When you’ve lost someone: grief, a new chapter, and staying close

This page is for anyone who has lost a husband, wife, partner or someone close, including those who have shared many years with them. It is also for grown children who have lost a parent, and for brothers and sisters grieving together, or apart. There is nothing here you have to do. Read the part you need, at your own pace, and come back whenever you like.

• Grief has no timetable
• When your family grieves differently
• Your children and grandchildren
• What to say, and how to listen
• When grief and money split a family
• A new chapter
• For a hard evening
• When to get more help

Grief has no timetable

Grief is a natural response to losing someone. It is not a problem to be solved, and there is no right way or right speed to do it.

You may have heard of the “five stages” of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described them in 1969, from her work with dying patients. They became famous, but research doesn’t support them as a fixed sequence that everyone moves through. Many people don’t feel all of them, feel them in a different order, or come back to some. If your grief doesn’t follow the list, nothing is wrong with you.

A more helpful picture comes from Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut. They noticed that grieving people tend to swing back and forth between two things:

• Facing the loss: remembering, missing them, crying, looking at photographs.
• Getting on with daily life: paying the bills, learning new routines, seeing friends, resting, even laughing.

Both are part of healthy grieving. A good morning followed by a hard afternoon is not going backwards. Enjoying something is not a betrayal of the person you lost, and a sudden wave of sadness months later is not a sign you are “stuck.”

Research by George Bonanno found that many bereaved people show resilience, keeping fairly steady in daily life, and that the path grief takes varies widely from person to person. There is no schedule you should be keeping to.

It is also healthy to stay connected to the person who died. Dennis Klass and colleagues called this “continuing bonds”: talking to them, keeping a few of their things, marking their birthday, asking yourself what they would say. You don’t have to “let go” to move forward.

Wanting to be alone for a while is common too. Going quiet, turning down invitations, needing the house to yourself: for many people this is part of grieving, and it often eases with time. If it doesn’t, the last section of this page has some gentle next steps.

For a little more on the research, see Grief, loss and change in the Library.

For how grief works, in plain words: Part Three, Chapter 8: Loss, grief and big life changes.

When your family grieves differently

People in the same family often grieve in very different ways. One person wants to talk about them every day. Another keeps busy: the garden, the paperwork, fixing things. Neither is wrong, and neither loved them less.

The trouble is that each way can look like something else from the outside. Your grown children may see you go quiet and wonder whether you are angry with them, or whether they have done something wrong. You may see a son who never mentions his father, or a daughter who never mentions her mother, and think they don’t care. Often each person is grieving in their own way, and quietly worrying about the other.

A few plain words can stop a second hurt from growing on top of the first: the feeling that someone isn’t grieving “properly.”

You don’t need to agree on how to grieve. It helps just to say out loud that you are each doing it differently.

The same is true between brothers and sisters. One of you may want to sort the house quickly, and another may not be able to face it yet. Neither is a sign of caring less.

Coming back to your grown children and grandchildren

After a loss, it is easy to drift. Calls get shorter, visits get put off, and after a while it can feel awkward to reach back. You don’t need a big gesture to come back. Small, steady steps work better.

• Pick a regular short call. Ten minutes every Sunday is easier to keep, and easier to look forward to, than a long call now and then.
• Start with one small thing. A text with a photograph. A question about the grandchildren’s week. A memory you came across.
• Offer specific help. “Let me know if you need anything” is kind, but hard to take up. “I can do the Thursday school pickup” is easy to say yes to.
• Ask, too. Many people worry about becoming a burden. But being needed and asking for help both count as staying close. Letting your children help you, with a lift, a meal or the new phone, can mean as much to them as it does to you.

If you help with the grandchildren, or would like to, the page For grandparents has more: how to offer help without taking over, how to say no to extra babysitting kindly, and how to stay close from far away.

Talking about it: what to say, and how to listen

Many people stay away from someone who is grieving because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Silence often hurts more than clumsy words. And if you are the one grieving, it can be hard to know what to ask for.

If someone you love is grieving

• Say the name of the person who died. For most people it is a comfort, not a fresh hurt.
• Listen more than you talk. Let them tell the same story again. You don’t have to make it better.
• Leave out the fixes. “Everything happens for a reason,” “At least they’re not suffering” and “I know how you feel” can sting, even when they are meant kindly.
• Offer one specific thing, and keep showing up after the funeral, when the cards stop coming.

If you are the one grieving

• Tell people what helps. “I’d like to talk about him” and “I can’t talk about it today” are both fine to say.

If a message to family is hard to write, try it first in the Chat analyzer. More: Effective communication: listening → · Empathy and sympathy, in the Library.

When grief and money split a family

Sometimes a loss pulls a family apart instead of together. After a parent dies, brothers and sisters can fall out over the will, the house or who did the caring. Money can stand for love and fairness, so it can hurt a lot. You may feel grief and unfairness at the same time.

If that is happening, you are not alone, and nobody has to be the villain. Adult siblings and family rifts has short first messages for reaching out, kind ways to say “not yet” if you aren’t ready, and when to get legal advice or a mediator. To see a hard moment from the other person’s side, try See it from their side.

A new chapter on your own

Living alone after many years together changes almost everything, from who cooks dinner to who you tell about your day. Be patient with yourself. You are learning a new way of living, and that takes time.

• Keep a simple routine. Getting up at about the same time, a walk, regular meals. A shape to the day makes the hard hours easier to carry.
• Rest without guilt. Grief is tiring. Sleep can be broken for a while, and it is fine to slow down.
• Choose one small goal. Not a whole new life. One thing: a class, a weekly coffee with a friend, finishing a project they started, learning the thing they always did for you.
• See people, a little. Even short, ordinary contact helps: a chat at the shop, a neighbor, a club, a place of worship.

When you are ready to think about what comes next, two pages may help. The self-discovery path is a gentle, step-by-step way to understand your own load, rhythms and reactions, on your own. The book on knowing yourself covers the same ground in short chapters, including choosing one small goal.

Running the home alone now? Running a home on your own after a loss has the practical side: the jobs your partner used to do, and asking for help.

When to get more help

Grief is not an illness, and most people find their way through it with time and the people around them. But sometimes it becomes too heavy to carry alone. It is a good idea to talk to your doctor or a grief counselor if:

• the weight doesn’t lift at all, even a little, over many months,
• you can’t manage daily life: eating, sleeping, washing, paying bills, or
• you are drinking more, or leaning on anything else just to get through the day.

Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, and it doesn’t mean you loved them any less.

Many areas have local bereavement support groups, often run through hospices or community centers. Sitting with others who understand can be a real comfort, even if you only listen. Your doctor, a local hospice or your place of worship can usually tell you what is near you.

If you’re retired together: if your partner is alive and you are both at home all day now, that is a different chapter. Retired and both home now covers sharing the house all day, handing over jobs and finding your feet.

This page shares general ideas, not medical or psychological advice.