One thing that many of us will hear when it is our time to grieve for a loved one is this: there is no time limit on grief. While it is true that we all process our grief at different speeds (and some of us will be permanently reshaped by grief) it is also true that the nature of grief evolves.
It can feel scary to consider grief as something that may never truly leave us, but this knowledge does reduce the pressure to move on before we are ready. In so many cases, grief is not something we simply ‘get over’ – it’s something to learn to live alongside as it changes with us. So how does grief change over time?
Early Grief is Often Defined by Despair or Numbness
The way that we react in the first days and weeks of a loved one dying depends on many factors. Our age, life experience, the circumstances in which they died, our relationship with them, what other traumas we might be facing – it all plays a part.
For example, cases of “cumulative grief”, where we lose people in close succession, may hit us harder. It may also be the case that losing someone unexpectedly, or while we are still in our teenage years or early adulthood, can be more shocking and harder to cope with.
There are no rules to grief, however. Most of us will have heard of the five stages of grief, but the order in which we experience them, how long they last, and the ways in which they may fade only to reappear is entirely individual.
For most people, however, the initial stage of grief tends to be the rawest. This is where the keeness of the loss is often felt most acutely, and may manifest itself as a physical ache. We may feel exhausted and full of unbearable sadness. Conversely, we may not be able to feel anything at all, or an “inappropriate” emotion like relief – with an accompanying sense of guilt.
Starting to Remerge From Grief
Picking yourself up from the initial sadness, shock and the crushing nature of grief has no time period. But whether it’s through choice or necessity, there will come a point where going back out into the world, even partially, will be a reality.
Perhaps it’s the first time you accept a dinner invitation from a friend that you’ve been rejecting, or perhaps it’s just that you’ve finally stopped crying every day, with moments when you feel as though life is proceeding as it might have before. The moments may be, admittedly, fleeting. But it’s hopefully a sign that healing is starting to take place.
Unfortunately, for those looking in on someone else’s grief, this change in behaviour – a loved one’s reappearance into their social circle, or a slightly cheerier attitude – could be mistaken as having “moved on” from their loss and able to carry on as they did before. For the grieving person, this is an entirely unique sort of stress. It may not be as upsetting as the initial stages, but it’s only natural to feel pressure or tension.
For both the grieving individual and family and friends, this period may be one of uncertainty and of learning. Boundaries may have to be set and it’s likely that even as you attempt to re-emerge into your social life, you will find that certain topics may trigger you. Patience is key
Learning From Grief
When the days, weeks and months of tears have eventually subsided, when you feel like you can enjoy a joke, have fun at a party and return to a semblance of normalcy, to perhaps feel like yourself again, what sometimes follows is a period of reflection. Death, for all the pain that it brings, can also teach us an extraordinary amount about life itself, what we want, and how we are living our own lives.
Of course, it’s important to remember that while some people may truly be able to move past their grief, to live their lives completely as they did before, for others, this is simply not the case. Life may be able to go on, but on some level, they feel that their loss has fundamentally changed them. This is often the case with a significant loss, such as that of a parent or life partner. These sorts of deaths often signify not only the loss of a loved one, but of a whole new stage in someone’s life that they must now understand and live through.
When it comes to these significant losses that can alter the course of your life, it is likely that the pain will never truly subside as though it was never there to begin with. Rather, it shifts into something that becomes a part of yourself going forward, something that you carry with you for the rest of your life and that defines your personality and certain decisions you may end up making. Rather than the grief consuming us as it perhaps had during the initial period of despair, it lives as a part of us, alongside us, reminding us of what is important in life and of the lessons that our loved ones taught us.
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It’s hard for us to understand the way that grief will change over time, especially if it’s the first time we’ve experienced it. And while we cannot predict how we will react, or force ourselves to move on in accordance with other people’s wishes, what we can do is understand one thing; for most of us, grief will slowly subside, even if it is not in a perfect downward curve, and even if it may not ever truly leave us.
There may be spikes, there may be moments that trigger us. But ultimately, we understand that without grief, there is no life. All we can hope is that in the end, we learn something from it, we cherish our bonds with others, and truly appreciate all that life has to offer, no matter what stage of grief we are in.
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