“Grief is the price we pay for love.”
It is a simple sentence, but one that can hold an enormous amount of truth.
When we lose someone we love, the pain can feel unbearable. We may wish we could turn it off, make it disappear or somehow go back to the life we had before the loss.
But grief is not a sign that something has gone wrong.
Grief is the natural response to losing someone who mattered to us. It is the other side of having loved, cared, connected and shared a life with another person.
And sometimes, understanding grief in this way can help us be a little kinder to ourselves as we navigate bereavement.
When someone dies, our whole world can change
Bereavement isn’t simply about missing someone.
When a person dies, their absence can affect almost every part of our lives.
Perhaps they were the person you spoke to every morning. The person you called when something happened. The person who knew your history, your habits and the little things about you that nobody else noticed.
Their absence can leave an enormous space.
You may find yourself reaching for your phone before remembering you can’t call them. You may instinctively turn to tell them something, only to be reminded that they are no longer there.
Even ordinary routines can suddenly feel different.
Grief can therefore involve not only mourning the person we have lost, but also mourning the life we had with them and the future we imagined having together.
There is no right way to grieve
People often talk about grief as though it follows a particular process.
We might expect to feel devastated at first, gradually work through our emotions and eventually reach a point where we feel “better”.
Real grief is rarely that straightforward.
You might cry one day and feel completely numb the next. You might feel angry, guilty, frightened or lonely. You might even experience moments of happiness and then feel guilty for laughing or enjoying yourself.
You may want to talk about the person constantly, while at other times you don’t want to talk about them at all.
None of these reactions mean that you are grieving incorrectly.
There is no timetable for grief, and there is no particular way that you are supposed to feel.
Grief can come in waves
One of the most difficult things about bereavement can be its unpredictability.
You may have a relatively good day and begin to think that perhaps you are starting to cope.
Then a song plays.
A photograph appears.
You walk past somewhere familiar.
You smell their perfume or aftershave.
Someone mentions their name.
Suddenly, the loss feels incredibly close again.
These moments can feel like you are going backwards, but grief doesn’t necessarily work that way.
The fact that you have a difficult day doesn’t erase the progress you’ve made. It simply means that something has reminded you of someone who was important to you.
And perhaps that is one of the hardest things about grief: you cannot separate the pain of losing someone from the love you had for them.
The guilt that can accompany grief
Guilt is a common part of bereavement.
You may find yourself thinking:
“I should have visited more.”
“I should have called.”
“Why didn’t I say that when I had the chance?”
“I wish I had done more.”
Sometimes we replay conversations and events, looking for things we could have changed.
We can become incredibly hard on ourselves when we are grieving.
But grief can distort the way we look back at our relationships. With hindsight, we know things that we could never have known at the time.
Counselling can provide a space to explore these thoughts without judgement and begin to make sense of the feelings of guilt, regret or unfinished business that may be keeping you stuck.
What about when you feel relief?
This can be one of the hardest emotions to admit.
If someone has experienced a long illness, significant pain or a prolonged period of suffering, their death may sometimes bring a sense of relief.
You may feel relieved that they are no longer suffering.
You may also feel relieved that the constant worry, caring responsibilities or uncertainty have ended.
Feeling relief does not mean that you didn’t love them.
Human emotions are complicated. Two apparently contradictory feelings can exist at the same time.
You can miss someone desperately and also feel relieved.
You can be devastated by their death and grateful that their suffering has ended.
You can love someone deeply and still feel angry with them.
Grief doesn’t require your emotions to make perfect sense.
When everyone else seems to move on
Sometimes the hardest part of bereavement is feeling that the rest of the world has carried on.
Friends and family may gradually stop asking how you are.
People return to work, routines and everyday conversations.
Meanwhile, you may still feel as though your world has changed completely.
This can leave you feeling isolated.
You might even wonder why you aren’t “over it” yet.
But there is no deadline for grief.
Other people’s expectations don’t determine how long you should mourn someone you love.
Your grief belongs to you.
Learning to live with loss
Bereavement counselling isn’t about forgetting someone.
It isn’t about telling you to “move on” or encouraging you to stop thinking about the person who died.
Instead, counselling can help you find a way to live with the loss.
The aim isn’t necessarily to make the grief disappear.
Sometimes it is about learning how to carry it.
Over time, the pain may change. Memories that once felt impossible to bear may eventually become something you can hold alongside the sadness.
You may begin to laugh at an old memory without immediately feeling guilty.
You may find yourself talking about the person with warmth rather than only through tears.
This doesn’t mean you love them any less.
It means that the relationship you have with their memory has changed.
You don’t have to “get over” someone you loved
Perhaps we need to change the language we use around grief.
Instead of asking:
“When will I get over this?”
we might ask:
“How can I learn to live with this loss?”
Because when someone has been an important part of your life, why would you simply want to get over them?
The goal isn’t to erase the love.
The goal is to find a way to continue living while carrying that love with you.
There may be good days and difficult days. There may be moments when you feel you are coping and others when the sadness comes rushing back.
That is grief.
And that is okay.
Bereavement: the price we pay for love
Losing someone we love hurts because they mattered.
The depth of grief can sometimes reflect the depth of the relationship we have lost.
That doesn’t make the pain easy, but it can help us understand why grief can feel so overwhelming.
We don’t grieve because we are weak.
We grieve because we loved.
And perhaps the aim isn’t to find a way to stop loving someone simply because they are no longer here.
Perhaps it is to find a way to carry that love forward.
When bereavement feels too difficult to manage alone
You don’t have to navigate grief by yourself.
Bereavement counselling can provide a confidential, supportive space to talk about your loss, explore difficult emotions and begin to understand what life looks like after someone important has died.
There is no need to have everything figured out before you seek counselling. You don’t need to know exactly what you want to say or how you are supposed to feel.
Sometimes you simply need somewhere safe to put the feelings that are difficult to carry alone.
If you would like to find out more about bereavement counselling at Nightingale Counselling Consultancy, you can visit our Bereavement Counselling page or contact us to discuss how we may be able to support you.
You don’t have to forget someone to begin healing.
And you don’t have to stop loving them to begin living again.