I recently read a brief comment on bereavement in the Wellness Newsletter published by the University of California at Berkley. The editor had read George Bonano's new book called "The Other Side of Sadness". I have not yet read the book. My comments are in response to what I read in the newsletter, that is, to what the editor took from the book.
The phrase "the other side of sadness" is an interesting one. I like it, and it does describe a part of what happens over time after the death of someone important in our lives. The editorial comment in this newsletter was about life returning to normal, about being able to smile again. This notion compelled me write a response to the idea that life can ever be the same after the death of a spouse, a child, a friend, someone important in our lives. I think that this is a wish on the part of an outsider, hoping to make the bereaved feel better.
I have learned from my own research and from my own experience that this is impossible. This expectation can often confuse the mourner when he or she realizes that it is impossible. With the death of a key person in our lives, our world, as we knew it, is changed forever. We will laugh again, we will find pleasure in life, but none of this is as before. For example, when a spouse dies, the role of wife or husband to this spouse, is gone forever, the father or mother a child knew is gone as well. The bereaved need to now construct, a new way of living in a changed world. This is not always easy to do, especially when mourners are not prepared for this aspect of the bereavement process. As we talk about grief and how we cope we need to focus, not only on the sadness and the emotions we experience but on the accompanying changes in the way we live our life.
What does looking at change mean for someone who is raising a grieving child? If it is your spouse who died, it means that you are now a single parent. You no longer have a companion to help, not only with the chores, with family finances and getting through the day but to share responsibility for care of the children, to help make decision about what is best for the family and for the children. You have lost someone to simply talk with at the end of the day and who shares the same concerns you have for your children.
It also means that the children have to get used to having only one parent, to live without the support and care the now dead parent provided. In the words of a teen age boy commenting on his mother's death one year later: "When my mom was alive; we were a family. It isn't the same at all now". His father was also having a difficult time assuming his new role in the family.
What is important here is that the need for change has to be recognized as well as helping people deal with their sadness and sense of loss. I recently got a call from a therapist who was helping a new widow. The therapist was looking for advice. She had helped this widow with her feelings about the loss. The new widow was now able to handle her grief and to talk openly with her teen age twins about the death of their father. The children were graduating from high school and were going away to college. The new widow was frightened about being alone in the house and how she would manage by herself. The children were also worried. They counted on their mother to be there for them, and to help them make this transition to college. They worried about her as well but in a different way. They worried how they might manage if something happened to her. Why wasn't what the therapist had provided not enough? What they had never talked about was what this woman's life would be like as she faced an empty house. Nor did they discuss her role as a single parent with children now on their way to college. No one had suggested that she needed to think about how her life had changed and what she would need to accommodate to this changed situation.
Some time ago I interviewed a college freshman whose father had died when she was 10 years old. In response to my question abut how this impacted on her life she said: " My life is good but it has been different than if my father hadn't died." I understand that her family had accommodated to the changes her father's death caused for the family and built their life always taking how different life was into consideration.
