Grieving the living.

by

After forty nine years on the planet I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve learned to embrace my fears.

I’ve learned about forgiveness and resilience.

I’ve learned the importance of growth even when I’d prefer stagnation.

I’d thought I’d learned acceptance around loss of relationships and how to rebound.

Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

I’d mastered the listed lessons, but there was one I’d not yet completed.

How to grieve the living.

How to mourn the loss of a human not returning to *my* life, yet who’s still happily existing.

I didn’t know how to honor the way the relationship changed me (& how without her I felt empty) even though I knew it had come to its logical conclusion.

And, as with all things I’m befuddled by, I like to think you’re challenged by these same scenarios.

And a blog post was born.

4 stept process to grieving the living

Feel the sads.

For me the hardest part of grieving someone still around was found in the minutia of daily living.

I’d see/hear something only the two of us would find funny and my instinct would be: XXX would love this! I should share it with her!

And then depression set in.

Well-meaning friends would say Tell *me* all that stuff. I’ll laugh!! —but it wasn’t the same.

My biggest lesson around grieving a human who’s alive but gone from my life was the realization mourning is appropriate.

It’s OK to have reflex feelings of sadness when these moments hit and it’s more than OK to pause and embrace these bittersweet feelings.

In my situation, it felt less miserable to imagine how my ‘missing person’ would have experienced the triggering moment than to attempt to replicate with someone else.

For me the former was sad, the latter seemed sad plus hollow.

Look in the rear-view mirror…

but don’t set up residency there.

Remember the person is still here just not in your life at the moment.

Remember the present moment doesn’t override a shared past.

Even though the current relationship has shifted it doesn’t change the connection you’d experienced.

Resist the urge to purge your literal/metaphorical space of remembrances. Instead designate a finite period of time to reflect.

Consciously stop and acknowledge the good this person brought to your life and the impact she had on your world.

Trust your gut.

AKA do not do the ‘reach out and try to repair‘ which is born from a sense of loneliness.

Or, more candidly put,  if you’re Carla don’t do it more than, say, 10 times.

Maybe it’s not too late? Maybe we can fix this? Maybe I overestimated the rift?

Let it go.

Don’t slam the door.

Don’t burn bridges (we never know what’s coming down the path).

Do listen to your gut (or spiritual intuitive if you need levity-filled guidance) and release for the present moment.

When we become still and are open to hearing what our intuition is telling us—we know what to do.

Exhale.

It’s important to remember, whatever the relationship, it wouldn’t have ended if it were meant to exist in its current state.

A sense of freedom/ability to fully exhale, however, only arrives when we take responsibility for creating false expectations.

These flawed expectations take myriad forms (I need you to behave a certain way to live in my home. I want you to be something you simply cannot.) yet when we’re honest with ourselves we can see they’re there.

Whether the relationship was romantic, friend or familial love it’s as nuanced, layered and simple as unmet expectations.

When I paused and assumed responsibility for unrealistic expectations I’d placed on my person my emotions shifted.

I was able to experience gratitude for the relationship and, more than that, deep appreciation for all I’d learned throughout its process.

I was able to exhale.

Did these steps aid me in handling my post-relationship ending grief?

Yes.

Did these steps immediately heal/allow me to move forward sans sense of loss?

Absolutely not.

For me grief is an attempt to make sense of a situation and pushing myself to ‘just know’ something else lies ahead.

For me grief is the Yung Pueblo notion we cannot erase memories (nor should we desire to) but we can release the heavy energies attached to them.

And you?

  • Have you grieved the loss of someone still alive? How did YOU handle it?

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Comments

  1. This is fantastic. Best friend and I broke up last year and the reasons why aren’t important, but it sent me into a depression tailspin which was hard to pull myself out of.

  2. 6 years ago I had to kick my son out of the house. It was the hardest thing I ever did and because I chose to do it friends didn’t understand why it felt like a really big loss.

    I can’t explain it well, but thank you for this. That is all I needed to say.

  3. I hear you in my head a lot about the rearview mirror thing and how I shouldn’t look there, but instead at the windshield.

    I really like that you say here you do look in the rearview mirror. I’m struggling with losing a romantic relationship I thought was for ever and I get mad at myself every time I look in the rearview mirror.

    You are really wise. Anyone who has you in her life is really lucky.

  4. I have.
    I wish I could sit down and tell you the whole story over a pot of puerh tea.
    My grief had anger and bargaining. My grief made me act out of fear.
    I finally took a deep breath and let go of what was and what would never be again.
    Now I march forward. There is still some occasional sadness and fear but joy has returned bit by bit.
    Hugs to you!

  5. I wish we were friends in real life because I would have the longest saddest story to share and I think your musings would help me turn it into a sweet tale.
    I wish we were friends in real life because I would tell you anyone who would let you go from her world is crazy.
    You for me are the living embodiment of an actualized human.

  6. I think somehow you are rustling around in my brain. How do you know what “I” need to hear? How do you know how “I” feel? How do you make me feel so not alone in my weirdness? How do you always seem to honor the big feeling ball that is me?

    Thank you. For making me feel so not alone. For giving me hope.
    Probably more than you can even imagine!

  7. Yes. All of this. I tried to read books on grieving loss but they’ve been narrowly focused on honoring those
    who have passed. I needed this today. I need this for the next days to come.

  9. My daughter. Who I havent had a relationship to speak of for almost 4 years. Who will be 18 in 2 months. Who I fully expect to never have a relationship with again. How did I do it? First off, I wrapped myself in the rest of my household’s love for me and desperately tried to acknowledge and accept that this was not *my* doing. Did I play a part into the narrative? Most definitely. But her warped perception of reality and the one leading her down that path were truly to blame and there was absolutely *NOTHING* I could do to change it other than compromise the potential safety of 4 other children along with myself and my significant other. To pursue a relationship within the parameters she had set gave me anxiety and fears. So how have I dealt with it? Placing the importance of wellbeing on those inside the walls of my house. Does it still tear me up that the one child, the first, that I desperately wanted (the others were wanted but not *tried* for) was choosing to remove herself from my life? Yes. Are there good memories with her in them? Of course. But I think the saddest part is that so many more happy memories exist with my 2 youngers unfettered by my oldest’s controlling attitude. We are actually happier and more peaceful here without her than the 12 years she was a sister and in my care. It is 100% a situation for mourning.

  10. So well expressed. Grieving those sitting right over there is one of trickiest, most challenging situations I’ve ever encountered. Stillness, observation, meditation. Xoxo

  11. Oh my God, Carla, I needed this post. I haven’t talked about it anywhere, but I am enduring the “loss” of my son and grandchildren because of the mental issues (my explanation) of their mother. It has been so difficult and I don’t know if things will ever change.

    My daughter-in-law has cut me off several times during the time she has been married to my son. Usually over imagined offenses that I committed, it was always difficult to know what would set her off. This last time was over a year ago, I tried all the building of bridges things, but none worked. My son, who I now think of as a man who is “fill in the blank” whipped, has done nothing to help, even threatening to report(?) my husband who was only trying to help. It is a sad, sad thing.

    It was hard to get over the blaming myself phase, but it really has nothing to do with me. She, over the years, has cut off her own family, and now my niece, with whom she was close. It really is all about her, I just have to bear the brunt of the anguish of not seeing my grandchildren.

  12. Great timing–even though my son is a freshman at college and I know he’ll be home, I miss him terribly! It’s not the same as losing a friend tho. I was unceremoniously dumped by a friend about 10 years ago. She was my BFF and I adored her. It was always Wendy and XX. XX and Wendy. But she decided I wasn’t what she wanted any more–she wanted the party people in my neighborhood. It was abrupt and it was painful. I was crushed. Not only did she sever our relationship, she took a few other friends with her. People are funny like that. While I obviously moved on, I still harbor hurt when I think about it. I will never understand people who do this, but yes, I grieved this friendship for a very long time.

  13. Life is full of reasons why, some of which we just don’t remember when we choose to look back. I reconnected (a couple times) with someone I thought I might have misjudged, been at fault in the relationship, just missed THAT much that I could only remember the good parts. And there WERE plenty of good parts. But when I reconnected, I remembered why it failed in the first place (the relationship was romantic) years later, I tried to reach out to him as a friend. Things seemed OK for the first COUPLE DAYS. He’s in a long term relationship now with the woman I thought he might have been cheating on me with, and has a child with her. His life seemed stable. Then, after less than a week being friends on FB, he asked me to be his “Sancha”. Even though we decided to try to stay friends after that, we really never talked much, only shared memes about teaching on FB, and I eventually just dropped him from my friends list.

    One of the hardest things about the loss of someone still living is that the rear-view mirror tends to have a bit of a rose-colored tint to it.

  14. Very thoughtful and I feel your pain. I’m still haunted by a past relationship that ended for reasons I don’t know. She just stopped communicating with me.

    Rena

  16. I lost the cousins I grew up with, my best friends in the world since birth over something they thought I should have done differently. I can’t go back and change it. They’ve cut me off completely. I was blindsided and I’ve been devastated for almost 2 years over it. I’m still not over it. Maybe one day.

  17. My husband had strokes that severely changed his memory and personality. He decided he hated me and divorced me. The saddest thing is that our boys essentially lost their dad, yet he’s still alive. His body is their dad, while his mind and actions are not. It is hard for them to grieve, because he seems to be there. Yet he’s not.

  20. Every loss requires some form of grieving–child, relationship, marriage, friend, parent, spouse, kids growing up–you name it. It’s the way we get through it because there’s no way around it or over it. I also once heard the term “Tincture of Time.” Loss is something very important that just has to be experienced over a period of time. A year is common and minimal but sometimes not enough.

    Please note that with siblings my experience and observation tells me that waiting 10 years is better. One party or the other has to learn something and then things can come together. No, they’ll never go back. Time doesn’t work that way. We all become new people as time goes on, but relationships can resume. I know. It happened to me. It was more than 20 years but it happened. Now I have a sibling again.

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