Dr. Neill Neill

Grief is an emotion we all will experience at some point in life. The loss through death of someone near to us is an inevitable part of life. Intellectually, we all get this truth, but experientially, it takes some of us a long time to get the lesson.

My oldest daughter, the mother of my first grandchild and the grandmother of my two great grandchildren, died suddenly three weeks ago in Ontario.

She had liver disease, but she had told me it was in remission. One night she stopped breathing. Over the next 15 hours, the medical people aggressively treated her, restarting her heart 3 times. Then, as I understand it, her liver shut down and she was gone quickly. It all happened so fast that only her husband Tim and brother Ian were able to be with her when she died.

Apparently, she got an infection through some lesions. The doctors began treating the infection as soon as they diagnosed it, but it was too late.

I was in my early 30’s when I adopted Monique at 14. She grew up to be a generous and kind woman. She was very intelligent and a voracious reader. I didn’t see her very often, but whenever we did get together, it was always a friendly and happy reunion.

Monique had her internal demons, and over the years, she used alcohol to quell those demons. We will never know for sure whether the alcohol caused the liver disease and ultimate liver failure. But it doesn’t matter. She lived the best life she knew how to live.

I find myself again reflecting on past lessons in acceptance I have struggled with, on son Colin dying nine months ago and on son Richard dying just over two years ago.

As human beings, we all grieve, and most of us recover and rebuild eventually. No two of us are the same in the ways we handle our grieving. I have written about this before.

What I am now getting my heart and head around is that the grieving process is different, not only for each person grieving, but also for each loss. As I look back over the many deaths I have faced in my life, the grieving process has varied tremendously. It is not that it gets easier; it may even be harder because the connection has had longer to deepen.

Some losses produced many tears; others called for ritual. A couple of deaths required talking, therapy and psychic help; another, silent meditation, and one, a three-month journey. There is no right way. There is no one-size-fits-all in grieving.

It pains me to hear someone say, "I haven’t grieved." It usually means they haven’t shed tears. Crying is only one of the many ways people grieve. I never cried over my brother’s death by suicide 30+ years ago, and I felt guilty for a long time about why I hadn’t grieved. Fifteen years later I realized I had long since completed my grieving his death; I was at complete peace with his life and death. Isn’t that the point of grieving?

I learned never to equate not crying with not grieving. Everyone grieves.

So be gentle with yourself and others in grief. There is much room for empathy, but little for judgment.