Live by Design is a weekly News24 column about mortality and the conversations surrounding it, by Dr Helena Dolny and Mapi Murang.
Met a friend for lunch. Her answer to her question, “How are you doing?” was, “The water level is a little high.”
As she said this, tears filled her eyes and she dabbed them away. She lost her beloved pet. I listened to her. Symptoms of her pet's unwellness, her worries, the visit to the vet, the fact that she briefed the kennel owner about her pet's unwellness before leaving on her vacation….
And the anxiety when the kennel owner called and advised that the symptoms were worsening and that he needed to return to the vet. Eventually, his friend's daughter sat with her mother's pet while the veterinarian performed the euthanasia.
My friend quotes a line from a poem by John O'Donoghue About sadness:
When you lose someone you love,
your life goes crazy
The ground beneath my feet becomes fragile;
Your thoughts make your eyes unsteady…
It can be even more difficult when a beloved animal dies and we are gone. In fact, I've even heard the comment that our absence creates room for death, and that applies to humans as well. As a grief counselor, I try to offer this perspective as an antidote to what O'Donoghue calls “flickers of guilt.”
For me, it was easy enough to go along with the prevailing atmosphere of sadness.
A month ago, on March 19th, I sent a WhatsApp message to a dear friend who lives in the UK. I asked if we could have lunch together at the British Museum restaurant on June 15th. It's a forward planner!
Later that day, I received the following reply: “No way! It's a more forward-looking plan than I've done in years past, but let's just assume it's okay. You'll recognize me, I'm smiling broadly on the stairs in 2019. Russell Street entrance is at 12:45. ”
When I entered the appointment in my diary, that lovely phrase brought a smile to my face.
But that lunch will never happen now. Last week I received a call telling me that a friend of mine had passed away. Although I was a supporting role in the larger panorama of that person's life, my heart still hurts, and as my animal-loving friend puts it, my water level seems to be rising a little.
O’Donoghue writes:
And while this loss hurt others too,
No one knows what was taken from you…
As you say; no one else knows what a particular loss means to you, whether it's the loss of a person, a pet, a job, or a child leaving home to start an independent life as a young adult.
Some people are critical and have a mental hierarchy of grief, believing that their grief over the death of a human being is higher than the death of a pet. The loss of a child ranks higher than the loss of a spouse or parent.
My lived experience, and what I have learned theoretically as a grief educator, is that grief is grief, no matter its cause. it hurts! Many of us will have a similar experience, but each time it is unexpectedly different.
Some days I wake up happy.
In a fulfilling life again…
Suddenly, without any warning,
You are overwhelmed with sadness.
O'Donoghue encourages us to be patient with ourselves. We sit with the sorrow as it comes upon us.
Sorrow will remain true to itself,
It knows its way better than you.
My preferred approach to grief work is that of Canadian expert Thomas Attig. In his work, How we grieve: Relearning the world, he explains how our losses can undermine the very essence of ourselves. He explains that grief work requires us to relearn how to interact with the world in the face of the losses we have endured.
For example, the person who was fired was placed in a position that involved a position and a set of relationships. Having lost their jobs, they need to redefine a new identity. Owners of deceased pets end up returning to empty homes with no animals to greet them at the door. A young immigrant woman who always returned to her orphaned mother's home will miss her mother's caress and her favorite dishes. What new patterns do each create to rebuild their world and ease the pain of loss? Overcoming grief involves rearranging one's inner self, accepting a new identity. It is necessary.
In my book Before is forever then, I wrote about my dear friend Getty, whose beloved Alan died young from a brain tumor. They had shared their lives for decades. Getty said he had three losses. It is the loss of the person she loves, the loss of her unique and intimate self as seen in that person's eyes, and the loss of her social status.
Grief has no timeline. Experts say people should be prepared to “revert back to the dark ages of loss” for several years in some cases, with the worst possible first year being the first anniversary or first celebration.
Ultimately, you will become the architect of the life you choose to shape from the point of that loss.
Cover of Before Forever After by Dr. Helena Dolny. (staging post)
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