Who Defines Your Grief?

I’d shared the story of having someone from hospice come to talk to our church’s grade schoolers about grief. The parents were supportive but some of them couldn’t see the point of it. After all, when did these kids have to deal with grief?

Turns out, they all had faced some kind of loss. I shared that some had lost grandparents or beloved pets, and a family was moving away so some were losing best friends.

A commentator jumped on to lecture me that she’d grown up as an Army brat, and had moved every 2-3 years throughout her childhood, and that moving away from a friend was nothing like losing a grandparent, and how dare I suggest that they were even in the same ballpark.

Of course moving away from a friend wasn’t a big deal to her because she did it all the time. She never had the best friend with whom she’d grown up, the friend she saw multiple times a week, the friend who was as close as a sibling, the friend she’d never been without for her entire life. 

Who defines your grief? 
I have two saucepans that belonged to my grandmother. In them she made mashed potatoes, cooked green beans for so long that every shred of nutrition was boiled out of them, and cooked the pasta for her mac and cheese that she made because it was my favorite. I treasure that connection. 

I was away at college when she died. I was sad but also relieved for my mom that her heavy burden of caregiving was done. I was sad but the grief didn't lay heavy on my heart.

On the other hand, in my adult life when my two dogs died within months of each other I wasn’t just sad. I was gutted. Absolutely gutted.

Sometimes we judge ourselves harshly because we don’t have the grief we feel that we should feel and the grief that we do feel seems inappropriate.

Who defines our grief?

Although I loved my grandmother and I have no doubt that she loved me, she wasn’t the kind to have me stay for a week for “grandparent’s camp.” We never did special things together.

Only in the last years of her life did I learn that she’d been married before, that her first husband was an alcoholic whom she divorced. I wish I'd had a chance to talk with her about how a young woman at the turn of the twentieth century found such courage, but we didn't have those kinds of conversations.

My dogs, on the other hand, were intricately woven in the fabric of my everyday  life. They were my routine minders, entertainment providers, and wellness partners who got me outside for walks and runs, all wrapped up in unconditional love. The loss of my dogs hit me harder because they were so glaringly absent over the course of my day.

When faced with someone who is grieving, be curious about their grief. What does this loss mean to them? What does this loss mean for their worlds?

Let them be the ones to define their own loss.

(An earlier version of this article appeared in the eNews from Pinnacle Leadership Associates.)