarming and frightening.
The Roadmap of Grief
The process of grief involves the survivor's new search and acquisition of experiences to live a healthy and full life in the new world without the loved one's physical presence. Grief helps a person to resolve — i.e., re-solve — the way the world works, requiring adoption of new ways of being in that world and reinvesting in it to compensate and adapt for the loved one's absence.
Grief guides a person toward revising the assumptive world and the way markers of self-identification are discerned and employed. A STUG is an unwelcome, unexpected tsunami to the natural tidal rhythms of grief.
'Sometimes When We Touch'
A fellow came to therapy, asking for help with a deeply personal narrative:
"I like listening to oldies music stations.  Nearly ten years after my wife died, as I was driving down the interstate, I heard the Dan Hill song from 1994 'Sometimes When We Touch.'  She and I used to sing it to each other in funny, pseudo-romantic ecstasy.  Well, it came on the radio and I started singing it automatically, just like we had always done. I got through the first verse before my throat closed and I started crying tears as big as light bulbs. I thought I would die. I pulled over to the side of the road and thought, 'Now what?' I shook like a wet dog and nearly vomited.
"I got through the first verse before my throat closed and I started crying tears as big as light bulbs. I thought I would die."
Eventually it passed, but I don't know what in the world happened to me. There weren't any thoughts that went with the feeling. I believed I had managed to make sense out of her death; it was so long ago. What do you think is the matter with me?  Was it a panic attack? Do I have to live with the possibility of this happening again? I was driving and could have been hurt."
This gentleman was slammed by a STUG that profoundly and dramatically untied a psychological connection to his deceased wife, one that he did not even realize he continued to hold. The STUG, traumatic as the experience felt, ultimately brought deeper and more personal meaning to his marital relationship — in life and death.
After the discharge of such intense emotionality, he was quickly able to gain context by attributing meaning to the trigger of the song. With a bit of perspective, he revisited one of the more pleasurable memories found in the history of his marriage.
Surviving a STUG
What can you do after a STUG? Here are a few suggestions:
Identifying the experience for what it is and calling it by name can help you stay in charge, even when feeling out of control.Remember that a STUG is a temporary, transitional experience. No one ever dies from a STUG, though many feel like the experience is deadly. The painful feelings will pass. The most effective strategy in the presence of a STUG is to ride it out. Find a safe place, as private as possible, breathe deeply and lean into it. Allow the pain until it passes. During a STUG, a person’s body goes on hyper-alert, releasing endorphins because of the fight-flight response manifest in the perception of danger. After the STUG passes, a body needs several hours to absorb the hormones and brain chemicals and return to baseline.Sleep on it. The day following a STUG, cognitive capacities return to normal, allowing more thoughtful consideration of the meaning of what triggered the memory. Take it as a matter of truth that the STUG signaled a reconsideration of a loving experience in the history of the relationship.Finally, remember that the word "closure" is never relevant in the loss of a loved one. If we have loved another intimately, grief does not lead us to forget.  Rather, the process facilitates resolution, clarity and meaning, even in the presence of a blindside wipeout.


The Blindside Wipeout of Grief

Jackson Rainer

After my husband died in 2009, I expected to be consumed by sorrow. The American cultural script, after all, is very clear on this point.
You know the kind of scenes I mean. Widow mournfully fingers the shirts in her husband’s closet. Widow burrows her nose in her husband’s pillow and tries desperately to inhale his scent. Widow climbs into bed and refuses to get up for days, weeks, even months.
In my case, what happened is better illustrated by the hours that immediately followed Joe’s death. We’d been enjoying a weekend in rural Pennsylvania with our teenage daughter. Now, as EMTs carried away my beloved husband of 24 years, I stood dazed, surveying the post-Joe world — everything familiar; everything changed. That’s one minute without Joe, I thought.That’s two minutes without Joe. 
I don’t remember how long I stood there, but gradually a new mantra took hold: Get home. Get home. Proceeding with painstaking concentration, I washed the dishes. Emptied the trash baskets. Straightened the bedrooms. Got Becky and me packed into the car and on the road home to New Jersey.
A Lesson About Death
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was receiving an important lesson about death. A master class, really.
During the more than two years that Joe had battled leukemia and then the side effects of a stem cell transplant, I had spent every possible hour by his side. When we were apart, I encountered dark fantasies of life without him. I imagined boundless loneliness. Unrelenting sorrow. Deepening depression. In my musings, death was solely about the stoppage of Joe’s life and the end of mine as I knew it. Now, reality was quietly showing me that death is never only about death. It’s also about the minute that follows death. And the one after that. And the one after that.
To see that life goes on was, in its own way, very shocking.
In coming days, as loving friends and relatives offered me sympathy and support, their tight hugs, furrowed brows and knowing looks communicated an insistent message: Jill must be a wreck. Yet, though Joe was never more than moments from my thoughts, I was actually functioning much as I normally do, albeit within a range of emotions more intense than usual.
Whenever a positive emotion broke through — comfort, affection, gratitude — I latched onto it. Around day four, a widowed colleague arrived radiating joy. “Wow, you look fantastic,” I said. Cocking her head shyly, she said, “I have a new boyfriend.” For a moment, I felt happiness and hope — two emotions I was surprised I could access, however briefly, so soon after losing Joe.
What I didn’t experience then, and still haven’t six years on, were any of the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) that my boomer generation was raised on. Those stages, I would eventually discover, were based on psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s observations of dying patients — not the loved ones left behind. Modern bereavement research paints a very different picture.
The 3 Ways We Grieve
Clinical psychologist George Bonanno, one of the country’s preeminent grief experts, divides the bereft into three groups: chronic grief (those who are overwhelmed by grief for 18 months or longer); acute grief (those who recover within 18 months); and resilience (those who return to normal functioning within six months).
This last group, the majority group, experience grief as a constant oscillation between sadness and lighter moments that enables them to experience pleasure even in the earliest days of loss. “Humans are wired to survive,” Bonanno explains in The Other Side of Sadness. “We adapt, we change gears, we smile and laugh and do what we need to do.”
So, what do resilient people do?
Mourners’ coping mechanisms are as personal as grief itself.
When Helen Kilbane, 47, turned the calendar page on her late husband’s birthday, she took herself off to a pub, her husband’s ashes in tow in an oak box. As she carried a pint of beer from the bar to her table, she says, “I smiled as I remembered times when I bought him a pint and then walked toward him at a snail’s pace as I tried not to leave most of it on the floor.”
After Sharon Kenney, 66, lost her husband, she says, “It became urgent that I get outside every day, put my feet on soil, and just notice that there’s still a world outside my grieving mind.” After ramping up her walks, bike rides and road trips, she says, “It occurred to me that maybe this is what it means to be ‘grounded.’”
For me, hauling boxes of Joe’s clutter from the attic proved therapeutic. (I know, it's not for everyone.) A life-long packrat, Joe had told me shortly before he died what he wanted me to save for our daughter. “Everything else, throw it out,” he said. So, I did. As the mounds of boxes shrank, I found that the weight of his absence had lightened a bit.
I also wrote thank-you notes. Lots of them. I wanted people to know that I valued their support. Each time I uncorked my gratitude and let it flow, it helped me recognize and appreciate the reasons I had to go on without Joe. By the time I discovered Spider Solitaire on my computer a few weeks on, I had begun to think of myself as “OK.”
Yet I was having trouble accepting my OKness.
That may sound odd, but the tide of sympathy that engulfs the newly bereaved is almost uniformly colored by an assumption that a grief-stricken person is, for a time, lost completely to sorrow. With their worried frowns and concerned How-are-you’s, well-wishers communicate the assumption that you are not all right. Each time someone told me I was “amazing” for bearing up so well, I wondered if my grief was abnormal.
I’m OK, You’re OK
About two weeks into mourning, I had an appointment with Joe’s and my attorney, Grace, to begin the process of settling Joe’s estate. A year earlier, Grace had shared the painful news that her young adult daughter, after a long illness, had died. Because I knew that Grace had experience with grief, I responded to her calm “How are you doing?” with candor. “Better than I would have expected,” I said. “I’m still waiting for the moment when I fall apart.”
A look of surprise flickered across Grace’s face. “You won’t,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “You’re strong, like I am. You’ll cope just fine. That doesn’t mean you won’t go on missing Joe. I miss my daughter every day. But I also have a lot going on in my life. You do, too.”
She then talked about my daughter, my magazine job, my friends. She spoke about my strength, my competence, my ability to cope. She applauded my decision to return to work the following week; she, too, had returned to work soon after her daughter’s death.
I hung on Grace’s every word. Here was someone offering an alternative to paralyzing sorrow. In her scenario, I would be, as she was, profoundly sad, but I would keep going because I had a life worth living. I took from our conversation something I hadn’t realized I needed: “permission” to be OK.
Four months later, when I discovered that bereavement researchers have a term for my OKness — resilience — I stopped worrying whether it was OK to be OK. Grappling with grief is hard enough.
I was relieved to be done with the additional burden of feeling guilty that I was coping as well as I was. I also realized there must be countless other people who feel ill-served by the one-size-fits-all cultural script that insists, “Now you fall apart.” Perhaps if we let go of that misplaced assumption and give the bereaved room to experience their grief without the weight of societal expectation, more people will find they really are OK.


A Different Script for Grief

Jill Smolowe

Grief is not teachable. This I learned in 1999, after my first husband Chuck died suddenly, a month before his 50th birthday. Grief isn't teachable, even for someone like me, a seasoned psychologist with multiple degrees. Chuck's unexpected death thrust me into an abyss with no way out, and neither my professional knowledge nor my previous experiences with death of loved ones helped.
I dipped into my cognitive toolkit and decided to create a mantra to help me cope. It ended up saving my soulWhen I scoured the literature for lessons on how to cope with grief, nothing fit. Everyday errands were torturous, as I worried constantly about encountering people I didn't want to see and fielding questions I didn't want to hear. Tears bubbled incessantly behind my eyes, ever ready to erupt, which often happened. Every fiber of my body felt raw, especially after the initial numbness subsided. Helplessness and longing for Chuck engulfed me. Once self-possessed, I had now become an emotional wreck.
Soon enough, I dipped into my cognitive toolkit and decided to create a mantra to help me cope. It ended up saving my soul.
Everyday errands were torturous, as I worried constantly about encountering people I didn't want to see and fielding questions I didn't want to hear. 
The word "mantra" comes from Hindu and Buddhist meditation practices. A Sanskrit term that roughly translates into "tool to think," it is a mnemonic device to aid one's concentration. Similar in use to the repetitive sacred sound "Om," short-sentence mantras in any language can be used to calm tangled minds.
Choosing My Mantra 
My mantra "Grief sucks; life goes on" was used whenever a tidal wave of grief shattered my fragile composure. I tried hard to find alternatives to "suck," but there weren't any. Grief truly sucks. That simple message acknowledged my grim circumstances and reminded me to endure the wave until it passed, as it always did.
One day, my mantra reached the social stratosphere during a grocery store encounter with an unwelcome acquaintance who saw me before I could escape.
"Carol!" she said brightly, trapping me with her cart. "How good to see you! It's been ages!"
I knew I needed to respond, but deep stabs of fatigue and irritation had dulled my brain. Sensing distress, her face registered concern and her voice assumed a honey-sweet timbre. With worried eyes, she placed her hand softly on my arm, leaned in, and gently whispered, "So. How are you doing?"        
Although I was now praying fervently for the floor to suddenly give way, I carefully shifted my mind into neutral and simply repeated my mantra: "Well, you know how it is. Grief sucks. Life goes on."
Confusion overtook her worry. "I guess so," she murmured, while glancing at her watch. "Yikes! Look at the time! I've got to run. Great to see you!" And she hurried off.
I realized then that I had stumbled upon the perfect response for people who didn't deserve access to my misery. Energized by the astonished relief that I suddenly felt, I sped through my errands, raced home, and mentally enshrined the mantra.
Learning How to Manage My Grief
Soon after, a trusted colleague whom I hadn't seen recently asked how I was doing. I smilingly replied, "Well, let's put it this way. My mantra is "Grief sucks. Life goes on."
Without missing a beat, he responded, "Or, it could be "Life sucks. Grief goes on."
"Hmmm, I guess so," considering the phrase, "but that's awfully negative."
Year Two's version became "Grief still sucks, and life still goes on." 
"I suppose," he agreed, "but at least you have another mantra to use when the world is at its worst!"
We laughed together.
His quick wit became another tool for grief. If I woke up to a "grief sucks" day, then I would get out of bed and get on with life, because it must continue. But if it was a "life sucks" day, then I'd cancel my calendar, stay in bed, and let the grief breathe for a bit. But I wouldn't do that too often.
During the first year, my mantra was employed several times each day, both inwardly and socially. Year Two's version became "Grief still sucks, and life still goes on." No longer needed for those horrid but now bearable grief tsunamis, my magic mantra reliably brought a quick end to every unwanted "How are you?" encounter.
Sometime during Year Three, I noticed that my response to the "How are you?" question was gradually becoming, "Fine. And you?" just as it had once been. Evidently, rays of light had begun to seep through cracks in my chasm of despair.
Although grief continued to suck for a couple more years, I started to relish my seismic journey back to life. Eventually, Chuck's soul claimed residence in my heart without posing a threat to anyone, including my second husband. Even more, I learned that love is infinite and expandable, and that life indeed does go on.
Grief is not teachable. But it sure taught me.


The Remarkable Lesson of Grief

Carol Ellstein

In the middle of the afternoon, Dan Callahan flopped on the couch for a nap. Roused briefly by his daughter, he rolled over to resume his snooze.
“He said, 'Hey babe, I love you and goodbye,'” Britt Louie recalls of a grief dream featuring her deceased husband, FredThat's when his wife Brenda walked in. The same Brenda who had died suddenly two months earlier at age 59.
"It wasn't a dream; I know what a dream is. This was a...visitation. She was there," insisted Callahan.
"She was dressed for work, wearing her blue skirt. She sat down beside me and I felt her weight. The Dan of the dream knew she was dead. I said, 'How is this possible?' She gave me little peck kisses and said, 'Don't worry about it. It's okay. I'm okay, you're okay. Let it be. Just go with it.'"
At the time of the dream, Callahan, who lives in the Twin Cities, described himself as "disoriented" by the loss of his wife of 38 years.
The Callahans met the summer after high school when they worked at Valleyfair, a local amusement park, and had been together ever since. With their four children raised, the couple had begun to contemplate their post-work options. But on a January morning, Brenda felt out of breath on her way to work. She drove herself to a hospital where she suffered a massive heart attack and could not be revived.
"It's been traumatic to lose the person you were so happy with for so long," Callahan said. "She died before I got the chance to say goodbye. Seeing her filled me with joy and calmness."
Unique Characteristics of Grief Dreams
What Callahan experienced, termed a "grief dream" by psychologists and social scientists who study them, is a fairly common occurrence. In the midst of the current global pandemic, dreams of those who have died may become more common as thousands of people come to terms with the loss of a loved one.
And while most such dreams bring comfort, not all of the dreams of the dead console the dreamer.
Dan Callahan and his wife, Brenda"Grief dreams have unique characteristics. They're vivid; they don't fade by the time you wake up. Forty years later, people can still describe them in detail," said Joshua Black, of Ontario, Canada, whose research prompted him to create the GriefDreams website and a weekly podcast, with 155 episodes (and counting) that include interviews with people who dreamed of dead parents, spouses, siblings, children, grandparents, even dreamers who suffered prenatal and pet loss.
"I see these dreams as playing an important role in how we survive as humans," he said. "They help at the time of greatest stress."
Grief Dreams of His Father
While earning his master's and doctorate in psychology at Brock University in Ontario, Black contributed significantly to the limited research on grief dreams. He conducted a half-dozen studies on the phenomenon, then co-authored articles published in academic journals. One of his studies concluded that grief dreams are quite common, especially among bereaved husbands and wives.
"If the deceased had been sick in life, they look healthy in the dream. Often the spouse returns with advice or to help with parenting."
"Our survey on spousal loss surprised us. Within two years, eighty-six percent had a dream of their deceased spouse or romantic partner and ninety-two percent considered them positive," he said. "If the deceased had been sick in life, they look healthy in the dream. Often, the spouse returns with advice or to help with parenting. There are sexual encounters. Some spouses appear in dreams to give their approval to a new relationship."
Black's research was inspired by his own grief dream, which he called life-changing.
"After my father died, I went though a rough phase. It was like the color went out of my life. I was going through the motions," he said. "Then I had a dream that my father was in my room. He'd had a lot of issues in life but he never looked better. There was a lightness to him. I told him, 'I miss you, I love you.' I hugged him. When I woke up, the darkness I had carried was gone. That dream gave me what I had been longing for."
The Pandemic Pierces the Dream World
The current pandemic-induced bottleneck at hospitals interfered with Britt Louie's ability to be with her dying husband Fred. Diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer, Fred had brain surgery on March 31 and survived for a week following the operation. Because of visitor restrictions at the hospital in Glens Falls, N.Y., Britt saw him only once.
"He told me, even if I die, I won't leave you," she recalled.
Six weeks after her husband's death, during a week she described as "really rough," Louie had three dreams about him in three subsequent nights.
"In the first, Fred didn't say anything, but I told him how much I miss him. He wrapped me in his arms, put his head on my shoulder and we cried together," she said. "In the second, he was sitting in my car and gestured me over, then he kissed me so tenderly. The third night, my phone rang and it was him. He said, 'Hey babe. I love you and goodbye.' He hung up and in the dream I knew he was dead."
Louie is still trying to make sense of her experience.
"The day after the first dream, I was wrecked. It was so real, but when I rolled over he wasn't there and that hurt," she said. "But now I cherish those dreams. I think about them every day."
Author TJ Wray predicts the COVID-19 era will produce many dreams that are far less comforting than Louie's.
"It's too soon in the pandemic to have the data, but I'm assuming that those who lose someone to COVID-19 may experience trauma dreams caused by the scenario of that loved one dying alone and frightened. It's all in place right now," said Wray, the author of Grief Dreams: How They Help Us Heal After the Death of a Loved One.
Wray didn't set out to study dreams. The death of her 43-year-old brother prompted her to write Surviving the Death of a Sibling, a book aimed at others suffering the same wrenching loss. When many of the bereaved brothers and sisters she interviewed mentioned grief dreams, she got curious and that became the basis of her next book.
Joshua BlackWray learned that a small percentage of grief dreams are what she identifies as trauma dreams.
"Trauma dreams are the most challenging, the ones when someone wakes up in a cold sweat, screaming. They happen when a loved one died in a shocking or gruesome way; they were murdered or died in a horrible accident, or if the person witnessed the death or found the body," she said.
Wray manages a Facebook group for grieving adult siblings and said that she is hearing from siblings who suffered traumatic loss and are now "retriggered" by the pandemic.
"There's a resurgence of trauma dreams from previous grief experiences they thought they'd dealt with. We see siblings who are ten years out now re-traumatized by this scenario of mass death," she said. "They haven't lost anyone to the virus. Just watching their newsfeed and seeing images of people on ventilators can do it."
Black anticipates the dreams of the pandemic will ultimately be a rich source of research for academics and analysts. He has already begun to collect stories.
"Maybe a portal opens when you sleep and there's communication we don't understand."
"I'm hearing from people who have worked through their initial grief. They are experiencing their loved one coming back to try to reduce their fears and help them regulate their emotions," he said. "People wake up after these dreams and say they feel less anxiety."
Pop Culture and Dreams
Grief dreams show up in pop culture. Paul McCartney credited a reassuring dream of his "mum," who died when he was 14, as his inspiration for "Let it Be." Grief dreams have become plot points in scores of television shows and movies, from Game of Thrones to Braveheart.
In the last scene of Titanic, the aging Rose sees her young lover in a dream, their reunion echoed in the opening lyrics of  the movie's power ballad theme, "My Heart Will Go On." ("Every night in my dreams/I see you, I feel you.")
Dreams have even shaped history according to Wray, whose day job is as a professor of theology and religious studies at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I.
"In the world of Biblical antiquity, dreams were considered truthful representations of what God wants. There are many major events in history that happened because someone had a dream," she said. "With grief dreams today, some people believe their loved one is in a spiritual form and is able to cross over or communicate with them in a unique way from heaven. If that is their perception, I affirm it. No one knows if that is true."
'Maybe Love Can Bridge the Divide'
Callahan, who describes himself as "the most skeptical man you'll ever meet," finds his grief dream inconsistent with his beliefs.
"I'm an atheist. I don't believe that we go to a better place. For me, this is your only shot and when you die, you're alive only in the memories of others," he said. "Maybe love can bridge the divide. Maybe a portal opens when you sleep and there's communication we don't understand."
His dream of his wife has stayed with him.
"I am desperate for Brenda to come back. I lie on the couch at the same time to try to get it to happen again," he said. "Even if it doesn't, though, I had this. Maybe I don't have to understand it to be reassured by it. I have to remember her words and just go with it."


What Are Grief Dreams?

Kevyn Burger

In David Kessler's book, "Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief," he writes: We want to find meaning. Loss can wound and paralyze. It can hang over us for years. But finding meaning in loss empowers us to find a path forward.
"Grief is not about pain. It's about love."For Kessler, a noted grief expert,  finding a path forward became an unexpected and integral part of his life.  While writing the book,  Kessler's son David, who had overcome a drug habit only to start using again, died in 2016 at the age of 21.
"We can't change the pain, but we can build a meaningful life around that pain."
The founder of Grief.com, Kessler, 63, spent several years working with the late psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (author of the groundbreaking "On Death and Dying") and co-authored two books with her.
Additionally, Kessler, who lives in Los Angeles, has counseled countless individuals, led workshops and delivered presentations throughout his long career. He is a trained thanatologist (someone who studies death and dying) and has been onsite at crime scenes, plane crashes and other traumatic events to help grieving loved ones. Kessler also lost his mother at age 13, and because he was under 14, was prevented from being in her hospital room with her at the end of her life.
Next Avenue talked with Kessler about facing loss and finding meaning in, as he says, "a grief-illiterate society."
Next Avenue: People in grief often ask you where they are supposed to find meaning in a loss. Where are some of those places?
David Kessler: I think that meaning is everywhere, just waiting to be found. We can find meaning in how [our loved ones'] lives touched ours. There is meaning in how we're changed by their lives, and how we changed theirs.
In your work as a grief counselor, you tell people their grief won't get 'smaller' over time, but they must get 'bigger.' How does that happen?
When people ask me 'How long will I grieve?' I respond by asking them, 'How long will your loved one be dead?' We can't change the pain, but we can build a meaningful life around that pain.
Think of the memories you have of your parents or your grandparents, that live with you and that you can share with your children and with your grandchildren. That is the growth that can come from pain.
David KesslerIn our culture, we talk so much about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but we should talk about Post Traumatic Stress Growth. It's after loss that growth is possible.
In today's world, you say grief has been 'minimized and sanitized.' Why is it such a struggle to bear witness to someone's pain? How can we be present when people we know are grieving?
Our generation is probably one of the last generations that remembers when death was part of life. I remember as a boy riding in the car, and seeing a hearse driving down the street ahead of us. Our grandparents may have died at home, now death generally happens in a hospital.
We are a grief-illiterate society. We are also a society that wants to 'fix' everything. When someone is grieving, they aren't broken. They don't need to be fixed. They need someone to sit with them in their pain and to witness their grief. In some ways, I'm teaching the lessons of our great-grandparents, who did those things when someone died.
Some people skip funerals because they are afraid of facing pain or remembering their own losses. If you are a person whose friend didn't attend the funeral of your loved one, how do you move forward in that relationship?
First of all, I really encourage people to attend funerals. It's important. However, if you have a friend who didn't attend a funeral for someone you loved, know that it wasn't about you. It wasn't a statement about your friendship. It was a statement about their own pain. They didn't do it to you — they just did it.
If you've had a friendship for twenty years, forgive them because of that twenty years.
You talk about the difference between private and public grief. Can you explain this?
Our grief is as unique as our fingerprint. We all have different backgrounds of love, and we all approach grief in our own ways.
In our generation, we were taught to be stoic. Think of the example of Jacqueline Kennedy, who didn't cry publicly after JFK's assassination. People said, 'That's what strong grief looks like.' But she was later quoted as saying, 'That was the First Lady grieving.' Of course she cried in private.
We all act differently in public. Some people cry with friends, but some only cry alone.
Quoting Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, you say that people can be left with 'unfinished business' when someone from whom they have been estranged dies. How can they make peace with that?
We have to accept who they were, and the role they played in this lifetime. I always say it takes two people to tango — it wasn't all you, and it wasn't all them.
I believe that if you ask forgiveness sincerely in your heart, the person who is gone will feel it sincerely in theirs. A lot of people report that they have better relationships with people in death than they did in life.
While you do touch on the death of your son David at various points in the book, it isn't until the end, in a chapter called 'Everything Has Changed Forever,' where you tell the story of his death and the days following. Why did you decide to talk about your personal experience of grief at the end of the book rather than at the beginning? 
This isn't a memoir, or a book about my grief. My grief is just one example; the book has many stories from other people about their grief.
A month after David died, a forty-three-year-old friend of mine died of the flu. Another friend lost their beloved dog not long after that. When I offered consolation, people said, 'Your grief is worse than mine,' but that's not true. All tears count. The worst grief is always yours.
How are you finding meaning? 
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross never intended for the five stages of grief to be linear. They don't prescribe how you are supposed to grieve, they describe how you are supposed to grieve. As I write in the book, my work isn't about my son's death, but his death has deepened my work. And finding meaning is not extraordinary, it's ordinary. Grief is not about pain. It's about love.


Understanding the Challenges of Grief

Julie Pfitzinger

“Thank you for the intervention. Friends and family came to be with me. I agreed to be admitted to hospital. Am waiting for a bed. I had a horrible breakdown. I am sorry for worrying you.”
This was my message posted on Facebook to friends on October 19, 2014. It was over a year since my husband, Bob, passed away. Every day since he died on June 8, 2013 was like walking through thick, muddy water with a constant fog clouding my head.
I was a willing participant in the loss and grief cycle from day one. I had no interest in the future. The past was painful, the present bleak. Every day I woke up crying, for days, weeks, months, and soon a year passed. Depression is part of the initial journey. Many people feel like they can’t survive without their loved one. The agony is enormous, but the pain starts to diminish with time.
It is natural to experience intense grief after someone close dies, but complicated grief is different.
My story was different. The depression was pervasive and continued, even escalated. I journaled the experience, intermittently, in a blog. Posting my thoughts gave me temporary relief. Then I’d go down the rabbit hole again. What I didn’t realize was that I was experiencing something more than a normal grief journey. Though not diagnosed, researching my symptoms led me to what’s known as Complicated Grief.
The Intensity of Complicated Grief
According to The Center for Complicated Grief (CG) “[it] is a form of grief that takes hold of a person’s mind and won’t let go. It is natural to experience intense grief after someone close dies, but complicated grief is different. Troubling thoughts, dysfunctional behaviors or problems regulating emotions get a foothold and stall adaptation. Complicated grief is the condition that occurs when this happens.
“People with complicated grief don't know what’s wrong. They assume that their lives have been irreparably damaged by their loss and cannot imagine how they can ever feel better. Grief dominates their thoughts and feelings with no respite in sight.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, CG can be determined “when the intensity of grief has not decreased in the months after your loved one’s death. Some mental health professionals diagnose CG when the grieving continues to be intense, persistent and debilitating beyond 12 months ... Getting the correct diagnosis is essential for appropriate treatment, so a comprehensive medical and psychological exam is often done.”
The Diagnosis That Probably Saved My Life
I had seen several therapists. They tried to help, under the assumption that I was grieving as any woman would after the death of her husband. What I didn’t tell them was that my sadness had escalated to suicide ideation.
On the evening of Saturday October 18, 2014, I posted on Facebook: “Please take care of my cats.” My cry for help wasn’t a mystery to friends who were following my downward spiral. Phone calls went out from people in several cities to friends who lived near me who came to my house, then later family. Despite my uncharacteristic reaction screaming at everyone who entered the door and yelling at them to leave, I eventually calmed down and agreed to be taken to the hospital.
I was put in a room with no windows and a security guard. Some family members came in. The doctor followed and told me the medication I’d been taking for many years to control my clinical depression wasn’t working. When that happens, ironically, it can make you more depressed.
That diagnosis rocked me to the core and probably saved my life. Every day had been torture. And now I had someone who was telling me they could help me and life could actually get better.
I agreed to be admitted to hospital and new medication was prescribed by a hospital psychiatrist. I stayed there just over a week, eventually getting day passes, then a weekend pass. After my release, I was closely monitored to ensure my medication was doing what it should have done. I started seeking other ways to help me out of the dark pit and took part in several Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) programs, or what I refer to as retraining the brain to focus on the positive.
Live in the Moment
Today, I lead what those newly grieving are told is “the new normal life” because, when our loved ones die, life as we knew it is inevitably changed forever and will never go back to what we thought was our normal life. As Buddhist monk and peace activist, Nhat Hanh, said, “It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.”
The new life can be good if we come to terms with our losses; remember them with loving kindness; embrace our family, friends, and new people who come into our lives and accept that nothing is ever permanent in life. The biggest lesson I learned is to truly live in the moment and enjoy each precious day as a gift.
If you, or someone you know, has been suffering with extreme grief symptoms for over a year it might be time to seek help.
Coping with Grief and Loss
While grieving a loss is an inevitable part of life, there are ways to help cope with the pain, come to terms with your grief and eventually, find a way to pick up the pieces and move on with your life. Here are some suggestions from Help Guide: 
1. Acknowledge your pain.
2. Accept that grief can trigger many different and unexpected emotions.
3. Understand that your grieving process will be unique to you.
4. Seek out face-to-face support from people who care about you.
5. Support yourself emotionally by taking care of yourself physically.


Coping With Complicated Grief

Suzanne Boles

When my father died, I managed my grief through writing. Sharing stories about visits to my hometown, recounting how his favorite chair keeps me connected to him, and describing our frequent lunches, have helped me process his passing. 
While words are my path to healing, others find comfort and hope in therapy, support groups and conversations with friends. But it turns out there are myriad ways to process grief that fall outside traditional methods. 
"The key is to figure out what kind of activities make you feel okay in any given moment." 
"You spend all this energy trying to color in the lines of your life while grieving, and that's because that's how society wants us to act," says Rebecca Soffer, co-founder of the Modern Loss community and author of "The Modern Loss Handbook." "The key is to figure out what kind of activities, both passive and active, make you feel okay in any given moment." 
Whether you're searching for a way to supplement therapy sessions or are eager to work through your sorrow in a different setting, consider stepping out of your comfort zone with these creative and unusual strategies to manage grief. 
Grief Yoga Uses Movement and Breath 
Paul Denniston, author of "Healing Through Yoga," combined aspects of various types of yoga: Hatha, Vinyasa, Kundalini, Restorative, Laughter Yoga, and Chakradance, to create Grief Yoga. He says Grief Yoga isn't about physical flexibility but more about empowering the person to tap into their strength and courage by using movement, breath, and sound.
"It's a sacred ritual that embraces the different colors of life, loss, love, anger, purpose or happiness," he says.
The online sessions range from 30 to 60 minutes, with options to practice while seated, standing, or on a yoga mat. Through his work with clients, Denniston discovered that people repress sadness, anger, and even joy. Traditional yoga classes include holding poses, but the focus of Grief Yoga is to learn how to breathe and move with your body to release pain and tap into unresolved feelings beneath the surface. 
The movement, "Breaking the Chains," where you stack your forearms in front of your chest, push both elbows back and let out a firm "Ha!" sound, addresses the feeling of being constrained by grief.
With the "Woodchopper," you stand with your feet hip-width apart, and knees slightly bent. After interlacing your fingers, raise your arms over your head and bring them down in a chopping motion while yelling "Ha!" This movement creates the space to let go of anger and rage.
The Benefits of a Grief Yoga Practice 
A year ago, Catherine Boorady, who lost her husband in 2019, began half-hour online sessions in her upstate New York home. 
"I was still so emotional and exhausted from the grief that I could not focus for more than thirty minutes," she said. After practicing daily, she developed enough stamina for one-hour classes. 
The Grief Yoga sessions have helped her get through the day, and when she practices in the evening, it improves her sleep.
"It has helped move whatever emotion was trying to surface," she says. 
Joy Myers, a psychotherapist in the Denver area, practices Grief Yoga by herself and with her clients during therapy. She started the online sessions six months after the death of her 26-year-old son three years ago.
"In my own grief, it gave me a language for my pain when words were not enough," she says. "Grief Yoga took me beyond the burden of thought and got me to where my grief was in my body and helped move that through."
She finds the practice beneficial during what she refers to as "dip-in moments" — times when, for whatever reason, the deep pain emerges. 
Splatter Paint Sessions Can Be Cathartic 
Finding the words to convey grief and sorrow is easy for some, while others struggle to discover ways to express their feelings. Creating art can fill that gap.
"It bypasses language so we can more readily access feelings and memories that might be shut down and cut off from grief," says Helen Marlo, clinical psychologist, professor, and chair of the Department of Clinical Psychology at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California.
While drawing, manipulating a small mound of clay or creating a collage can direct your grief into meaningful works of art, thinking outside the art box can be freeing and cathartic. Enter splatter paint. 
With splatter paint sessions, room sizes can range from a small room for two people to a large room for 15, depending on the business. When guests arrive, they receive coveralls — a paper-like material with a hood — along with goggles and shoe coverings. Rooms are set up with a canvas on each easel and paints and brushes on the shelves. During a 30-minute session, participants dip the brushes in paint and fling the colors on the canvas. 
"It's a creative outlet for people to release their excess feelings, whether grief or anger." 
"People say, 'It's therapeutic for me to be able to throw paint around, and I don't have to worry about the mess,'" says Steffany Faldmo, co-owner of Splatter Lab in Rexburg, Idaho. "It's a creative outlet for people to release their excess feelings, whether grief or anger." 
The best part about splatter art painting is that you don't need artistic talent to see the benefits.
"Splatter art is amazing because that's what grief is — it touches everything," says Soffer. "It's a total mess, so go in the room and make a mess, have a cathartic moment." As you make plans to channel your inner Jackson Pollock paint session, consider asking family members or friends who are also grieving to join you. 
Finding Support for Grief at Sea 
Mary Feith, from Maple Grove, Minnesota, lost her 13-year-old son 34 years ago and her 35-year-old daughter 11 years ago. When she told her friends she had registered for a cruise, they couldn't understand how she could vacation and grieve simultaneously. But that's the goal of The Grief Cruises, a week-long trip for those who have lost someone close to them. 
Created by Linda Findlay, the seven-day grief seminar at sea includes presentations, arts and crafts, meditation sessions, and a "Night of Remembrance" on the top deck. The week offers a way for people who understand loss to come together.
"People think we'll cry all week," says Findlay. "Instead, it's a time to honor a loved one and feel that connection to them." Attendees range from parents who have recently lost a child to those mourning a spouse 20 years after their death.
When Kellie Sanchez, from Roseville, California, scheduled her first cruise, she initially felt guilty about enjoying the voyage. Her spouse was 49 when he passed away. Although everyone believed she needed to move on, she wasn't ready. Instead, she was determined to learn how to cope.
"When I was on the cruise, I felt like my husband was on vacation with me," said Sanchez. "It was me remembering him." She plans to attend her fourth Grief Cruise in 2023.
Findley recognizes that when people experience the loss of a loved one, they feel they're dishonoring that person if they go on vacation. 
"The outcome of the cruise is for people to have that message of hope and recognize that joy and grief do co-exist," she says. 
Grief has no time limit. Almost two years after my dad's death, I still write about him. Now I focus less on my loss and more on his legacy. 
While grief can be exhausting, with the power to leave you feeling helpless, there's hope. Whether you are experiencing a recent loss or are still mourning a family member or friend who passed away decades ago, try creative ways to manage your grief. Then you can begin to find the solace you need and deserve.


A Grief Cruise, Splatter Paint and Grief Yoga: Unusual Ways to Handle Loss

Lisa Kanarek

A profound sadness has settled over our planet. Whether it's the loss of visits with loved ones, the loss of steady work and income, the loss of our usual routines or the full-stop loss of a person in our life whose own life has been extinguished by COVID-19, grief is now a part of our daily landscape.
So, let’s not deny it. And, please, let’s try to avoid constructing mental lists of who-has-it-worst, then arguing with ourselves about whether it’s appropriate for us to be upset about whatever is rocking our own universe.
Example: A neighbor of mine is quarantined at home with her two children, mourning the recent death of her husband from coronavirus. Given this family’s pain and isolation — neither friends nor family can drop by to offer comfort and support — am I entitled to the sadness I feel because I can’t see and hug my adult daughter? Answer: Yes, I am.
Instead, let’s acknowledge that, at a minimum, coronavirus is infecting all of our lives with anticipatory grief.
For some, it’s a sense of impending loss as we gird for the very real prospect that someone we know and care about may be felled by COVID-19: a family member, a colleague, a friend, a neighbor, a caregiver.
As the list of items stoking our fears and grief grow by the day, it helps to remember that while loss is universal, grief is personal.
For others, it’s anticipation, or the bald reality, of financial turmoil: loss of a job; loss of income; loss of a stock portfolio intended to see our grandchildren through college or ourselves through retirement.
No less real, anticipatory grief now darkens even what were once the simplest transactions in our lives. When we go out to shop for food, what might we bring home that wasn’t on our list (COVID-19) or what might we fail to procure (toilet paper)?


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When we phone a child for a weekly chat, what unanticipated news bulletin might explode in our ears? When we extract an envelope from the mailbox, what might it be carrying along with a greeting or a bill?
Grief Is Personal
As the list of items stoking our fears and grief grow by the day, it helps to remember that while loss is universal, grief is personal.
This means that we should honor whatever best enables us to process and handle the myriad disruptions and blows upending our lives, but should neither expect nor assume that our own coping strategies are appropriate for our partners, our children or any of the other people in our orbit.
At a stressful time like this, we need to steer wide of judgment (of ourselves and of others) and widen the space for compassion (for ourselves and for others).
We need to agree that there is no hierarchy to the sadness each and every one of us feels. We need to recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all rule or remedy for handling all these feelings.
Then, we need to get practical and find ways to deal with our own grief.
Coping Strategies in the Face of Grief
Toward that end, here are some coping strategies that draw on my work as a grief coach; my personal experience with pre-COVID-19 family losses and my three-year meditation practice. Take what works for you. Toss the rest.
Just, please, don’t deny, dismiss or denigrate the grief you’re feeling. It’s real. You’re entitled to it.
Try techniques to quiet dark thoughts. When you find your thoughts spiraling into a black hole of what-ifs, try replacing them with a one-word mantra or phrase. Shifting your focus from a sprawling mental narrative to a simple word or phrase can help pull you back into the present moment.
One particularly timely phrase: “Don’t go there ’til you get there.” Quiet repetition of these words reminds both that you are in the here and now and that there’s no gain in trying to predict events hours, days or months from now.
Another approach favored by meditators is to focus on the in and out of the breath. Alternately, you can experiment with your five senses to see which best helps you achieve focus. Maybe it’s the warmth of clasped hands. (Touch) Aromas emanating from your kitchen. (Smell) The sound of birds or windchimes. (Hearing) A single flower petal. (Sight) The sensation of an ice cube dissolving in your mouth. (Taste)
Feel your emotions. When we are rocked by a wave of grief, we typically respond with thoughts that strain to parse, argue with or deny what we’re feeling. An alternate approach is to let go of those thoughts and instead focus on the physical sensations.
To do this, sit or lie comfortably. Next, train your attention on where the emotion is showing up in your body. Are you feeling a stiffening in your shoulders? A quickening of your heartbeat? An unease in your gut? A pounding in your temples?
Whatever the sensation, explore it with interest, not judgment. Say to yourself, "So, this is what grief feels like." By focusing on physical sensations, rather than thoughts, a strong wave of emotion often quiets and passes within minutes.
Practice self-compassion. Rather than argue with or dismiss your grief with harsh judgment and criticism, meet your pain with gentle understanding. Offer yourself words of comfort. Give yourself a hug. Treat yourself, as Kristin Neff suggests in Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, “with the same kindness, caring, and compassion [you] would show to a good friend, or even a stranger.”
Another important aspect of self-compassion, Neff notes, is to acknowledge that we are not alone in our pain. By remembering that grief is a part of the human experience, one that we all share, we allow our pain to connect us to our common humanity rather than isolate us.
Allow yourself to cry. For months after my husband died in 2009, I found that each day around dusk, I’d feel a gut-punch of sorrow and a tidal wave of tears pressing against my eyelids. Rather than try to ignore or blink them away, I’d grab a box of Kleenex, close myself alone in a room and let ’em rip. I’d sob. Keen. Pound the floor with my fists. After 15, 20 minutes, the tears would dry up and I’d feel my grief subsiding.
Sharing a wave and a smile while out walking, or accessing the myriad online efforts to comfort and reassure can help to soften your grief.
During the first week of the current lockdown in New Jersey, I went for a walk. As I took in the shining sun, the blue sky, the picture-perfect clouds, the budding trees, I suddenly felt a familiar gut-punch of sorrow. "Our planet is so sick," I thought.
With that acknowledgment, I began to weep. I didn’t care if the people across the street or the people 10 feet in front of me noticed. I just let my grief have its say. And you know what? After five, 10 minutes, I felt better.
Give it a try. Maybe you will, too.
Tap into gratitude. Within 14 months of losing my husband, I lost my sister and mother, too. During this protracted period of bereavement, I discovered that my feelings of extreme pain were attended by feelings of extreme gratitude. Appreciation for other people’s kindness. Appreciation for what remained good in my life.
These days, people are trying so hard to lift one another. Sharing a wave and a smile while out walking, or accessing the myriad online efforts to comfort and reassure can help to soften your grief.
This virtual orchestra project by a bunch of college kids opened the floodgates for me. It reminded that tears of gratitude can be as restorative as tears of sorrow.


Managing Anticipatory Grief in a Pandemic

(This article is excerpted from Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief by Claire Bidwell Smith.)
What is anxiety? Where does it come from, and how can you gain control over it? And why is it so frequently spurred by the loss of a loved one? These are often the first questions I address when meeting with a new client, because understanding anxiety is the first step in learning how to overcome it. But understanding how it is tied to the loss of a loved one is even more important.
I have been a grief counselor for more than a decade. I’ve worked in both hospice and private practice. I’ve held the handsof many people in their final moments of life, including my own father. And I’ve worked with countless people who have struggled to cope in the wake of grief after losing someone they love.
Yet while I’ve written and spoken and worked with death in so many capacities, it is this one issue that I have encountered more than any other: anxiety following a loss.
It is understandable that death makes us anxious. We experience anxiety after a loss because losing someone we love thrusts us into a vulnerable place. Loss changes our day-to-day lives. It forces us to confront our mortality. And facing these fundamental human truths about life’s unpredictability can cause fear and anxiety to surface in profound and unexpected ways.
The first thing to know is that anxiety is more common than you may even realize. Recent studies show that 18 percent of the population of the United States, roughly 40 million people, have suffered from anxiety in the past year. Not only that, but it also seems to be on the uptick. Anxiety is leading far ahead of depression as the most common health issue on college campuses. And even higher than the national average, data from the National Institute of Mental Health shows that 38 percent of teenage girls and 26 percent of teenage boys have an anxiety disorder.
The good news is that anxiety is also highly treatable.
The Basics of Anxiety
So what exactly is anxiety? At its core, anxiety is fear of something, real or imagined. Specifically, anxiety comes from fear-based thoughts about things that are not necessarily occurring in the present moment or that may never occur. Anxiety is intrinsically linked to our physiology. You may have a physical pain or sensation that then generates a fear-based thought or memory. Or you may have a fear-based thought that generates a physical sensation.
Anxiety is a feeling of dread or foreboding. Anxiety can be as simple as a general sense of uneasiness, a feeling that all is not right, or it can be as specific as worrying that you have cancer or that the plane you are flying in will crash. Anxiety comes from the Latin word anxius, which means a state of agitation and distress. This distress is often felt on a deep level, in both the mind and the body. It is the sense of danger but not always a specific one that you can identify.
Anxiety is also a practical and useful emotion. We actually need anxiety in certain situations. Anxiety helps us prepare for an exam or think about all the things we might need to pack for a trip. Anxiety helps us stay alert and present to our well-being.
But when anxiety goes beyond these practicalities and we begin to worry all the time, it can become problematic. Worry is the mind’s expression of anxiety. When we find ourselves worrying incessantly about things beyond our control, that is when we need to take steps to calm the mind.
After the death of a loved one, many of the fears that run through your mind can be perceived as more of a threat than before the loss. You have witnessed someone die, and now that inevitability is more real than ever before in your life. So when you have a fear-based thought about that person’s death, or about your own mortality, or a worry about losing someone else, your body and mind are reacting stronger than before you experienced loss.
The intense amount of emotions that come with grief can also heighten your sense of fear and danger. Most people have never felt such strong emotions as they do when they lose someone they love. It can be very frightening to find yourself overwhelmed with sadness or anger, and this can lead to even more anxiety, even years after the loss.
Anxiety can also perpetuate itself. I can’t tell you how many clients confess that what they are most anxious about is experiencing more anxiety. Once they have had one panic attack or one truly anxious spell, they often find themselves worrying that they will have another. They worry that they will be at an event, at work, or on a plane and that they will suddenly get hit with a bout of anxiety and be unable to cope with it. Thus, the fear-based thoughts become simply about having more of them. It’s a tricky cycle, one that can last far beyond the actual loss, but it is one that can be brought under control.
What Does Anxiety Look Like?
Anxiety comes in many shapes and sizes. While it can look different for different people, it also has a lot of common symptoms, many I’m sure you’ll recognize. Above all, the most complicated aspect of anxiety is that it can manifest in very real physical symptoms. These symptoms, ranging from heart palpitations to nausea, can deceive you into thinking there is something physically wrong with you, when really there is a deeper, underlying, psychological issue that must be addressed in order to alleviate the physical symptoms.
Symptoms of Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Irregular heartbeatDizziness and lightheadednessShortness of breathChoking sensations and nauseaShaking and sweatingFatigue and weaknessChest pain and heartburnMuscle spasmsHot flashes or sudden chillsTingling sensations in your extremitiesA fear that you’re going crazyA fear that you might die or be seriously illAt its most basic, anxiety is the sense of fear. These fears can be real or imagined. Your fears can be about something in the past, the present, or the future.
In grief we experience fear for many reasons. We can feel afraid of how the future has changed now that an important person in our lives is gone. We can feel afraid of more loss, worrying that we might lose more loved ones. We can worry about our health, concerned that we may get sick or die soon, too. Some people also have residual feelings of trauma as a result of witnessing or hearing details of the death itself.
While many people experience anxiety for a variety of reasons — divorce, moving, illness, a genetic predisposition — the kind of anxiety that is brought on as result of losing someone close to you is its own breed. While grief anxiety maintains many of the same characteristics as generalized anxiety, there is an underlying situational cause. So when we can allow ourselves to grieve and truly explore the impact of the loss, we are better able to ease and manage the anxiety that accompanies it.


Anxiety Is Another Stage of Grief

Claire Bidwell Smith

In the days immediately following my husband’s death, I heard this sentence not once, not twice, but three times: “It takes five years to get over grief.” In each instance, the message was delivered by a widowed man or woman, and, frankly, it didn’t sit well.
I’d just been through two-and-a-half years of caregiving. The thought that my life might be on hold for another five years weighed far too heavily.
 
Today, I hit that mark: five years without Joe. Did it take all this time to get over the grief of losing my cherished husband of 24 years? Am I over my grief?
It may sound like a contradiction, but the answer to both questions is no.
 
(MORE: 'Four Funerals and a Wedding' — One Woman's Story)
 
During my first year of widowhood, my main challenge was to figure out how to keep going with a huge hole at the center of my being. Joe’s absence was so raw and palpable that he remained a presence throughout my days. The first six months, no matter what I was doing, Joe was constantly there, reminding me that he was gone. I remember actually telling him silently (but quite firmly) that the bathroom was off limits; hey, a girl needs some privacy.
 
Even after I met Bob, a widower, seven months after Joe’s death and began to discover that it was possible to experience both giddy happiness and deep sorrow at the same time, Joe was still on my mind most of the time.
 
The Second Year Is Harder 
 
That changed in Year Two. No longer awaking to thoughts of Joe every morning and no longer falling asleep to thoughts of him every night, I also no longer felt him as a constant presence throughout my days. When he would visit my thoughts, he never stayed for very long, which is perhaps what many people mean by “getting over grief.”
(MORE: Reimagining My Life)
 
At the same time, however, I felt Joe’s three-dimensionality begin to flatten. My memories of him and us began to seem more like vacation photos than the actual experiences. As Joe grew a little less vivid with each passing day, I felt like I was losing him all over again — this time irretrievably. Heartsick, I wondered if this dimming was what widowed people meant when they said, “The second year is harder than the first.”
 
By then, I’d mastered the special occasion thing. A birthday? An anniversary? A holiday? For predictable dates like those, my instinct was to begin girding weeks in advance. By the time the actual day arrived, I was sometimes so defended that I forgot the occasion. What I couldn’t gird against were the moments that would catch me by surprise, suddenly summoning a memory that left me aching. 
 
And Then, Year Three…
 
In Year Three, memories of Joe and the pain of his absence resurged with sometimes biting vividness. The ache started after our daughter, Becky, received her first college acceptance letter late in the fall of 2011. Bob had accompanied us on most of our campus tours, nearly a dozen in all. Yet, as Becky and I jumped up and down, shrieking like two little kids, Joe was the man with whom I shared the moment. Can you believe this? I marveled silently. Our baby is going to college! 
 
Six months later, Bob was again the man at my side, Joe the one on my mind, as I sat at the high school crew team’s spring awards banquet. Becky had been an indifferent athlete through her elementary and middle school years, so Joe and I had been delighted, but surprised, when she announced her freshman year that she wanted to take up the grueling sport of rowing.
 
In coming years, Bob’s was the male voice that cheered Becky on as she racked up city, state and national medals. But on this night, it was Joe’s absence that left me blinking back tears as the coaches handed Becky her varsity letter. Can you believe this? Our daughter, the non-athlete. A varsity letter. Who would have thought?
(MORE: Lessons We Learn From Loss)
 
Grief Comes as a Wallop
 
Now, as I hit the five-year mark, those unanticipated moments keep coming, each time packing a similar emotional wallop.
Most recently, when Becky, a college sophomore, identified and secured a summer internship in the music industry, the swell of pride I felt was attended by a powerful punch to the gut. Her passion for music? She says that comes from Joe and me and our eclectic tastes. Her determination and tenacity? That definitely comes from us, too, Type A personalities, both. But the internship? She did this, all by herself. Where are you, Joe? You should be seeing this! 
 
Looking to the future, I expect the milestones in Becky’s life — some that I can anticipate, some that I cannot — will continue to hurt. They remind me that Joe is not on hand to witness our daughter’s evolution into a stunning woman. They remind me that Becky doesn’t have her adoring dad present to express his pride and joy in her every achievement. They remind me that our “Becky sandwich” is one irreplaceable slice short.
 
Although I’m now happily married to another man, I am also still Joe’s bereaved widow. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. The best — and the worst — days are those when my memories feel alive and more vivid than a flat image in a frame.
Get over my grief? Why would I want to? Each time I feel the sting of acute longing, it is reassurance that Joe, and Joe and I as a couple, are for me still very much alive.  


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