[O]n Jan. 4, 11 years and 26 days after I walked out of an animal shelter in New Jersey with a little white and brown dog attached to the end of a brand-new leash, she died. On this day, an undiagnosed tumor pressed down on Emily’s brain and told her that she needed to escape, which made her usually soft, cuddly and often napping body go wild, endangering herself and me. The humane thing to do was put her down.
I don’t think anything could have prepared me for that moment, or the searing grief that followed. But if I could go back in time to console myself, I would tell myself these six things:
Most people will say the wrong thing. They will talk about dogs they knew and loved and put down, too, or, if they haven’t walked through this long, lonely tunnel yet, about how they can’t possibly imagine losing their very alive pet, which reminds you that yours is dead. They will also ask how old she was, and when you say 15, they will say, “Well, it was a good long life,” as if the ending of it would be less painful because of how long you were together.
They may tell you other dog death stories, too, like the one about the dog who was so excited to be home from vacation that he bolted out of the car and was immediately run over while the whole family watched — stories that imply it could have been worse. They will shove shelter listings for other Jack Russell terriers at you, as if another dog could slip into that perfect little spot left by your beloved one-of-a-kind pet.
Guilt overwhelms. I still tell myself that I killed Emily, despite the veterinarian telling me, after her body had been taken away, while I gripped both a counter and a vet tech to keep from collapsing, that all four of her paws had been bloodied as she had clawed at the floor, the door and the ground during her manic and desperate attempt to get away from my home. There is guilt, too, over the relief of no longer having to take care of a dog who was on multiple medications and who had arthritis, two defective heart valves and pulmonary hypertension.
You will become unmoored. I adopted Emily soon after I became a freelance writer, and I wrote three books with her by my side. She was the metronome to my life. With her gone, I floated through a space she no longer occupied but haunted with every little white hair found on my blankets, on the floor, in my shoes. Once, in the first week following her death, I came up from the basement and looked at the spot where she would usually be waiting. I called for her with the foolish notion that she’d appear at the top of the stairs. But of course, no: just another sledgehammer reminder that she was really gone.
Grief is exhausting. Last fall, I ran two marathons and an ultramarathon. After Emily died, I couldn’t drag myself through three miles, not to mention find the energy to get out of bed, put on clothes that were not my pajamas and shower at regular intervals. I pushed off assignments because the idea of putting my fingers to the keyboard was inconceivable when Emily wasn’t sleeping on her bed in the corner of my office. These were wretched, grief-stained days, surrounded by a deafening silence.
I went back into therapy after she died and was told I was depressed, which wasn’t surprising, as I had started to slip into bed at 8:30 p.m. and not get up until half a day later. Losing a companion and your routine all at once, especially if you’re single like me, could throw anyone into a tailspin.
It will get better. You won’t want to hear it, or believe it, because the pain is so suffocating. It does ease, though, almost without you noticing it.
But still, it slaps back. This may happen at predictable moments, such as when you decide to sell her crate, and sometimes not. Soon after Emily died, I got on a plane and went to Florida to bake out the pain with all-day poolside sessions punctuated by midday drinks. It worked, somewhat, but on my last night there, my face cracked open at the World of Disney store when I saw a mug with the character Stitch that said “brave” on one side and “loyal” on the other. Only the cashier noticed that I paid with tears and snot running down my face. I then ran out of the store to stare at a lake.
These days, I get up, I brush my teeth, I write, I run. I smile now and laugh sometimes. The pain still catches me, though, and I can now more clearly see why: I loved that dog, and in giving a scared, abused, imperfect Emily a home, she loved me back, and together our lives both bloomed. The loss of that joy is why the pain is so acute — and why, at some point in the maybe not so distant future, I’ll go back to that animal shelter with a brand-new leash, and do it all over again.
[R]ecently, my wife and I went through one of the more excruciating experiences of our lives – the euthanasia of our beloved dog, Murphy. I remember making eye contact with Murphy moments before she took her last breath – she flashed me a look that was an endearing blend of confusion and the reassurance that everyone was ok because we were both by her side.
When people who have never had a dog see their dog-owning friends mourn the loss of a pet, they probably think it’s all a bit of an overreaction; after all, it’s “just a dog.”
However, those who have loved a dog know the truth: Your own pet is never “just a dog.”
Many times, I’ve had friends guiltily confide to me that they grieved more over the loss of a dog than over the loss of friends or relatives. Research has confirmed that for most people, the loss of a dog is, in almost every way, comparable to the loss of a human loved one. Unfortunately, there’s little in our cultural playbook – no grief rituals, no obituary in the local newspaper, no religious service – to help us get through the loss of a pet, which can make us feel more than a bit embarrassed to show too much public grief over our dead dogs.
Perhaps if people realized just how strong and intense the bond is between people and their dogs, such grief would become more widely accepted. This would greatly help dog owners to integrate the death into their lives and help them move forward.
An interspecies bond like no other
What is it about dogs, exactly, that make humans bond so closely with them?
For starters, dogs have had to adapt to living with humans over the past 10,000 years. And they’ve done it very well: They’re the only animal to have evolved specifically to be our companions and friends. Anthropologist Brian Hare has developed the “Domestication Hypothesis” to explain how dogs morphed from their grey wolf ancestors into the socially skilled animals that we now interact with in very much the same way as we interact with other people.
Perhaps one reason our relationships with dogs can be even more satisfying than our human relationships is that dogs provide us with such unconditional, uncritical positive feedback. (As the old saying goes, “May I become the kind of person that my dog thinks I already am.”)
This is no accident. They have been selectively bred through generations to pay attention to people, and MRI scans show that dog brains respond to praise from their owners just as strongly as they do to food (and for some dogs, praise is an even more effective incentive than food). Dogs recognize people and can learn to interpret human emotional states from facial expression alone. Scientific studies also indicate that dogs can understand human intentions, try to help their owners and even avoid people who don’t cooperate with their owners or treat them well.
Our strong attachment to dogs was subtly revealed in a recent study of “misnaming.” Misnaming happens when you call someone by the wrong name, like when parents mistakenly calls one of their kids by a sibling’s name. It turns out that the name of the family dog also gets confused with human family members, indicating that the dog’s name is being pulled from the same cognitive pool that contains other members of the family. (Curiously, the same thing rarely happens with cat names.)
It’s no wonder dog owners miss them so much when they’re gone.
Psychologist Julie Axelrod has pointed out that the loss of a dog is so painful because owners aren’t just losing the pet. It could mean the loss of a source of unconditional love, a primary companion who provides security and comfort, and maybe even a protégé that’s been mentored like a child.
The loss of a dog can also seriously disrupt an owner’s daily routine more profoundly than the loss of most friends and relatives. For owners, their daily schedules – even their vacation plans – can revolve around the needs of their pets. Changes in lifestyle and routine are some of the primary sources of stress.
According to a recent survey, many bereaved pet owners will even mistakenly interpret ambiguous sights and sounds as the movements, pants and whimpers of the deceased pet. This is most likely to happen shortly after the death of the pet, especially among owners who had very high levels of attachment to their pets.
While the death of a dog is horrible, dog owners have become so accustomed to the reassuring and nonjudgmental presence of their canine companions that, more often than not, they’ll eventually get a new one.
So yes, I miss my dog. But I’m sure that I’ll be putting myself through this ordeal again in the years to come.
Julia Samuel specialises in helping people cope when a loved one dies. Joanna Moorhead finds out how we can stop feeling awkward and uncertain about death – and why we should talk honestly about grief
Julia Samuel … ‘Death disrupts the complex and finely tuned balance in a family, so everything has to be -reorganised.’
[P]hil and Annette were on their way to the mortuary when Julia Samuel phoned. Their daughter Amber, aged four, had drowned in a swimming pool, and they were going to see her body. Not many people would have called them at that moment; not many people would have dared to encroach on such raw and traumatic grief. But Julia, a friend of a friend of the couple, is a psychotherapist who specialises in dealing with loss. She knows that, when people are in the throes of overwhelming grief, sharing the pain is the only thing that can make even the tiniest difference.
But being a grief professional does not endow special powers. When Phil answered the phone, Julia would have liked to be able to say something that would make it all better. But she knew nothing could do that, so she said the only thing she could. “I am terribly sorry to hear that your daughter, Amber, has died; I’m sorry that such a devastating thing has happened to you. How can I help?”
Twenty-five years as a grief psychotherapist has taught Julia a great deal about the human condition – because when you focus on grief you focus on life, and loss exposes everything that matters about a person and their strengths and weaknesses. When someone dies, it reveals the faultlines in the bereaved family, even the deepest, most hidden ones. If you know about loss, you know about family, and about love, survival, resilience and strength. If you know about loss, you know about life.
But there is a paradox at the centre of loss, and it is this. Grief is the most intense pain there is, and we will do anything to avoid pain. So we run away from it; we run away from our own grief, and we run away from others’ grief.
And yet, says Julia, running away from it means we will never recover from it. Embracing it, moving through its agony, and allowing ourselves to just be while it washes over us, is the only way to survive it; because we have to feel the worst of it in order to let it change us, and then we can start to find out who we are going to be in the wake of it.
This is the message at the heart of Julia’s new book, Grief Works. “If you ignore grief and push it down, you can live and you can even function, but you will live a very narrow emotional life because you are using so much emotional energy to cope,” she says when we meet.
“Everything in your psyche will be squashed down, and that means small things can trigger a much bigger kind of effect. The fact is, you have to do the work of grieving. You have to let it run its course. Pain is the agent of change; pain is what allows you to change, it’s what enables you to reach a new reality.”
Her book traces the journeys of many of the bereaved people she has walked alongside; she describes how she has wept and mourned with them. “I let clients know that what they’re saying has an impact on me: I tell them when I feel shocked or sad or upset,” she says.
“I talk about our relationship: the relationship I have with them is in service of them. I say what I feel when I think it’s useful to share it.”
One of the many moving stories in her book is that of Bill and Sally, whose 13-year-old son, Matthew, died of a rare virus. Sally tells Julia that losing her son has made her, too, feel dead. She no longer has any expectations of life; she does not want to go on living. “I said quite plainly that, although she was giving up on herself, I refused to; I would fight for her. I held the whisper hidden somewhere within her that said, ‘I want to live’.”
Julia, in her 50s, a mother of four grownup children and a grandmother of four, is slight, vivacious and fun: time with her feels charged with life, and you can’t help feeling that must be helpful for those clients who, like Sally, have lost sight of the joy of being alive. Julia is as interested in asking questions as in answering them; and her questions to me surround something that I have experienced but she never has, which is a traumatic loss.
There are two sorts of loss, says Julia: expected loss and traumatic loss. And perhaps strangely, for one in her profession, her own losses have all been expected ones. Her father died, but he was 87 (“I was sad and I grieved, but it was not a traumatic loss”); her interest in bereavement sprang from her involvement with the charity Birthright, now Wellbeing of Women, which made her aware of the pain of losing a baby, although she wonders whether she was unconsciously influenced by the fact that her parents had lost three parents and three siblings by the time they were 25. “Everything seemed OK, but now when I think back I’m aware of some unresolved grief.”
Almost her only personal experience of a shocking, out-of-nowhere, loss was that of the figure whose death brought loss closer to millions, and perhaps even changed how the British deal with it: Julia was a close friend of Princess Diana, a connection that was echoed when she was asked by William and Kate to be a godmother to Prince George in 2013. That is, she says, a very joyful role – lots of fun, and the chance to enjoy the little boy as he grows up – but she doesn’t want to say much about it or about Diana, save that she agrees that her death did make a difference to the nation’s approach to grief.
So, too, she says, did other major shifts of history, especially the first and second world wars. “Our parents, the parents of people of my generation, were the generation that couldn’t afford to grieve. They were parented by survivors of the first world war: they simply had to survive, whereas we have the luxury of being able to deal with it differently.”
Having said that, and despite the public outpouring of grief after Diana’s death, she doesn’t think most people are sufficiently aware of the impact a traumatic bereavement has, the ripples it leaves or how long they persist. As someone who experienced a traumatic loss at the age of nine, when my three-year-old sister was killed in a road accident, I have to agree with her analysis. It is 44 years since that death, and the shockwaves still reverberate in my family: everyone is different because of it, and the next generation has been touched by it in ways that are too subtle for them to fully understand.
How traumatic losses shape the future of a family is a subject of great interest to Julia; so, too is the way men and women deal with loss differently. Men, she says, tend to want to move on, to make plans, to focus on new horizons. Women, on the other hand, want to spend more time remembering the person who has died; they want to immerse themselves in the pain. But the fact is, she says, that each can learn from the other. “You have to do both things: you have to have time when you grieve, and time when you have a break from the grief. You can create circumstances where you grieve, and circumstances where you move on; so men and women can help one another. He can help her go for a walk to the park or to a gallery, and she can help him talk about how he feels and express some of his loss.”
The problems set in when one individual fails to understand the pattern of grief in the other; they think of them as selfish or that they don’t care enough, but it isn’t about that – it’s about different ways of coping. Grieving is an intensely individual and usually incredibly lonely experience, which can make it a particularly difficult time in a family, where a group of people will be going through something sparked by the same event, but is in each case very different.
The way to cope, says Julia, is to be open in communicating how you are feeling to others in your family. “The families that fare best are able to share their feelings openly. Death disrupts the complex and finely tuned balance in a family, so everything has to be reorganised – and being open helps with that process.”
At the beginning, and this is especially true of a traumatic loss, the grief is all-consuming: but over time, says Julia, you find you are starting to live again. The mistake some make, though, is believing they can go back to being the way they were.
“Some people say, ‘This isn’t going to change us.’ But that’s not how it is: and it’s when you recognise that bereavement is a life-shattering experience, and that you have to grieve and rebuild, that you can move on positively into a new phase of life.
“You don’t forget the person who’s gone; you can never do that, and you should not worry that you’re going to. But you fold them, and their loss, into the new person you become; and maybe that, in the end, is the greatest tribute any of us can make to anyone who has died.”
Eight ways that family and friends can help
Listening. Be a friend who is prepared to give their time, to listen and to acknowledge the extent of your friend’s loss. Listening is the key. Bear witness, and allow your friend to be upset, to be confused and contradictory, or to say nothing at all. Every time they tell their story once more, or are allowed to say how important the person who has died was, the burden of carrying their pain on their own is incrementally a little lighter.
It’s not about you. Follow the mourner’s lead: they may not want to talk about their grief right now, or even with you. It is good to say something to acknowledge their loss, but then let them have the control they need (they had none over the death), to choose to talk or not. If they ask you to come and be with them, and want to talk openly to you, go. If they truly do not want you to visit, and do not want to deal with it at that particular time, don’t force it on them. Don’t confuse your need to speak or call or be in contact, with your friend’s need.
Acknowledgment. Death isn’t catching, but those who are bereaved might think so, judging by the fear they see in other people’s eyes. People are frightened about whether to come forward, about what to say, about saying the wrong thing – so, in the end, they say nothing. All of that comes from a belief that whatever you say should make things better, that you should have enough wisdom to make the pain more bearable. But you can’t. Nor do you need to. Being kind enough to dare to acknowledge them and their situation is good enough.
Offering to be there if they need you, suggesting that they should be the one to ring you, is probably asking too much of your friend at this time. It is better if you take the initiative and make contact, and then follow their lead: they may want to see or speak with you – or not. Often, people don’t make contact because they feel they don’t know the bereaved person well enough. If you are erring one way or the other, better to err on the side of making contact.
Practical help. Doing practical things is often what really makes a difference. Don’t say, “Let me know if I can help”; actually do something helpful. At the beginning of a bereavement, there may be a lot of people around, so bringing food may be the best thing you can do. Taking food around for longer than the initial crisis is rare, and therefore particularly appreciated.
Honesty. Be honest. Honesty is comforting and easy to deal with. There is a direct cleanness to honesty that cuts through much of the complex messiness of grief, and this can come as an enormous relief to people.
Also, be honest about what you actually can do rather than covering up because you feel guilty about what you can’t. Be specific: say, “I’m going to come round for half an hour” or “I’ll come on Tuesday”; don’t say, “I’ll come whenever you want, tell me, and I’ll be there”, and then find you can’t deliver on that offer.
Be sensitive. While being honest is important, so is being sensitive. Promiscuous honesty is not a good idea. Be aware of showing too openly that your life is trotting along happily, as that can feel like rubbing their nose in your happiness.
Be in it for the long haul. Try to remember to make contact and be supportive after everyone else has gone. Usually three months following the death, people get back to their lives, as they should. But it is by no means over for the person who is bereaved. Sending a text or popping by can be hugely supportive.
Writing. Letters, cards, texts or emails: it doesn’t matter what you write – all are extremely helpful. It is better, however, to say that you don’t want a reply, because some people simply can’t respond. And it is never too late to send them. It is a welcome surprise to receive a card much later, because it is when everyone else has forgotten and your friend is still grieving.
When you do write, try to make it personal and avoid tired cliches such as, “She’s had a good innings” or “Better to have loved and lost”, because they are trite and in some way diminish the personal importance of this very loved person who has died.
You don’t need to go into long explanations of why the person has died or theological explorations about death; just be loving and personal, warm and acknowledging.
[A] chimpanzee has been filmed using tools to apparently clean the corpse of its adopted offspring, the first hint that animals other than humans may have mortuary practices.
The female, Noel, was seen at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia using a stem of grass to remove debris from the teeth of a nine-year-old male, Thomas, which she had looked after since the death of its mother four years earlier.
She was one of a number of chimps that surrounded the body for around 20 minutes, gently touching and sniffing Thomas despite offers of food to lure them away. Noel stayed on its own to clean the teeth of its adopted son, even when the others had left.
Dr. Edwin van Leeuwen, of St. Andrews University, lead author of the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, said: “Noel approached Thomas’s body, sat down close to his head, turned her upper body sideways to select a hard piece of grass, put the grass in her mouth, and opened Thomas’ mouth with both of her hands.
Chimpanzees gather around the body of Thomas, a nine-year-old who died of pneumonia.
“Then she wrapped her fingers around Thomas’s chin and jaw, and used her thumbs to explore his teeth. After three seconds, she took the grass out of her mouth with her right hand, while maintaining focused grip on Thomas’s mouth with her left hand, and started to meticulously poke the grass in the same dental area as where her thumbs had been.
“This behaviour has never been reported in chimpanzees or any other non-human animal species. Chimpanzees may form long-lasting social bonds and like humans, may handle corpses in a socially meaningful way.”
Nina, Noel’s adolescent daughter, stayed at its mother’s side and observed the cleaning efforts.
The researchers say Noel might have been trying to understand how Thomas had died. She was seen tasting the debris she picked from his teeth. A post mortem found Thomas had most likely died from a combination of a viral and bacterial lung infection.
[I] am a mother to two beautiful boys. My first son Conor was stillborn at the end of a textbook pregnancy. His death was sudden and without warning. Grieving for the boy who didn’t come home is complicated. I grieve the innocence of my past along with the absence of my son from my present and future. In those early months I didn’t know if I would survive or even if I wanted to survive, such was the depth of my grief. Everything changed the day Conor’s heart stopped beating. I am learning that keeping going isn’t about rebuilding my old life – it’s about building a new life. Two years on from Conor’s short life and subsequent death, I can now reflect on what helps me to keep going…
Knowing I am not alone
Sadly about 1 in 200 babies die before, during or shortly after birth. While most parents leave hospital by the front door with car seats, I left by the back door with a coffin. Thankfully the bereavement team in the hospital I attended put me in touch with two baby loss charities; A Little Lifetime Foundation and Féileacáin. I attended support groups, joined online forums and made friends with other bereaved mothers. While all our stories are different, we all share a broken heart. Hearing the two words “me too” has been life saving.
Accepting that grief has no instructions or time frame
In the weeks and months that followed Conor’s death I had unrealistic expectations of how I should be functioning. There were days it took all the strength I had just to get out of bed. Grief comes with no instructions and its chaos is frightening. Not only do I have to work through grief but grief also needs to work through me. I grieve because I love my son and so I will never stop or nor do I want to stop grieving for Conor.
Telling my story
I was left in a state of total shock following Conor’s sudden death. Antenatal classes did not prepare me for making decisions around a post mortem and funeral just hours after delivering and meeting my beautiful boy. In an effort to process what happened I found myself telling and retelling my story. I also read and reread stories of baby loss. I was inspired by other mothers to start writing my own in the form of an online blog. cakesforconor.com explores my relationship with grief. When I click the “Publish” button I feel listened to. It allows me to tell the world about Conor and has helped me connect with other bereaved parents.
Hearing Conor’s name
All parents want to protect their children. I find myself wanting to protect the memory of my child. I fear that Conor will be forgotten. Very few people got to meet him and no one else got to know him. This lack of shared stories makes grieving for the boy who didn’t come home complicated. I think some people are afraid to mention Conor in case they upset me. However, hearing family and friends speak his name is like music to my ears. It tells me that he is remembered.
Finding peace by doing something I enjoy
In the early months after Conor’s death, I could find no escape from the pain of grief. One day I noticed apples falling from a tree in the garden and decided to bake an apple cake. I figured if my hero, the cook and TV Bake Off judge Mary Berry could survive the sudden death of her son then so could I. For those few hours kneading, mixing, frosting and, of course, tasting, I found peace. Attending a beginner’s baking course was the start of my re-engagement with the outside world.
Accepting that my relationships have changed
I have a very pro-active manager who on hearing the news of Conor’s death sought professional advice on how best to support her employee. She was told to keep in touch even if it seemed like she was being pushed away. The people I spend time with now are those who continued to send “thinking of you” messages without the pressure to meet up. They are those who had no expectations of me to be anything other than how I was. Conor’s life and death have changed me so maybe it’s inevitable that relationships would change too.
Moving forward with Conor
The bereaved can often feel a pressure from others to move on after a loss. In the past, parents were advised to forget about their baby who died. Believing it was for the best, babies were taken away from mothers after delivery. Parents did not get to see, hold or name their babies. While this was not that long ago, it is unimaginable to my generation. I have very precious memories of time spent with Conor in the hospital. I have photographs along with his hand and footprint. I am able to move forward by finding ways to bring him with me. I tell our second son all about his big brother. I write Conor’s name in the sand, decorate my cakes with his star symbol and light candles. Conor will be always remembered as the little boy who made me a mother.
Lots of tissues
People comment on the dignity of the bereaved at funerals. However, in reality, grief is ugly. Behind closed doors it is swollen eyes, a snotty nose and blotchy face. Two years on the sobbing is no more but tears still fall freely. Tears now fall from eyes framed by waterproof mascara and I go nowhere without tissues.
Coping with grief can be overwhelming. Expressing your feelings, both negative and positive, is important.
By Elysia Tucker, LPC, ADC
[A]ll people experiences loss at one time or another in their lives. Grief is a natural process arising from the loss of someone or something important to you. While it is normal to experience grief, it is important to know the difference between grief and major depressive disorder, and when to seek help with either.
Grief has several symptoms in common with major depressive disorder, including intense sadness, insomnia, poor appetite, weight loss, difficulty concentrating, anger, loneliness, and isolation. With grief, symptoms usually decrease over time, as the person accepts the loss and reinvests in life again. Complicated grief means that the process is taking longer than normal, or that the person grieving is engaging in self-destructive behaviors. This can lead to major depressive disorder.
Warning signs of major depressive disorder include:
Feelings of guilt not related to a loved one’s death
Thoughts of suicide—although in grief there can be thoughts of “joining” the deceased
Intense feelings of worthlessness
Sluggishness or hesitant and confused speech
Prolonged and marked difficulty in carrying out the activities of day-to-day living
Hallucinations and delusions
These symptoms indicate a real need for therapeutic intervention. Major depressive disorder can be dangerous if left untreated, and can rob you of the joy of life.
Although grief is painful, the process of working through your feelings is important. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, and each journey is unique to each person. Be sure to have a trusted friend, family member, member of the clergy, or counselor to talk to.
If you think you are experiencing complicated grief or major depressive disorder, it is vital to receive caring help from a professional.
[W]hen I wrote my first book Tips from Widows, I gathered advice verbally from 29 women who had lost their husbands. When I wrote my second, Tips from Widowers, I found that the 15 men felt more comfortable writing their feelings down for me, rather than speaking them aloud.
Widows and widowers, I discovered, do heal differently – and now a report backs this up. According to Independent Age, which surveyed more than 2,000 bereaved people aged over 65 from the UK, women are more likely to open up about their loss – but they also suffer greater feelings of loneliness.
More than half of women said speaking to friends helped them deal with grief, compared to a third of men. Indeed, 32 per cent of men did not turn to anyone for support after the death of a family member, compared to 18 per cent of women.
Following her husband’s death in 2015, Sheryl Sandberg said that she was a member of a widows club that ‘no one wants to join’
Yet, 30 per cent of women found loneliness the hardest thing to cope with, compared to 17 per cent of men. The report found that feelings of loneliness lasted, on average, for eight months but that a fifth of those bereaved still felt lonely after three years.
In my experience of speaking to widows, the problem for many is that their social life diminishes and, for some, stops altogether. Added to which, those widows who prioritised family over career can struggle with the financial implications and responsibilities left for them to sort out. Their status as a widow can sap their confidence and many never have another romantic relationship.
So for any woman (or man), young or older, currently suffering after – or preparing for the death of a loved one, here are some tips from real-life widows to help with the grieving process.
It is absolutely essential to do one of the following two things if you know your partner is very ill. Set up a joint account and make sure that all Direct Debit payments for your family and household go through this (and not through a sole account in their name). Set aside a sum that you know will be sufficient to carry you through the worse-case probate scenario.
Only if it is what you both wish, get married or become civil partners. Do so at once or at least make the appropriate pension nomination if that is what you both want.
Encourage each other to talk about these matters well before either person has become too ill.
In the very early days, the telephone will ring constantly. The emotional strain of answering every call will often be too great. It is a good idea to switch on your answerphone whenever you feel like it, or alternatively, to get a friend or adult child to answer on your behalf.
Do involve your children in all the arrangements and decisions with regard to the funeral arrangements for their father; also, take your time, if you follow a religion that allows that.
Do encourage grandchildren to go to the funeral or cremation. In the case of very young children, it is for the parents to decide whether they should attend.
Don’t try to be too brave.
Allow yourself to BE and not DO all the time.
You will inevitably do some foolish things.
Smile – it will make yourself look and feel better.
Be a really good friend.
Don’t be surprised to find yourself crying, even after many years.
If you are still angry see your doctor . Listening to your anger is not much fun for your family or your friends.
Recognise that fear and anxiety slows healing see your doctor.
You are alive and your departed husband would wish you to embrace your remaining years.
