I am currently meeting with a family as a group unto themselves. Matter of fact I meet with the grandparents and a cousin at one session and the parents and a sister in another session. At some point I will put them together into one group but at first they seemed afraid of being overwhelmed by too many people being present. The 19-year-old son died of suicide. 

The grandparents, the cousin, and the sister were the ones who found him so they are faced with memories the others can only imagine. I am sure there will be times when I meet with some or all of them individually to try to work through feelings they cannot share openly, but for now, our aim is to help the family share feelings openly and understand where each one is on their grief journey.

We are trying to avoid the barriers that seem to be inevitable when a family faces a loss. Somehow it is harder to share feelings with the family than with almost anyone else. The family is too close, too intimate, and too permanent. When something is said there, it is there forever so it is harder to share. We feel the need to protect one another so we try not to cry in front of one another for fear it will cause them pain. One person does not want to bring it up until they are sure the other person is ready and willing, but the other person is in the same dilemma so no one says anything and the death becomes the elephant in the room no one will talk about. 

When my father-in-law died, my wife and I came home from the funeral and acted like nothing had happened. After several weeks I woke her up in the night and told her I was missing her father. That broke the barrier and we could begin to talk and grieve together. It seems to me that it takes someone to break the barriers or a family will avoid grieving in front of each other. The problem is, it takes a family to grieve a loss. I don’t think the journey is over until it has been explored and openly discussed with the family. Until that happens the door is open to misunderstanding and mistaken judgements.

This post is the result of my bumping into the results of my bumping into two families who are hiding from each other just yesterday. I rode to the airport with a man whose daughter’s husband died two months after her marriage. Part of his pain was that she was not communicating with them about how she was feeling. She assured them she was fine and of course they knew better. I explained the tendency to avoid the intimacy of sharing pain within the family and urged them to have a get together where he could lead the way by sharing what he was feeling and doing so with openness and feeling so she would know it was alright to do such a thing.

Then I got on a plane and my seat mate was a delightful young MD whose wife died eight months ago. Since my wife died six months ago we had much to share. His journey was far different from mine of course. His wife died after a long illness which he as a physician knew was coming and he dealt with some of his feelings during the illness. I am not sure he is as far along as he thinks he is but that is for him to say. We grieve in our own way and on our own schedule. 

One of the things I picked up on was the fact that his children did not know or understand where he was nor what he felt. He started dating quite soon after his wife’s death and they do not understand how he could so such a thing. He is changing his lifestyle and they are struggling to accept his decisions. Their tension and struggle are the result of the family not grieving together. If they had walked through the pain together and shared where they were along the way, there would not be the misunderstandings they now must face. He expressed that he was in the dark about where each of the children were in their journey as well. I hope they too can have a time of breaking through the barriers and sharing together.

The only way to avoid misunderstanding is to have an understanding.

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