When I began writing about grief in the late seventies, I read everything I could find on the subject which turned out to be three books. We just didn't know very much about the process at all. There was a survey done during those days that asked people how long they thought grief lasted. The answers varied from days to a couple of weeks. The average answer was forty eight hours. Like I say, we didn't know much about grief then.

I am still asked that question. Grief is still seen as some kind of condition like a disease that one gets over. You have this for a while, take some kind of cure and then you are well. That is just not how it is at all. There is no definitive answer to the question. I give two answers that seem contradictory to each other. One the one hand I think it lasts a minimum of two years. One the other hand I don't think we ever "get over" it, so it lasts for the rest of our lives.

I had cancer surgery a few years ago. They removed a part of my body in the process. I went through a period of recovery that lasted several weeks so in a sense I am cured, but I will miss the part of my body they took away for the rest of my life. How long then does it take to get over a surgery?

When I say grief lasts a minimum of two years I am not giving some magic number, nor time table. Some grief experiences will last much longer. The length of time does not indicate a person is hung up and not trying to get well, nor does it prove they loved more deeply than other folks. We grieve at our own pace and in our own way. There is no right way nor right length. 

For those reading this during the first tough days of grief, I do not mean to imply that you will hurt like you are hurting now for the next two years. I just think it takes at least two years to work through all of the emotional upheavals and life changes that happen when a loved one dies. Grief comes in waves that overwhelm us and almost pull us under never to come up again. In time, the waves are not quite as high nor as often and we gradually begin to turn the corner in the way we cope. That part of the process can be compared to recovering from surgery. Like surgery, healing takes longer than anyone thinks and longer than most people going through the process think

it should take. 

The major message of these bogs is that we need permission to grieve as long and as loud as it takes without being pressured by others or from ourselves. I can not count the number of times I have listened to a grieving person who is convinced they are not as far along as they should be. Those feelings snowball into panic and adds to the pain. 

If you had a broken leg and the doctor said it would take eight weeks to get out of the cast, you would give it eight weeks without feeling weak or being accused of not trying. If at the end of eight weeks the doctor discovered the leg had not healed properly and needed another six weeks, no one, including you, would give that a thought. We give all the time needed to a broken leg; but somehow think a broken heart should heal in a week. If it takes longer either we are not trying or there is something wrong with us. 

It is also true that grief lasts the rest of our lives. We do not recover. A piece of our heart has been torn out and it will not grow back. The best I can promise is that the deep pain you feel right now will one day be a dull ache, but the dull ache will always be there right under the surface ready to become a pain again and again as things such as anniversaries, special days, or another death brings it to the surface again. Sometimes it will surprise us for no reason at all and we will find ourselves reliving the experience like it just happened. We never really get past it.

If we think about it, that is the way it should be and the way we want it to be. The only way to be cured of the pain is to have forgotten the person and that would be worse than the pain. We don't want to forget. The memories are our most treasured possession. In a sense, the memories maintain the pain and the pain maintains the memories for the rest of our lives.