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Some 9 years ago my wife was diagnosed with non-operable lung cancer. She was told 3 to 5 years. She did chemo for 4.5 years and still lived a good life. She died about 3.5 years ago ago.
As we knew the end was coming, we had time for many, many discussions. Many centered around me moving on and promising to take good care of her two cats. She said she knew I could take good care of myself. It was the cats she was worried about.
We relocated (downsized) to be near family. Shifted some money about. Had legal docs drawn up. All in all we were as ready/prepared as one can be. Her last few months were rough on her but she worked her way through them.
I expected to feel more grief but now I know we were ready thus less grief than expected.
We all grieve, but we do not all grieve the same way.
I do believe we begin grieving ahead of death. My father had Alzheimer’s for several years, and when he died it was a relief to everyone and comforting to know he was no longer ill. We didn’t feel any overwhelming grief at his death, but the 7 years of declining dementia had us going through all the emotions of denial, anger, exhaustion, etc. during that time.
As others have said, we all do it differently. There is no one right way to mourn.
One way or another, I always knew that my husband would die before I did. He was career military, a sport skydiver, and drove motorcycles. I was waiting for it.
It's not something that you think about daily, but it's always there. I'm pretty sure that I grieved his loss long before he was gone.
He died when he was 54. If I'd known that was going to happen, I might not have married him.
I was pretty emotionless for a while. I had places to go, paperwork to fill out, calls to make. Things didn't go well when I ran out urgent chores.
There is definitely such a thing as anticipatory grief; I grieved deeply when I learned that my husband would die. But anticipatory grief does not decrease the presence or intensity of actual grief after the death. I always say that there is no way to prepare for the death of someone you love, and this is what I mean. For almost 4 years I grieved what I knew would be the ultimate loss. And I grieved the gradual decline along the way. But when he actually died, the grief was like hitting a wall. It was stunning, confusing, crippling, etc. My psychologist had told me that my anticipatory grief would not help prepare me, nor make that final grief less, and she was right. But my husband was truly with me, in mind as well as body, until the day he died.
When my mom died, however, I had grieved her dementia and the loss of her "self" a couple of years before the actual death, and when she actually died, I looked at it like a blessing. She had no quality of life, no consciousness, only pain, and really, really needed to be released. I didn't grieve much for mom when she died, but I miss her all the time.
As individuals, we grieve differently from each other, but we also grieve differently for the different loved ones we lose.
Ah, gg, how true, true, true about the hubby. I didn't think I could hurt worse or grieve more when he died. Boy, was I wrong, wrong, wrong. Nothing prepared me for the reality. You and I have come a long way, Baby!
Some 9 years ago my wife was diagnosed with non-operable lung cancer. She was told 3 to 5 years. She did chemo for 4.5 years and still lived a good life. She died about 3.5 years ago ago.
As we knew the end was coming, we had time for many, many discussions. Many centered around me moving on and promising to take good care of her two cats. She said she knew I could take good care of myself. It was the cats she was worried about.
We relocated (downsized) to be near family. Shifted some money about. Had legal docs drawn up. All in all we were as ready/prepared as one can be. Her last few months were rough on her but she worked her way through them.
I expected to feel more grief but now I know we were ready thus less grief than expected.
We all grieve, but we do not all grieve the same way.
I absolutely agree that this is a thing. I've heard some psychologists say, that you're not really pre-grieving; what you're doing is stuffing your feelings after the fact. I don't buy that, not as a blanket statement. When you know it's coming, and you've had years to prepare and perhaps get the impending out of your system emotionally, it can be easier, when the time comes. It doesn't mean you're somehow a bad person, or cold, or anything like that, if you don't experience a more typical grief after the loved one's death.
Anticipatory grief is very real. When you know the outcome and live with terminal illness and the deterioration of a loved ones health, you begin the grief process long before actual death. I believe grief continues at the time of death. I don't believe it makes things easier, rather, it prolongs grieving in certain circumstances. It's incredibly difficult and stressful.
I was trying to illustrate, by my two examples, that anticipatory grief can, in some cases make the loss easier, and in other cases it does nothing at all to ease the grief when the person finally dies. I don't think we should make generalizations about the effects of a "long death." It is different with every circumstance, with every person, with every relationship. I have had, thankfully only a few times, someone say to me something like "well, at least you had time to get used to the fact of losing him." Usually this is said to contrast a long loss to a sudden, unexpected one. But I think it is a very insensitive remark, because it may be the farthest thing from the truth. Surely, there are times, as with my mother, when the loss was "pre-grieved" and by the time she finally died, it was more relief than anything else. We still grieve, but it surely has less impact because we "lost" her years ago. But there are other times, as with my husband, when the four years of care actually brought us so close, that we seemed to breathe together. He was literally reliant on me to keep him alive, and I felt like his life was all that mattered to me. His death SEEMED to me like a sudden ripping away of my identity and my life. So in that case, anticipation was not preparation, and there was no "pre-grieved" effect at all.
So what I am trying to say is that however the particular loss is felt is individual. It is normal, in some cases, that anticipation decreases the shock and grief when the person dies. It is also normal, in some cases, that it does not. It is also normal for grief to be postponed and to hit later. I hope that we can all be patient and accepting of our own, individual feelings when these events come into our lives.
So what I am trying to say is that however the particular loss is felt is individual. It is normal, in some cases, that anticipation decreases the shock and grief when the person dies. It is also normal, in some cases, that it does not. It is also normal for grief to be postponed and to hit later. I hope that we can all be patient and accepting of our own, individual feelings when these events come into our lives.
Totally agreed. We're all different.
Last year I met a really sweet man on Match.com; we met for lunch and he told me his wife had died only 2 months before, after battling cancer for 9 months. She'd told him she wanted him to find happiness again and his friends and family also encouraged him. I found it encouraging to meet someone else who had lost a beloved spouse but had started to rebuild a new life. He was headed out on a 2-week motorcycle trip shortly after that; I sent him a nice follow-up note and never heard from him again. My guess is that he realized he wasn't quite ready to date. They'd been HS sweethearts, married 47 years. I hope he finds someone nice and that our date at least let him know there are good women out there when he's ready.
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Anticipatory grief
