by Howard Miller

Created on: September 07, 2008   Last Updated: November 01, 2008

What can I tell you about coping with the most difficult grief that we can experience? I can tell you what I have learned in over forty years of practicing and teaching psychotherapy and I can tell you from the personal experience of losing a beautiful, bright, and kind 23 year old son who was just embarking on the voyage of life. What I cannot tell you is that there is any easy answer to the pain or any shortcut for the healing.

I can tell you what to expect, a few things to do, and some important things to avoid. No two people grieve exactly alike, but there are common experiences. Knowing some things to expect can help through the hardest times.

Expect to hurt, intensely and long. Do not expect the pain to go away or even get much better in days or weeks. Understand that pain is part of healing and learning to live without someone you loved. Trying to avoid this pain impairs healing. Let yourself mourn, grieve, and rail against the fates; do not try to avoid feeling the loss. In weeks or months, you will experience increasingly frequent periods of time free from the unremitting pain. Expect to feel some guilt when you find yourself laughing, or even enjoying something for the first time, but realize it is not disloyalty or callousness to live your life, again. You have no other choice.

You will ask yourself what you did wrong or what you could have done differently. Thinking about missed opportunities and regrets is inevitable. Know that these feelings are normal and that there is no relationship that is free of lost opportunities or some regrets. Learn some things you might want to do differently with your surviving loved ones. Learn what you can from tragedy. This is its only benefit.

What is called, survivor guilt, is also common. Why not me? Why my good, innocent child who never had the opportunity to experience as much of life as I did? Never ask why; it is unanswerable.

Take time to mourn and time not to. Allow yourself times in which you grieve intensely and times you avoid doing so. Make yourself enjoy new activities or do ones you once enjoyed, sometimes alone, sometimes with others.

When to share grief and when to grieve alone is one of the most important issues in healing. Everyone needs to balance grieving alone and grieving with others who care. Remember, spouses, other children, and even close friends share the loss. Consoling each other, sharing the experience and simply feeling the support of others who understand is a crucial part of healing. But mourning alone is equally important. No one shares all of your feelings. Find your own balance between sharing your grief and feeling it alone. You need both.

The sadness will never go away completely, but it will get much better. Cry when you need to. I am now, and it has been over five years.

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