Emotional content alert. For those who follow the blog, I touch into serious matters at times and today is one of them. The recent loss of a friend was not unexpected in one sense. He had a couple of different health issues and apparently another one or two that hadn’t quite manifested. Without getting into unnecessary detail, the rapidity of his decline is what took many of us by surprise.

For anyone who has dealt with the loss of a spouse, that, and the loss of a child (not something I have personally experienced) have dynamics that cannot be truly understood without having suffered that particular loss. People may care deeply about you, offer sympathy and support. That does help, is appreciated, and and it’s good to do. The irony is, of course, the one single thing you want is to have the individual back and that is the one single thing that can not happen. After the initial “buffering of shock” passes, there are so many actions to be taken and then there is your life in the new stage. One of the things difficult to grasp is there isn’t a “straight line” in dealing with the grief. I don’t recall how long it was after the famous “Stages of Grief” was published when the author explained she never intended for it to be taken as a “timeline”. There is no – “okay, it’s been X amount of time, so you should be at Y.” Other people around you get on with their lives and most of us adopt a public facade for the sake of those people. How one feels and deals with the grief in private depends on the individual. There is nothing good about having cared for a person in long-term decline and while that loss might be “expected”, it doesn’t necessarily make it less painful. The finality of death is what can be difficult. The lingering scent of someone’s clothes, the favorite foods you no longer buy or cook; the act of now cooking for one. These are things that seem small and yet can be emotionally draining. Time does help, if you allow it to do so. However, you can’t dictate how much time it will take.