To live is to face loss. This is an inevitable part of human experience. No one is exempt from this reality.

In the book, Life After Loss: A Practical Guide to Renewing Your Life After Experiencing Major Loss, author Bob Deits invites us to consider the pervasive extent of loss:

• We live in a mortal, frail, imperfect world in which the word fair doesn’t always apply.
• Every marriage ends one of two ways: death or divorce.
• Life is always a terminal condition.
• Every career has an end.
• Every relationship is temporary.
• The aging process is inevitable and so are the increased losses that come with it. (3)

If we live long enough we will inevitably lose friends, family, loved ones, our job, our health, our independence. These losses will bring grief – the normal and appropriate response to loss.

In order to thrive in an imperfect world where loss is to be expected, we must learn how to do healthy “grief work.” The largest of losses can be survived, and even more, can lead to a better life.

Grief is Good

The normal and appropriate response to loss is grief. Because grief is rarely viewed as a helpful emotion, Deits continually reminds his readers throughout his book of its goodness. “You need to hear this: Experiencing a terrible loss and the grief that goes with it is the most concrete proof there is that you are a normal, real, live human being” (1, italics his).

Grief is an important part of recovering from great loss: “Grieving is something you do to heal the wounds in your life after a major loss” (3-4). Most importantly, grief is truly a noble emotion, the last gift of love. Deits writes in bold and italics to underscore his point: “Grief is the last act of love we have to give those who have died” (7).

Grief is about losing, but it can also be about growing. Just as we tend to view grief negatively, we fail to recognize its potential for positively transforming us. Grieving can be an avenue for growth. “Working through loss can also mean growing through loss” (100).

This growth can only occur if grief is embraced. Truly, “the way out of grief is through it” (69). But, “[t]he common tendencies we all have when we experience grief are to

• Try to avoid it
• Try to get over it quickly

And, when neither of these work…

• Try to wait it out. (70)

The Grief Process

A good understanding of the grief process will go a long way toward helping us work through our loss. Deits writes, “If you know what to expect, you can avoid being harsh on yourself and adding to your own sadness” (95).

First, Deits warns us against common misperceptions concerning loss. “You will make it worse by

• Having unreasonable expectations of yourself.
• Keeping your feelings and thoughts inside instead of talking about them with understanding people.
• Believing that your religious faith can lessen the impact of your loss.
• Assuming that you are the only one who has ever had such sadness.
• Thinking you will always feel as you in the first weeks. (2)

Deits offers the following four steps to recovery:

• Shock and numbness
• Denial and withdrawal
• Acknowledgement and pain
• Adaptation and renewal (48)

The intensity of the first phase – shock and numbness – may blind us to the fact that things will not always be like this.

During the first weeks and months after a death, divorce, or any major loss in your life, you will need to be reminded many times that you will not always feel as you do now. You may think the pain of your loss will never go away. It may seem as if the feelings of sadness and emptiness will last forever. You may think you have smiled for the last time in your life. To have these thoughts and feelings is quite normal. The truth is, the pain will diminish, the sadness will leave, and laughter will return. (95)

The phase of denial and withdrawal is the time when the support of others is not sought, but most needed. Deits offers a sample “grief letter” to pass out to loved ones to help them understand our situation.

My dear ________________ (Family, Friends, Pastor, Employer…),

I have experienced a loss that is devastating to me. It will take time, perhaps years, for me to work through the grief I feel because of this loss.

I will cry more than usual for some time. My tears are not a sign of weakness or a lack of hope or faith. They are the symbols of the depth of my loss and the sign that I am recovering.

I may become angry without seeming to have a reason for it. My emotions are heightened by the stress of grief. Please be forgiving if I seem irrational at times.

I need your understanding and your presence more than anything else. If you don’t know what to say, just touch me or give me a hug to let me know you care. Please don’t wait for me to call you. I am often too tired to even think of reaching out for the help I need.

Don’t allow me to withdraw from you. I need you more than ever during the next year.

Pray for me only if your prayer is not an order for me to make you feel better. My faith does not excuse me from the grief process.

If you have had an experience of loss that seems anything like mine, please share it with me. You will not make me feel worse.

This loss is the worst thing that could happen to me. But I will get through it and I will live again. I will not always feel as I do now. I will laugh again.

Thank you for caring about me. Your concern is a gift I treasure.

Sincerely,

(your name)

After a period of denial and withdrawal we enter into the third phase – acknowledgment and pain. The pain is intensified in that “[e]very day is another first time without experience” (108). Eventually, we come to accept our circumstances, with all their accompanying pain, and move into a phase of adaptation and renewal.

During this phase we may become obsessed with “why?” questions. This is an unhealthy preoccupation, because “why?” questions do not lend themselves to simple or satisfying answers.

The worst thing about “why?” questions is that they have no satisfactory answers. Questions that begin with “why” reflect a desperate yearning for meaning and purpose in your loss. It seems so unfair. You are sure there is some reason for what happened. You think you might feel better and hurt less if only you could discover that reason. (57)

For this reason, “Recovery depends upon, among other things, letting go of the ‘why?’ questions and turning to questions that begin with words such as ‘how’ and ‘what.’ ‘How do I go on with my life now that this has happened?’ and ‘What can I do to recover a sense of joy and meaning in my life?’” (118)

Releasing the “why?” questions places us on the path of recovery, no longer as victims, but as survivors. “Victims are passive, feel helpless, and let circumstances dictate their feelings. Survivors are assertive, take charge, and understand that whereas they may not be able to control their circumstances, they can always control their attitudes toward those circumstances” (64). As survivors, we realize that though we “may not be able to choose all of the circumstances of [our] life, [we] can always choose [our] responses to whatever happens” (103).

Traversing these four steps takes years. Deits summarizes that the first year of major loss involves merely surviving – getting through it. The second year is the “year of loneliness.” Our initial shock and pain transforms into an empty sense of loneliness. It is in the third year that life begins to take on a sense of normalcy. The overall point of recognizing this long and slow process is to demonstrate that recovery cannot be rushed. It takes time to adequately deal with major loss.

The Role of Religion

Some people assume that this process can be rushed – or completely avoided – by means of religious devotion. This is not the case. In fact, this perspective reveals an unhealthy view of religion, a perspective Deits labels “make-a-wish” religion: “This inappropriate, unhealthy religion looks for short, simple answers to complex questions for which there are no simple answers. It hopes for some magical way to either bypass grief or to resolve it quickly and painlessly” (115).

In one of the most helpful chapters in the book, Deits exposes three things religion cannot do:

1. Religious faith cannot grant us immunity from loss. (124)

2. Religious faith cannot give us back our dead loved ones or our dead relationships. (126)

3. Religious faith cannot provide a shortcut through grief. (127)

Religion can provide some consolation, that is, the consolation that no matter how great our grief, we will never go through our loss alone. God is always with us. Deits interprets Jesus’ words, “Remember, I am with you until the end of the age” to mean “loneliness is always an illusion. The statement means that even if everyone else deserts me, I am not alone” (122).

Deits encourages us to recognize the benefits and limitations of religion:

It seems to me to make much more sense, and to be much more in harmony with the basic tenets of the Judeo-Christian heritage, to say, “This is a mortal, imperfect, frail, and flawed world. Life is not always fair. Tragedy and major loss are as much a part of life as victory and times of joy. As a human being, I am subject to these realities. So are my loved ones. My one and only assurance from God is that I will never be deserted in any circumstance.” (126)

He continues:

To acknowledge that our religious faith cannot bring back our dead loved ones is in no way a denial of life after death. I have no doubt that my friends and family members who have died are “okay” in God’s eternal heaven. While that affirmation gives me a certain sense of comfort for them, it does not diminish my sadness or loneliness at losing them. Whatever else their condition is, one thing is clear: I will not see them again in this life. That part of my history is ended. (127)

The Inevitable Losses of Old Age

Our fear of major loss increases with age. An infant’s fears are limited to a fear of loud noises and falling. But as we grow, our fears increase, and over time, include a fear of death. Thus with our growth in consciousness, our wonder increases, but so do our fears.

The losses that accompany old age take on a new intensity in that there is no “more time to adjust to the changes and to create a new life after any loss” (154). Deits charts the progressive losses that come with increasing age:

As one elderly person one puts it, “Living past eighty is not for sissies” (158). Deits summarizes: “Aging isn’t a disease. Rather, it’s a natural breakdown of the efficiency of the body’s normal maintenance and repair processes. Aging is simply living past our warranties” (158).

Conclusion

Grief is a normal and necessary response to major loss. It does not come without a purpose. Proper grief work can also lead to great growth. In our grief we “will find joyful surprises along with the sadness and disappointments… But grief can also be an unparalleled occasion for discovery of your own strength of character” (176). Deits gives us hope that, no matter how great our loss, we “can emerge from it considerably stronger and more compassionate than [we] were before” (177).

There is life after loss. However, to experience this, we must not short-cut the grieving process, for it is a necessary component of recovery.

Quotes excerpted from Life After Loss: A Practical Guide to Renewing Your Life After Experiencing Major Loss by Bob Deits
© Richard J. Vincent, 2006