Author Margaret Rice believes that we as a society need to stop being frightened of people experiencing grief. And she says that while grief is a long, hard road, it is something you can grow from.
The unfairness of death has been felt throughout history. It has always been with us and it’s always been very cruel. And when it comes to the grief that naturally ensues, I believe our way of dealing with it is quite entangled with our whole cultural attitude towards death.
In a way we’re a bit spooked by the big story in grief. And too often, our automatic reaction can be to shy away – whether that’s intentional or more to do with our own internal dialogue with the themes of grief and death.
Particularly when it’s a big grief – like the loss of a child, a parent or a life partner – I find that people can become quite frightened of another person’s grief. That’s like it was for me, when I lost my mother and then eight weeks later lost my brother – and there are surprising numbers of people who’ve experienced a tragedy like that, with one death very close to another.
I think it is true to some extent that until you’ve experienced a big grief in your own life, or you’ve thought about death a lot and have come to terms with your own mortality, it’s very hard to say something to somebody who’s in the death space because they’ve been forced there by the death of someone they love.
It’s so unfortunate that we underestimate our value and what we can do that’s positive for a person who’s grieving. I think people feel as though if they say something and it’s the wrong thing or it doesn’t quite come out right, then that would be worse than having said nothing at all.
But in fact, that’s not the case at all. Overwhelmingly the studies, statistics and reports show that people feel when somebody’s tried to connect with them in their grief, that even if they get the messaging slightly wrong, it’s better than avoiding them.
It’s far better for us just to be able to say to somebody: “I don’t know what to say to you. This is a very sad thing that’s happened to you and I’m a little bit scared of saying the wrong thing, but I just want you to know that I’m here for you.”
Because at the end of the day, it’s about being present to people.
It’s simply about being nuanced enough and brave enough to be able to be with people without actually needing to feel as though we’ve got to say or fix something. And acknowledging the depth of their feelings.
It’s simply about being nuanced enough and brave enough to be able to be with people without actually needing to feel as though we’ve got to say or fix something. And acknowledging the depth of their feelings.
And being consistent. So if you have always had a weekly cup of coffee with someone, and then they suffer a tragedy, don’t make excuses not to be there. Keep that regular communication up. Or if you’ve always called someone on a semi-regular basis, don’t stop.
And sometimes the grieving people themselves are stuck in a space of grief – especially in the early days – where they actually don’t want to let go of that grief because they might think that means they’re going to forget the person. They’re not ready to move on yet.
And we do have to be very careful that we don’t make judgements about how long or short a person’s grief should be or what stage of grief they should be at.
Some people have to sit with grief, some people don’t want to look at it, and some people don’t want to look away from it. There are all sorts of different reactions to grief and everybody deals with it differently.
But there are going to be circumstances where we’re just going to have to be able to deal with that. That’s life. Whether it’s our sister-in-law who’s upset because she’s lost a child, a friend who has lost a parent, or someone else close to us where we can’t side-step it.
And nor should we.
There’s a theory out there that a woman’s reaction to grief is different to a man’s reaction – that the man’s reaction might be more task-oriented and it might be a less emotional one. I don’t know about that. I think those stories are being re-written a bit.
But what does emerge is, not so much about how the person themself feels about the grief, but what society imposes on them about their grief, based on their gender. It’s as though society has come to, in some way, expect that a man won’t want or need to cry as much as a woman. Or that a woman will take longer to recover than a man.
For example, people will go up to a man after the death of his child and ask “How is your wife coping?”, rather than asking about his emotions. We tend to expect men to be more silent and stoic, to turn inwards or be silent about their grief. But is that what the man wants or what we want of the man who’s grieving?
We’ve got to give people permission to step out of the gender stereotypes a bit. Especially if we’re trying to support them in their grief.
When you’re in the middle of that worst phase of grief, it can be hard to believe that life will ever get better.
When you’re in the middle of that worst phase of grief, it can be hard to believe that life will ever get better.
An existential counsellor once said to me: “I can’t promise you that you’ll get better quickly, but I can promise you that eventually you will get back a sense of the meaning of life.” At the time I thought that was impossible. It took me years – several years – to get to a point where everything had meaning again.
And it was a long, hard road. But it did happen. And writing the book was part of the way, for me as a writer, to get that back. Life is different after, but the grief does get better.
I’d say I’m a different person on the other side of my experience. It definitely made me much stronger and, actually, I think I’m better on the other side of it. Psychologists talk about this idea of post-traumatic growth, and I think I have experienced that, as have many others.
Believe it or not, death is something that you can grow from.
And for all of us, by simply getting more comfortable with being around someone who is in that space, we can all grow and find ourselves better equipped to deal with this very difficult but very natural part of life.
Margaret Rice regularly shares her insights at good-grief.com.au. She also recently released her book ‘A Good Death: A compassionate and practical guide to prepare for the end of life’.
Read an extra from the book here:
