Many of us have lost loved ones during this past pandemic year, either due to the virus or otherwise. This serious loss has a number of effects on us – practical, emotional, and in changing our perspective on life. Social psychologists are studying the effect on human beings of having the foreknowledge that our time is limited.
This awareness, maybe unique to humans, not only affects how we conduct our own lives, but it influences religious and spiritual beliefs and institutions. Losing a loved one, particularly before they normally might be expected to die, brings our mortality home to us dramatically.
Grieving a personal loss like a death is an emotional process and one that also changes us. Grieving a death often takes a calendar year to process 80 per cent of our feelings and adjustments, and a second full year to complete the healing, though we will in some ways never be the same.
It is not the time itself that is the key to this, but it is the necessity of going through each season, each holiday, and each significant event-memory without that person we lost.
There is not really a typical or ideal sequence of grief phases, such as bargaining, anger, denial, sadness, and acceptance. Rather, each person experiences grief in their own way, feeling each of these elements in different orders, some repeatedly, and some not at all. We do know that expressing our feelings of any kind to another person helps us move through grieving faster and better.
Some grieving people experience being changed for the better and feeling stronger as they adjust to their loss. We are reminded of the importance of making every day and every encounter with others count positively. We learn to pay more attention, to express the best side of ourselves, and to value kindness, tolerance of others, self-understanding, and self-acceptance. We learn not to take things for granted.
Some of us who have lost someone close gradually feel more confident as we learn to cope without the person who died. We rely on others more, but we also learn about our own resilience. We may feel relief, too, if we had been caring for a loved one who was seriously ill, in pain, and debilitated, and we may have more energy as we keep adjusting.
Designing, attending, and participating in our loved one’s funeral definitely helps us focus on how we ourselves want to be remembered, and this too helps us refocus our priorities and our outlook on life. A funeral can give closure, which helps begin the grieving, and it can bring us closer to the family and friends who are there to remember and support.
The death of loved ones, premature or timely, tragic or peaceful, helpfully reminds us that we are not ultimately in control of events and that everything ends sometime. These awarenesses help us not “play defence” too much in life.
Research shows that approaching life defensively – taking precautions, being careful, trying not to be unprepared or to let anything bad happen – is associated with less happiness, less satisfaction, poorer health, and poorer relationships than if we were to “play offence.”
People who generally play offence have a positive attitude, try for what they want, take some calculated risks, reach out to others, open up about their mistakes, are less self-critical and are proactive overall.
In this regard, I have found over the years working in therapy that very often people eventually regret what they have not done in life, but that they much less often regret things they did try, even if those efforts did not work out.
It can happen often after a death, especially a sudden or unexpected death, that we find ourselves eventually valuing life more, being more aware of the time we have left, trying less to prevent problems, and taking some chances to go after what we want while we can.
Grieving is natural, necessary, and temporary, and though we will treasure the memories of time with our lost loved one, it can lead us to an even fuller participation in life.
