When Russell Edwards lost his wife to cancer 11 years ago he was left with two young children to raise.
“It was daunting,” he recalls. “You really feel you’re the only person this has
ever happened to.”
After a time, help from family and friends dropped away and he was on his own. Keeping on top of everything was
a juggling act. Working full time as
a mechanic meant employing someone
to collect his children from school and help with the housework. It was tough. “There’s a perception in the community that within 12 months you should be absolutely flying and almost remarried,” he laughs, “but it doesn’t happen like that. It’s a very difficult journey.”
INVISIBILITY AND DENIAL
Experts say the invisibility of grief in
our culture today is a big problem.
In Victorian England, for example, those in mourning wore black for a period
of time to alert others to their status.
In today’s society we make do with three days’ compassionate leave. That said, more people visit cemeteries than tourist attractions every weekend.
Recent research is challenging old ways of thinking about grief. The notion that it’s a linear progression with time limits has been largely discredited. There are as many ways to grieve as there are people. Most people are resilient and work through grief in their own time, but up to 20 per cent have difficulty coping. For others, experiencing such profound loss can be a catalyst for spiritual awakening.
Psychologist Christopher Hall, director of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement in Melbourne, says today’s approach to grief has been influenced by the massive number of deaths during World War I; the losses were so great that the culture couldn’t bear it, and grief was somehow deemed unpatriotic. “In many other cultures there is some identification [of a person’s grieving], either through ritual, customs or clothing, and people are given support. We’re focused on people returning to normal,” Hall says. That view is slowly starting to shift but Hall says we’re still a death-denying culture and it will take a long time for real change to come about. “We live under the assumption that bad things don’t happen to good people,” he says.
Edwards found solace in a support group at the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement. “We call it the club you don’t want to join,” he says. “You meet people from all sorts of backgrounds who are tied together by the same problem. Death is a great leveller.”
Grief has taught him patience and understanding, says Edwards, 56, who now runs a support group for bereaved partners. “If you’re prepared to face the fact that grief is intense and it hurts and if you ride right into the eye of the storm, eventually you will come out the other side. Grief brings out skills you didn’t know you had, such as being able to have empathy with someone who is struggling. I didn’t know I had that.”
THEN AND NOW
In recent years there has been a move away from the cookie-cutter approach to grief popularised from 1969 by the late Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ work on its five stages. Early research was based mainly on the experiences of white middle-class widows in the US and Britain, which is ironic given the evidence that older men are more vulnerable than women after losing a spouse. Those studies encouraged the view that grief is time-limited and there are distinct phases, such as depression and anger.
Today’s research is much more evidence based and respective of culture and gender. Hall says the focus is no longer on the stages of grief but on the tension between the reality of the loss and the new identity the bereaved person needs to carve out. “People oscillate between the two,” he says.
Counsellors at the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement have worked with people suffering disability, divorce and drug addiction, though 80 per cent of cases are death related. The centre has also been involved with communities suffering widespread redundancies, loss of culture (such as the stolen generations) and events involving mass deaths (such as the bushfires in Victoria in February 2009). “The process of reconstructing our world is a common thread,” he says.
Feelings of anxiety are common when a loved one dies. “It ruptures
the assumptions we have,” Hall says.
“We kiss someone we love as they are getting into their car and we assume they will arrive at their destination alive.”
LOSING A CHILD
Little is known about why some people cope better than others, however, deaths that are sudden or involve violence or trauma are certainly more challenging for those left behind. The fact that a number of the Victorian bushfires were caused by arson rather than nature will have an impact on how the people affected will grieve.
People who lose a child face one of the toughest challenges. “We know that mothers have poorer outcomes; it’s about the nature of that attachment and bond,” Hall says.
When Josie Costanzo’s three-year-old son drowned nine years ago she regressed. “I needed to learn how to talk and walk all over again,” she recalls. “It was so overwhelming, debilitating, shocking and devastating.” Over the next couple of years she lost interest in life: “I couldn’t get out of bed. I had two other children to care for but they lost their mum for a while.”
Costanzo sought help through the Compassionate Friends, an organisation that supports families who have lost children. Her grief threatened to isolate her from her friends. “People would say the wrong thing and I would dismiss the relationship because they didn’t understand my grief,” she says. She found it easier to connect with people who understood.
After two years Costanzo returned
to work in the family business. Today
she works with the Compassionate Friends, helping bereaved families and raising community awareness. She says it’s important to support people who
are grieving.
“Don’t say, ‘I know,’ if you really don’t know,” she advises. “Avoid platitudes like, ‘It was God’s will’ or ‘It was meant to be.’” The bereaved person has changed, so be aware of what’s now important to them. Remember, too, there’s no easy way to deal with bereavement. “There’s no time frame. It’s very unique, very individual.
It takes its own course with every person,” Costanzo says.
SUPPORT NETWORKS
Friends and family are often fearful of talking to a bereaved person about their grief. “It’s about having difficult conversations. It’s the elephant in the room. We need to acknowledge that reality,” Hall says. When someone is going through a transformation, reconciling the way the world used to be with the way it is now, often that’s a painful reconstruction. “When a person dies, a part of us dies as well,” Hall adds.
There is more recognition today that grieving is individual, and private rituals are as important as emotional expression. Hall says a woman came to see him, worried her husband wasn’t grieving for the death of their baby. He was stoically supporting her every day as she mourned their loss. What she didn’t know was that when he got in his car each morning he cried all the way to work, turning on the air vents so his shirt would be dry by the time he arrived. “More grieving gets done in cars and showers,” Hall says. “It’s about a person finding their safe place.”
Coping with loss requires patience. “You’re talking months and years rather than days or weeks,” Hall says. For instance, in the wake of this year’s Victorian bushfires the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement received an increased number of referrals from people involved in the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983. When Diana, Princess of Wales died in 1997 there were more calls from people whose parents had died in car accidents. “At a cultural level they have permission to grieve,” Hall says.
According to Hall, the people who are most at risk of chronic grief are those with little social support. “We also get people coming because their friends or family have had a gutful and say they should be over it by now,” he says. “Grief has alienated their support network.”
SPIRITUALITY AND CONNECTION
For some, grief is the start of a spiritual journey. In her book, Broken Open:
How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow (2004), Elizabeth Lesser says difficult times provide the opportunity for growth. She recommends using psychotherapy, meditation and prayer
to help cope with loss.
Lesser, who is a co-founder of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in the US, says finding 10 minutes to spend alone every day will help the grieving process. “Just go in the direction that your internal soul river is flowing instead of swimming so hard against it,” she advises as a way of processing the grief more quickly and more fully. “If we’re resisting it and pushing it away it goes underground, it goes somewhere else, it shows up as sickness, it shows up as anger.”
There has also been a move away from the idea that we have to let go or say goodbye when someone dies. “We know that death doesn’t end a relationship. Most people maintain an ongoing connection with their loved one,”
Hall says. This may take the form of visiting the cemetery or getting involved in events marking the loved one’s death, such as raising money for cancer research. Hall says such connection is complex
and helpful for many people.
“Grieving people walk a narrow path. That path is becoming wider as the culture is suggesting there are many different ways that people respond to loss,” Hall says. Grief is the price we pay for love. “It’s an expression of love, not just an expression of grief,” he reminds us.
STORIES OF SURVIVAL
Costanzo hopes her experience can help others. “I feel like I’m a living, breathing example of a survivor,” she says. “I got through it, but I’ll never use the words ‘got over it’ – that’s just a myth.”
Having emerged on the other side, Edwards now meets with newly bereaved partners each week. People ask him how long it will take to feel better. He says he doesn’t know, but he does know it helps to accept the situation they’re faced with. “Learn as much as you can from people in similar situations. Be patient and kind to yourself and work through it slowly,” he advises. “I think if I could talk to you in two years you’d be totally different.”
Edwards is now “worlds away” from where he was 11 years ago. “It was gradual and it’s been a big shift,” he says. “I’ve learned a lot through facilitating meetings and meeting people who have experienced loss and grief. It’s taught me a whole new world of understanding, learning and reading. My bookcase looks very different these days.”
Edwards has not remarried and
his two children, now in their early
20s, live with him. The home he
shared with his wife has changed very little. Photographs adorn the walls
and a few of her possessions remain.
“She’s not mentioned every day but she’s constantly remembered,” Edwards says.
“Her influence is still there, and that’s OK, we’re quite comfortable with that. She was the mother of my children and you can’t take that away.”
