It seems like I get bombarded by folks who think they should be doing better with their grief than they are. I get that all of the time, but it seems to increase four fold at this time of the year. The holidays always seem to bring a wave of memories and pain which usually comes as a surprise. Quite often the pain comes out of the blue and hits some who think they are past at least the hard and raw part of their grieving.

A father was going through the second Christmas after his twenty-four year old son died. The death was sudden and the loss was not only a son who was deeply loved, but also a close friendship between a father and son. In addition, the father has had to face the loss of all of his dreams for the future. The father and son were in business together with great plans for the son to one day take the rains for himself. All of that was gone in a single night and the journey has been long and hard. We somehow got through the first holiday season and have seen slow progress through the year. Still some very bad days, but they are not quite as often and maybe not quite as bad. Grief comes in waves and it looks like his are farther apart and not quite as high now. Then we hit the second Christmas and the waves were over the bow and he was ready to sink. The shock of still being that deeply involved with the grief added to the pain itself and left him wondering if there was something wrong with him. Was he weak? Was he mentally ill? He happens to be a very religious person and that made him wonder about his faith. Was he weak?  Did he not trust his God?

At almost the same time, I received an email from a friend who is walking through her first Christmas after the death of her mother. She and her mother had maintained an extremely close relationship. She had never lived away from her parents and they had maintained daily contact all of her life. Her mother died after an extended illness that left her exhausted from the care and full of all kinds of undeserved and unfounded guilt over what else she could have done for her mother. 

As is usually the case when a loved one dies after a long term illness, her grief was delayed for several weeks. Long term care exhausts us and we do not have the emotions to grieve with right after the death. Gradually we get rested up and the emotions return along with the waves of grief. Her reaction has been to fight her grief. To tell herself how much better off her mother is and how grateful she should be that her mother no longer has to suffer. So when the grief hit with such vengeance at Christmas she was in pain but rather appalled. She called it “this dumb grief” and was quite angry with herself because she hurt. She had it all explained so why did she still hurt?

I tried to lead each of them to discover some truths about grieving. Grief lasts a lot longer than most of us suspect. When I say “lasts”  I am not talking about it being over and done with. I am only talking about the early raw period of the experience. Grief lasts for a lifetime. We never get “over it.” A chunk has been bitten out of our hearts and it will not grow back. The bottom line to grief is the loved one is not here and the goal of grief is to learn to live with that fact. The only way it could ever be over would be if the loved one could come back. Short of that, there is no cure, just growing toward better ways to cope. That means they hurt because they should be hurting. The loss is still real and the coping is not there.

This is true no matter what the situation is nor the reasons we may think we have to not hurt. Her mother being in a better place and not suffering any more, sounds wonderful and it is wonderful, but that does not bring her back so the growth toward coping is very real and so is the pain.

Grief is like congestive heart failure. That disease causes our lungs to fill with fluid and we must take some kind of diuretic to bleed off the fluid. Grief is the same. We fill up with emotions and memories that need to be released. The major way they are released is by talking or writing about them. Even if we have someone to talk with or write to, the feelings often build up faster than we can release them. When we get full, a wave of grief comes to force us to empty. That process is nature’s way of healing broken hearts. Although we fill much faster and more often during the early days of our loss, the process will be with us for as long as we live. Twenty Christmases from now, my friends may not be overwhelmed any longer, but they will still remember and feel some kind of surge within their hearts. 

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Doug invites you to log in and post comments at the end of each blog entry. He looks forward to hearing from you. Any of Doug's books, CDs or DVDs are available at www.InSightBooks.com.