All grief is complicated. There is no set pattern of feelings we are suppose to have nor any set pattern of healing we can expect to follow. Every person will grieve in a way that fits them, and every grieving experience will vary to fit the person who has died and the relationship each person had with that person. However, some grieving experiences are much more complex than others and leave us wandering through a maze of thoughts and feelings wondering if we are loosing our minds. The problem is, no one tells us what is normal, how we are suppose to feel. No one really even tells us how they feel or felt when faced with similar circumstances because they too are afraid they aren't normal.
A woman wrote me her story of a husband who could never conquer his need for alcohol and drugs. She pictured a long down hill spiral that forced her to move him out of the house to protect her children and her sanity. He never really left. He would use up all of his money on drugs and then become homeless often sneaking in to sleep in her garage. He would show up begging to come back and, of course, promising never to drink or use again. Most of the time he was drinking or using while he was making the pledge. He forced his way into her house by plunging his hand through a window and requiring many stitches as a result. He was a danger to everyone involved and she should be commended for having the strength to take the actions she had to take.
There were no other choices she could make. He refused all treatment and would not go to the shelters that were available to him. After showing up one more time and begging for help, she refused again and left with her teen age son. When they returned, he had hanged himself in the garage and the son found him. Now, how is she suppose to feel?
Suicide is one of the cruelest things a person can do to their family. Doing it so that the family will be the ones to find them is doubly cruel. The horror of the scene added to the guilt every family feels after a suicide complicates the grieving into a confused mess of anger, fear, guilt, sadness, and helplessness.
Her feelings were complicated before the death. She is convinced that she still loved him. It does not matter whether or not psychologist could analyze that and decide it was delusional. She thought she loved him, and that is all that matters now. In the middle of that love, there was anger and frustration and, at times, something very close to hate. Add the suicide to that and she is left with a tangle of feelings that will take years to sort through. Every thought and feeling is filled with contradictions.
Too make matters worse, she has no idea what she is supposed to feel. What should she feel? Should she be guilty because she did not help him one more time? Should she be angry because he arranged it for them to find him in some bizarre plan of revenge? What is normal to feel when nothing about the death was normal?
It finally comes down to just feel what you feel. That is probably the best advice I know to give to someone in grief. You can't change the feelings, so just feel them and give as little thought as possible to whether or not you should be feeling what you feel. Think what you think as well. The thoughts are going to be there. Some will be irrational, some will be scary, all of them are necessary as our mind works its way through looking for what is rational.
It will also help if you can find a way to express what you think and feel. Even though the thoughts and feelings may seem to be unthinkable and wrong, they need to be expressed either by finding a safe person who will just listen without judgment or correction, or write out what you think and feel. I know this woman’s story because she wrote it out in detail. Her writing it down on paper was far more healing than her reading my response. Somehow the unthinkable thoughts and feelings don’t seem so scary when they are exposed to the light of day.
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