I have observed for years that children grieve in segments related to their ages. If they lose a loved one when they are five, they work through the grief of a five year old. As they grow older then seem to pick it up for further development. Perhaps at seven they will suddenly show signs of grief and, of course, scare the parents, but they are just ready to do the seven year old level. This may happen at intervals until they are working through the grief as adults. We will visit children and grief in future blogs, but I am beginning to realize children aren’t the only ones to grieve in segments.

A good friend emailed me that for no reason he had spent the evening crying almost uncontrollably over the loss of his father who died several years ago. He could not understand why he was feeling such deep sorrow and pain this many years after the loss. I explained that grief does not go away nor really even diminish we just learn to cope with it, gradually growing strength. 

His experience seemed to be much deeper than that explanation. He seemed to be dealing with new depths of reality and sorrow than ever before. He is the leader among his siblings and the one the family leans on for strength and support. When his father died, he was so busy taking care of the rest of the family that he had very little time to even think of his own loss. After the death he kept himself in control in an effort to not upset his mother or the rest of the family. He was the tower of strength that never saw a storm coming his way.

He did the amount of grief work that could be done under those circumstances. Now he seemed to be ready to pick it up again and walk through another segment of the journey. Even though the pain was intense and the tears seemed to flood there was a sense of peace in the room. Reliving the life through memories made him feel his father’s presence in a strangely warm and comforting way. It felt as if he was able to talk with his father and tell him things he wished he had found words to say before his father died. 

It maybe that this grieving in segments gradually helps us turn memories from something to avoid because of the accompanying pain, to welcomed friends that comfort and help us feel the presence of our love. In time the memories that hurt the most become the ones that bring the most comfort. Maybe that is a process created by the step by step segments of our grief.

A woman wrote a different slant on this phenomenon. She too had experienced the reoccurrence of grief long after her mother had died. She did not share her feelings in some super spiritual way, but simply thought these experiences happened because there was some lesson she needed to learn. She said that each time she walked through an episode of sorrow she always seemed to think through another part of what made her mother such a special person and came away with new resolve to be more like her in some specific way.

I don’t know whether we go through segments to teach us some lesson or simply as the natural result of learning how to cope with a loved one no longer being here, The one thing I do know if the statement that something is not over until the fat lady sings is true, then, when it comes to grief, the fat lady never sings.