— For those entering 2024 without a loved one, one bereaved writer offers her wisdom
By Lotte Bowser
A few days into January 2021, I lay on the bathroom floor in the foetal position, sobbing.
For non-grieving folk, the start of a new year can prompt a dogged determination. Perhaps they set goals and resolutions, run a marathon, quit smoking – that sort of thing. But for me, the striking of the clock hand at midnight on New Year’s Eve triggered a horrifying realisation. My fiancé, Ben, was dead. And, no matter how much I kicked, screamed and dug my heels in in protest, time would keep moving forwards without him.
Six weeks earlier, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, my beautiful Ben took his final breath with the aid of a mechanical ventilator in an intensive care unit. He died from complications attributed to the virus, compounded by stage four soft tissue cancer. He was 36-years-old.<
‘There were many mornings in the early aftermath of his death when I woke up and wished I hadn’t’
There were many mornings in the early aftermath of his death when I woke up and wished I hadn’t. His absence catalysed an existential crisis, leaving no corner of my life untouched. Everything changed, from the way I went to sleep at night in an empty bed, to how I made my coffee in the morning for one instead of two.
And yet, despite the monumental sense of loss, there was a hastiness in the way others met me in my grief. They insisted that I meditated, that I stayed positive, that Ben wouldn’t have wanted me to be sad.
My GP regurgitated something about the six stages of grief, before handing me a prescription for antidepressants. The celebrant at Ben’s funeral in mid-December invited us to say our goodbyes.
‘My GP regurgitated something about the six stages of grief’
I quickly learned that bereavement support falls woefully short of what’s needed. We tend to pathologise grief. We condense the grieving process into clear-cut stages with a beginning and an end. We impose arbitrary timelines.
We hold another’s grief at arm’s length, or better yet, turn the other way. I suspect it’s because grief is a reminder of everything we stand to lose. Why would we contemplate our mortality when it causes so much fear and pain?
‘I knew that thinking happy thoughts or waving sticks of sage in the air wouldn’t make my grief disappear’
I knew that thinking happy thoughts or waving sticks of sage in the air wouldn’t make my grief disappear. I understood that while it was possible for my grief to give rise to mental illness, it was not a mental illness in itself. Nor was my grief a problem to be fixed – because try as I might, I couldn’t bring Ben back from the dead. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him either, and nor should I have; I loved him then, and I love him still.
Rather, my grief was a normal response to loss that demanded my patience and compassion. It was part and parcel of my humanness, something that would accompany me through life. It made sense then, to find a way to not merely tolerate my grief, or to overcome it like others had suggested, but to honour it. To grant it all the time it needed to metabolise.
‘If leaving them behind in 2023 feels counterintuitive, it’s because it is’
There is no such thing as ‘letting go’ or ‘moving on’, either. There is only moving forwards. When you form an intimate bond with another person, you create new neural connections that change your wiring. Your person is – quite literally – encoded into you. This coding is the physical manifestation of your bond. Your love. If leaving them behind in 2023 feels counterintuitive, it’s because it is. Take them with you instead.
You might have heard of the six stages of grief by now: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and meaning. Perhaps you question whether you’re ‘doing grief right’, like I did. Perhaps you think you ought to be doing better than you are. But the stages of grief model was created to describe the experiences of those facing death themselves, not of those left behind. In grief, our emotions often coil together, overlap or reoccur in unpredictable ways, rather than progressing neatly.
One moment you think you’re fine, and the next you’re crying into a bowl of porridge. Some days you’re making progress, and others you’ve taken ten steps back. We all grieve in our own time and in our own way.
I urge you to meet yourself, wherever you are, with radical compassion. Recovery from loss is not easy. And it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. It happens bit by bit, in the baby steps, in the small actions taken over time. Think of a ball inside a box for a moment. The ball represents your grief. At first, the ball takes up all the space inside the box.
As time passes, the box grows bigger, creating more space around the ball. It’s not that your grief necessarily diminishes in size – it’s that the space around it expands. Eventually, those baby steps will grow bigger, becoming strides and leaps until one day you look back in awe of how far you’ve come.
Entering the fourth year without Ben feels far easier than the first. My grief, once agonising, is softer now, like a dull ache. I’ve learned that no feeling is final, and that in-between the bad bits in life, there will be good and gorgeous bits, too. Whether it’s a gentle nudge or a thread of hope, let it pull you forwards. Reach for what gives you purpose and meaning, and hold on with both hands.
Purpose does not have to mean transmuting your pain into something big and radical, like running a marathon or climbing a mountain. It can be found in the small, everyday ways you show up for yourself, and in the ways you honour your person. Meaning does not mean finding meaning in their death.
It can be found in what you do from here on out; in saying ‘yes’ to life again, in choosing joy in spite of your grief.
From my grieving heart to yours, here are some practical tips for navigating the start of 2024 without your loved one.
Feel free to take what resonates, and leave behind what doesn’t.
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