Before All Is Said and Done by Pat Miles & Pat Miles Zimmerman & Suzanne Watson

Author:Pat Miles & Pat Miles Zimmerman & Suzanne Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Made for Success
Published: 2022-08-27T07:05:08+00:00

Grief Is Not a Linear Process

Anne said that many people read the book On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in which she describes the stages people go through to process their own mortality. But Anne points out that Kubler-Ross was not writing about how to process the death of a loved one. Anne says people who apply Kubler-Ross’s theories to a loss run into two problems. First, people look at those stages and apply them to the grieving process, and second, people think of the stages as timelines they should move through.

But, she says, the reality is the stages of grief are not stair steps—grief is not a linear process. So, someone may move through the anger stage and then six months later be right back in it. Anne said that can be especially true when a partner has died by suicide, and that’s OK. Everyone needs to move through grief in their own way and in their own timeline.

I learned from Anne that all grief, especially when suicide is involved, will ebb and flow over time. It goes from causing total desolation to accepting the suicide as just another fact about the person’s life. She encourages her patients to understand that the loss never stops being important, and they may never stop missing their loved ones, but the way in which the person died lessens in importance.

After my discussion with Anne, I better understood the complexities of dealing with grief when a spouse has died by suicide. But I wanted to know more about what advice or resources are available to help work through the unique problems associated with that type of death. I reached out to Carolyn Kinzel, founder and president of Brighter Days Family Grief Center, to get her perspective.

Carolyn was working in the real estate and mortgage industries when her business partner lost his wife and son in a helicopter crash. She watched as his life spiraled out of control; he was traumatized by the sudden death of his wife and overwhelmed trying to care for their three-year-old daughter.

She began a search for grief centers that could help him but found there was no such entity in the state. She spoke with other people who had lost spouses and found they also were floundering. They needed help with practical issues—how to file for Social Security, how to close out social media accounts, or how to deal with probate. Those mundane issues paled in comparison to finding adequate assistance in helping children through the loss of a parent.

Carolyn was frustrated by the lack of pragmatic, useful counseling available to her partner. And then her own life took an unexpected turn. She was a single mom who had not married the father of her son, but he had stayed a part of his son’s life. One day, two detectives knocked on her door. They informed her that the father of her son had died by suicide. Unfortunately, her son, aged thirteen, was walking past the door as the detectives delivered the news.

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