Good Grief
Whether death is sudden or lingering.
By Jo Winkowitsch and JK Loring
Each person's path will be uniquely influenced by the bereaved person's personality and history, their relationship to the one who died, the manner in which the person died, and other factors as well. To better deal with the similarities and differences in different kinds of death, I have invited a friend to write this article with me.
Introductions: I, Jo Winkowitsch have experienced prolonged illnesses of my father and daughter which led to their deaths. The goal of these articles is to inform and help people recognize and deal with their grief. I think that Grief can be a rude intruder into our lives in different ways, depending on the circumstances surrounding the death. We’ll explore that a bit in this article.
Hi, I am JK Loring. I was asked by Jo to write about sudden death of loved ones, having experienced it twice. My prayer is that in sharing parts of my story you will be blessed and encouraged.
(JK) I wish I didn’t have anything that qualified me to help write this article on the subject of sudden death, but unfortunately it showed up on my doorstep twice. It has changed my family. It has changed our lives forever. We will never be the same.
In 1995, we experienced the sudden death of a young friend who I was very close to. When we received that phone call, our world fell to pieces. It shook the very core of our family and pierced our hearts. Why? Had we done something to make God angry? What were we supposed to do? How would we ever recover? How could our lives go on?
No time to say goodbye, no time to make things right, no time for one last hug.
It was over.
My phone ringing late at night took on a life of its own.
How could I keep this from happening to my sons? Could I keep them safe?
Fear became a huge issue for me.
The visitation, the funeral… all a blur. Grief happened. As layers of loss hit, we felt
anger, raw emotions, felt crazy, and had tears. But we slowly healed. Life became life again.
And even sweeter than before because we had known loss.
I wish this is where the story ended.
On Christmas Eve of 1998 I once more lost one of my best friends instantly in another car accident. My reconstructed world shattered.
A second time of loss makes everything so much more complicated and painful. How could a loving God let this happen again, I wondered? I thought, “Not again, it must be some kind of mistake.” A silent scream started to grow in my heart.
In losing someone suddenly it is as if your arm has been ripped off. It feels like an awful nightmare that makes you wonder whether it will all be gone when you wake up. But instead, the nightmare goes on and you realize that this is your new life. As shattered and fragile as it is- this is it. Reality.
I have learned that you need to go through the whole process of grief, no matter how messy or painful or difficult. The reward is healing. My advice is to not let anyone tell you how to mourn or what to do. Mourn as you need to. I have realized that death will be different even if the circumstances are the same. It is different for each person you lose. It will be as different as the person who died, and the person who mourns, for the relationship will be different for everyone. The experience will be different, even if the circumstances seem frightfully similar.
The arm is gone.
(Jo) I think that a sudden death generally doesn’t give one much time to adjust to the reality of impending death, and this complicates the grief process. When death occurs suddenly it causes a trauma that interferes with understanding and accepting the reality of the death, possibly causing one to feel as if the trauma of the death is a reality “too terrible to bear”. It seems that usually the intensity of the first pain is more intense when the death was a surprise. As JK wrote, in a sudden death there is no time to do or say much. Before you know it, the one you loved is gone. In sudden death the grieving person will probably need to go over and over the trauma of the suddenness and the awfulness of what the death means to them, in order to try to accept the reality of the loss. Sometimes writing a letter to the one who died can be a helpful thing, releasing any final thoughts, sentiments or questions.
In lingering deaths, there is pain in the waiting, especially when the person is suffering or weak or wants to die. Joslin, my daughter, was considered terminal for 9 months so to me it felt like the arm that she represented was being sliced off me bit by bit.
I did struggle with acceptance of Joslin’s death especially before she died, wondering too how a loving God could let such a thing happen. During the course of time I read books about death, I journalled, I received counseling, I prayed, I cried, I wrestled with God. But the end result was the same as what JK experienced… “the arm is gone.”
In Joslin’s case, there was still trauma when she died, but she and those who loved her had time to say goodbyes and all the things they wanted to say before she was gone. (Not everyone took advantage of that, but they did have the time to do it.) Everyone was forced to grow accustomed to the fact that the chemo treatments had not worked and she was dying.
But even though we faced death for many months with my dad and daughter, when they died there was still the shock and disbelief that comes with the loss of someone you love. I still wanted to have one more hug, say one more “I love you”, laugh at one more funny joke. But their lives on earth were over. They were gone.
Mixed with that shock was an initial relief that the suffering was finally over when she died. In my case, it took several months before the deep sad came, as I faced my new life without my child.
Through Joslin’s illness we got a lot of support from people. There were calls and cards for us, benefits held and many gifts given to us. In the case of a sudden death there are gifts too, they just come in a more condensed version.
In 1991, Worden, Leick and Davidsen-Nielson described four basic tasks that the bereaved individual needs to achieve in order to integrate their experience of loss into their life and move toward investing in a new life without the lost loved one. These four basic tasks, no matter how the person died, are as follows:
1) Accepting the reality that the person died and is not returning. Often this takes 6-12 months to accomplish.
2) Working through the pain of the grief. The pain experienced at the loss of a loved one is composed of many intense emotions. Eventually the painful triggers become less frequent and may become intense mostly during anniversaries, holidays, and special events.
3 Finding a place for your memories. Keeping your loved one as part of your life is important and good. How that is done will vary from person to person.
4 Accepting your new life with its losses, and going on without your loved one. This work involves the need to take on new roles and make new kinds of contacts in the world..
(Jo) Bottom line, death is difficult no matter how you experience it. The purpose of this article is not to say one way is worse than another, but to help in understanding some of the differences and similarities of different grief experiences. I hope and pray that your own grief journey will be gentle and bring healing to you.
Whether death is sudden or lingering.
By Jo Winkowitsch and JK Loring
Each person's path will be uniquely influenced by the bereaved person's personality and history, their relationship to the one who died, the manner in which the person died, and other factors as well. To better deal with the similarities and differences in different kinds of death, I have invited a friend to write this article with me.
Introductions: I, Jo Winkowitsch have experienced prolonged illnesses of my father and daughter which led to their deaths. The goal of these articles is to inform and help people recognize and deal with their grief. I think that Grief can be a rude intruder into our lives in different ways, depending on the circumstances surrounding the death. We’ll explore that a bit in this article.
Hi, I am JK Loring. I was asked by Jo to write about sudden death of loved ones, having experienced it twice. My prayer is that in sharing parts of my story you will be blessed and encouraged.
(JK) I wish I didn’t have anything that qualified me to help write this article on the subject of sudden death, but unfortunately it showed up on my doorstep twice. It has changed my family. It has changed our lives forever. We will never be the same.
In 1995, we experienced the sudden death of a young friend who I was very close to. When we received that phone call, our world fell to pieces. It shook the very core of our family and pierced our hearts. Why? Had we done something to make God angry? What were we supposed to do? How would we ever recover? How could our lives go on?
No time to say goodbye, no time to make things right, no time for one last hug.
It was over.
My phone ringing late at night took on a life of its own.
How could I keep this from happening to my sons? Could I keep them safe?
Fear became a huge issue for me.
The visitation, the funeral… all a blur. Grief happened. As layers of loss hit, we felt
anger, raw emotions, felt crazy, and had tears. But we slowly healed. Life became life again.
And even sweeter than before because we had known loss.
I wish this is where the story ended.
On Christmas Eve of 1998 I once more lost one of my best friends instantly in another car accident. My reconstructed world shattered.
A second time of loss makes everything so much more complicated and painful. How could a loving God let this happen again, I wondered? I thought, “Not again, it must be some kind of mistake.” A silent scream started to grow in my heart.
In losing someone suddenly it is as if your arm has been ripped off. It feels like an awful nightmare that makes you wonder whether it will all be gone when you wake up. But instead, the nightmare goes on and you realize that this is your new life. As shattered and fragile as it is- this is it. Reality.
I have learned that you need to go through the whole process of grief, no matter how messy or painful or difficult. The reward is healing. My advice is to not let anyone tell you how to mourn or what to do. Mourn as you need to. I have realized that death will be different even if the circumstances are the same. It is different for each person you lose. It will be as different as the person who died, and the person who mourns, for the relationship will be different for everyone. The experience will be different, even if the circumstances seem frightfully similar.
The arm is gone.
(Jo) I think that a sudden death generally doesn’t give one much time to adjust to the reality of impending death, and this complicates the grief process. When death occurs suddenly it causes a trauma that interferes with understanding and accepting the reality of the death, possibly causing one to feel as if the trauma of the death is a reality “too terrible to bear”. It seems that usually the intensity of the first pain is more intense when the death was a surprise. As JK wrote, in a sudden death there is no time to do or say much. Before you know it, the one you loved is gone. In sudden death the grieving person will probably need to go over and over the trauma of the suddenness and the awfulness of what the death means to them, in order to try to accept the reality of the loss. Sometimes writing a letter to the one who died can be a helpful thing, releasing any final thoughts, sentiments or questions.
In lingering deaths, there is pain in the waiting, especially when the person is suffering or weak or wants to die. Joslin, my daughter, was considered terminal for 9 months so to me it felt like the arm that she represented was being sliced off me bit by bit.
I did struggle with acceptance of Joslin’s death especially before she died, wondering too how a loving God could let such a thing happen. During the course of time I read books about death, I journalled, I received counseling, I prayed, I cried, I wrestled with God. But the end result was the same as what JK experienced… “the arm is gone.”
In Joslin’s case, there was still trauma when she died, but she and those who loved her had time to say goodbyes and all the things they wanted to say before she was gone. (Not everyone took advantage of that, but they did have the time to do it.) Everyone was forced to grow accustomed to the fact that the chemo treatments had not worked and she was dying.
But even though we faced death for many months with my dad and daughter, when they died there was still the shock and disbelief that comes with the loss of someone you love. I still wanted to have one more hug, say one more “I love you”, laugh at one more funny joke. But their lives on earth were over. They were gone.
Mixed with that shock was an initial relief that the suffering was finally over when she died. In my case, it took several months before the deep sad came, as I faced my new life without my child.
Through Joslin’s illness we got a lot of support from people. There were calls and cards for us, benefits held and many gifts given to us. In the case of a sudden death there are gifts too, they just come in a more condensed version.
In 1991, Worden, Leick and Davidsen-Nielson described four basic tasks that the bereaved individual needs to achieve in order to integrate their experience of loss into their life and move toward investing in a new life without the lost loved one. These four basic tasks, no matter how the person died, are as follows:
1) Accepting the reality that the person died and is not returning. Often this takes 6-12 months to accomplish.
2) Working through the pain of the grief. The pain experienced at the loss of a loved one is composed of many intense emotions. Eventually the painful triggers become less frequent and may become intense mostly during anniversaries, holidays, and special events.
3 Finding a place for your memories. Keeping your loved one as part of your life is important and good. How that is done will vary from person to person.
4 Accepting your new life with its losses, and going on without your loved one. This work involves the need to take on new roles and make new kinds of contacts in the world..
(Jo) Bottom line, death is difficult no matter how you experience it. The purpose of this article is not to say one way is worse than another, but to help in understanding some of the differences and similarities of different grief experiences. I hope and pray that your own grief journey will be gentle and bring healing to you.
posted by Jo Winkowitsch at 3:01 PM
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