“Lesser” Losses Require Grieving, Too

They can happen in a split second (a fall that breaks an arm) or develop over a long time (a cancerous tumor). They can cause minor inconvenience (a broken purse strap) or create major change in the rest of our lives (the death of a spouse). Most times they cause sadness (losing a loved one), but they can even be hoped-for events (moving to a dream house). They are all considered losses and we react to each of them in the same way—with grief.

Most of the time when we think of grief, we think of someone we love dying. That is, indeed, the worst loss we could ever experience. But we encounter many other losses throughout our lives, some seemingly so minor as not even to justify the word “loss”. Each of these, it has been found, triggers the exact same grief process. Famous grief expert Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book On Death and Dying, outlined five steps in the grief process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. Some experts say there are more or less steps, or they don’t name them the same, but in essence, these are the general phases we all go through when faced with a loss.

Our dog Taffy just died. Not only that, my husband and I made the decision that ended her life. As we thought about it and discussed it beforehand, it seemed the best thing to do. Now I feel terrible—I’m so sad, I miss her, all I can think about is how sweet she was. I feel so mean and chintzy because we based our decision partly on financial reasons: the medication that might have eased her pain was too expensive. Never mind that she is completely out of pain now, never mind that we struggle to pay our bills; I berate myself for placing money above her life. So what if she was 13 years old, she could have lived several more years.

Obviously, I’m in the anger stage of grieving Taffy. The denial first came months earlier when she started her daily whining that numerous trips to the vet didn’t alleviate.

Even a missed phone call brings on a short period of grief. “Hold on, the phone’s ringing. Now where did I put it? Two rings, three. The machine will get it after one more ring. Oh, there it is.” I grab it in the middle of the fourth ring, but the caller has hung up. “Darn it! They didn’t even leave a message. I don’t believe it; did they want to talk to me or not?! Why interrupt someone’s day if you don’t really care if they know you called? Some people have no consideration. I’ll just put the phone by my desk so I won’t miss another call. I hope it wasn’t Aunt Jane asking me to lunch. Oh well, whoever it was will call back if it’s important.”

Did you follow the progression of the grief process in that phone call example? Denial: I don’t believe it; did they want to talk to me or not? Anger: Some people have no consideration. Bargaining: I’ll put the phone by my desk so I won’t miss another call. Depression: I hope it wasn’t Aunt Jane asking me to lunch. Acceptance: Oh well, whoever it was will call back if it’s important.

How long we grieve a loss depends on many factors. How major an event is it? How vulnerable were we before the loss happened? How do we generally handle our emotions? The main thing is to go ahead through the process so we can come out the other side. Sure, it hurts, but it’s better than carrying it around forever.

I was sexually abused by my father for 10 years, starting when I was three years old. I repressed the memories until I was 47. I’m now 60 and I’m still carrying anger that holds me back from having the life I want. I have exhibited lots of unhealthy behavior and emotions all my life, and have had close to 30 years of therapy. But until I had the memories, I couldn’t deal with the grief because I didn’t know I had that experience to grieve.

Now I have some years of incest therapy under my belt, but I’ve been noticing that I still sabotage myself most of the time. Obviously, I’m not done grieving the losses that go with this heinous act, because I’m stuck in the anger stage. So I recently went back into therapy to work through this. Saying that I’m not looking forward to it is putting it mildly. It scares me to death to go back into this kind of work. But it scares me even more to give up the rest of my life to the monster who did this to me. I’ve got to finish the grieving so I can be free to live my life my way.

What about the positive events, like moving into your dream house—how can we call them losses? Well, every time something changes in our lives, even if it’s a change we want, we lose something. We lose the dream, the expectation—we exchange it for the reality of living the dream rather than dreaming it. We no longer have that goal. Have you ever had a sort of let-down, empty feeling when you got something wonderful that you had wanted and worked for? Did you think something was wrong with you because your feelings weren’t 100% happy? No, nothing is wrong with you; it’s just that when we reach a goal, we lose the thing to work and strive for. What will we do now? We feel like we don’t have a purpose.

Of course, in a little while we create new goals for ourselves. Hopefully, we won’t lose the happiness we achieved when we reached our most recent goal, and we can continue to build on that happiness by striving for our new dream. As long as we recognize that we’ll feel a sense of loss when the dream is actualized, and we let ourselves progress naturally through the process of grief that arises, each dream fulfilled will make us stronger and happier persons.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any detour around grief when we experience loss. But, just as each rainy day helps us appreciate the sunshine a little more, so each sorrow survived makes us stronger.