I will admit that when it came to grief I had no idea what to do. It made me extremely uncomfortable and so I would generally just avoid it. I would send my condolences and then avoid the whole thing. I have also been very lucky to have not been deeply impacted by death until two years ago when my best friend died and then Cameron a year later. In that time I have learnt a lot about grief and how to handle it.
Many people, myself included, get so uncomfortable when it comes to talking about loss and grief. I get it, really I do because it is not a pleasant topic, especially when the loss was unexpected or traumatic in some way. Very often we just don’t know what to say or how to approach it.
These are a few things I have learnt over the last 2 years when it comes to dealing with grief, yours or someone else’s.
Don’t ask a person who has just lost a love one what they need. I guarantee you they don’t know. Those first few weeks after Cameron are a complete blur. I am so incredibly grateful for Davids aunt and uncle who kept us all fed and helped with the admin of everything involved in dealing with a death because I just did not have capacity for it.
Send frozen meals. If you want to do something but aren’t sure what, send food, send all the food. I can not explain how helpful it was to receive frozen meals or money to be able to buy take out/meals. Knowing I could pop something in the oven, or that the kids could do it themselves when I just couldn’t made a huge difference. Don’t even stress about what they will like or can eat – trust me in those early weeks we all kinda just ate what we had.
It’s ok to not know what to do or say. I also don’t know what to do. A friend of mine came to visit and apologised for not coming sooner, she said she didnt know what to say. We cried together and that was that.
Show up. This was one I didnt know I needed. Showing up means things like fetching kids for their activities, randomly sending a dinner, sitting with me while I cry or get angry. Inviting me for coffee even when my grief scares you a little bit, being there for my kids. This one is hard and I found that it was the people who had experienced grief before were the most comfortable with this.
“Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.” Earl Grollman
If you have lost someone close to you, what helped you?
What helped me most was people sending cards and text messages to let them know they were thinking. I was very overwhelmed and needed time on my own. This way of communication worked for me after the loss of my daughter Lucy.
This is a great post. I send food instead of flowers these days. When my SIL died, we got so many flowers they were just in buckets and bowls as we’d used all the vases and had no where to put them. It seems so wasteful. I stood in the kitchen, not hungry at all but the kids were wanting dinner and I was blank. I had no idea what to feed them. So now I send food. Stuff that can be microwaved or put in the oven with no prep. I did this for a friend when her mum died. They were returning from another city and I put a lasanga and fresh salad (and dessert) on their doorstep for their return. She sent a text letting me know I had literally fed them dinner as there’d been no food in the house. Grief makes the simplest tasks seem incomprehensibly hard. #TalkaboutitTuesday
This is such a helpful post! I always stress over what meals/food to send and do often go the gift card route since then I figure they can pick what they want to eat.