Our Grief Fits Us Like a Glove

Grief is a lot of things. It’s a process. It comes in waves and it comes in stages. It’s relentless and can’t be controlled. It can last for months, years, or forever. It’s incredibly personal and yet universal. It can be complicated, anticipated, distorted, delayed, inhibited, absent, or any combination thereof. All I know is that it sucks and that you must go through it.

There are many common aspects of grief—as anybody who has ever been in a grief support group can attest to—but there’s no "one size fits all." No two people grieve the same way. Our grief fits us like a glove.

Our children are our children, and our feelings about them are our feelings. Mine are different from yours. My pain is different from yours. The way I hurt is different from the way you hurt. It’s the same deal with love. We all love our children, but we love them in our own way. I loved my older son Rob harder than I’ve ever loved anyone because that’s what he needed. I love my younger Zach easier than I’ve ever loved anyone because it is the most natural love I’ve ever known. Simply put, our grief is shaped by the person we loved and lost.

When I got the call that my son Rob died, I remember initially feeling numb, but really it was more a feeling of resignation, like what took you so long? I had been waiting by the phone ever since he was a teenager.

I also felt a sense of relief, both for him and for our family. He was no longer struggling with his demons, and we no longer had to worry about the worst thing that could ever happen because it had happened. The intense emotional pain I felt was because I couldn’t save him or change him, but more than anything, it was because he was inimitably Rob—the good, the bad, and the ugly, all rolled up into a giant ball of grief, hand-crafted just for me by the person I loved and lost.

It’s been the same way for you. The same—meaning different from everyone else.

Grief is a lot of things, and we all experience it differently and in our own time, but one of the things it most definitely is not—in my completely unprofessional opinion—is mental illness. You may sometimes feel crazy and incapacitated; I certainly did. You may be depressed and need meds; I was and did. You may go to a therapist; I went for a solid year. You may be bitter and angry; I was for a short time. You may question your reason for living; I did until I found my answers.

Having said that, I had more questions than answers a few years ago when “prolonged grief” was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short). It’s defined by many of the feelings I’ve felt, feelings you’ve felt and perhaps still feel, and it can be diagnosed one year after a loved one’s death. Along with designating grief as a type of pathology, the one-year line of demarcation really pissed me off. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know any bereaved parent who wasn’t still suffering with many of the “crazy” thoughts and feelings a year after losing a child.

There are certainly some folks who suffer more acutely and are unable to get out of bed and function in the world, and it’s great that there are specific psychotherapy treatments to help them. But for the rest of us, things are crazy enough without adding mental illness to the mix.

That day-to-day craziness is only heightened, at least for me, when people compare their grief to mine. First of all, if you’ve never lost a child, don’t tell us about how devastated you were when your mother/father/sister/brother/aunt/uncle/best friend/cat died. Grief is not a contest. There are no winners, only losers.

Second, we residents of Suck City know the score. Comparing your grief to somebody else’s makes it suck more, and the last thing we need is for things to suck more than they already suck.

Which is not to say that different flavors of grief don’t exist within our own dreadful club. There’s a big difference between losing a child at birth and losing a kid when he or she is in their 40s or 50s. Grieving for a life that never began is different from grieving for a life that was cut short. The pain is different for each, but it’s still the worst pain, because it is yours.

Yet sometimes comparisons happen, albeit inadvertently. About a year into my grief group, one of the dads was having a particularly rough night. His son had died in a freak accident while hiking, and he was missing him hard.

“No father has ever loved their son the way I loved mine,” he said before bursting into tears.

When I first heard him say those words, I became indignant. There were other fathers in the room, and we all loved our sons with all of our hearts, and how dare he say that he loved his son more than I loved Rob!

But now I don’t think that’s what he was saying at all. Now I think he was just expressing his grief, hand-crafted just for him by the person he loved and lost.