I remember I met every week with one of our pastors.
And every Tuesday I'd drive to his office and think,
“I'm tired of being in pain.
I've been in pain for months, and months, and months."
Dr. DeVries: Sometime after my wife died, I was golfing
with a friend of mine.
So it had to be at least six, perhaps eight
or nine months after my wife died.
And I was still really feeling the sadness and the grief.
I really hadn't worked through it all that much yet,
and I was saying to him, “I wish this would just go away."
[Music]
Brad: It's kind of like that experience
that you have whenever you're driving somewhere new
for the first time and somebody tells you,
“It's only three miles.
It's really easy to find."
And you're driving and you're going “Did I miss my turn?
Did I miss my turn?
I have not done this before."
And the whole time you just, you have the sense,
“Am I doing it right?"
And as soon as that question comes into our mind,
“Am I doing it right?"
the necessary implication is, “Maybe I'm doing it wrong."
And “wrong" is a guilt word.
And then I begin to beat myself
up because I can't even grieve right.
[Music]
Dr. DeVries: And this friend of mine just stopped.
He stopped cold.
He turned and faced me directly on.
He said, “Look, Bob.
It took you 28 years for you and your wife
to weave your life together.
It's been torn apart.
There are all kinds of ragged edges.
Don't expect those ragged edges to go away instantly."
[Music]
Hi, I'm David Guthrie and this is my wife, Nancy.
We've moved further down the trail that we started
in our last GriefShare session.
It helps us illustrate the journey
of grief you will travel as you heal.
Ask any park ranger and he'll tell you that lots of people set
out on journeys that they're not ready for.
And it's easy to see why this happens:
People either underestimate the difficulty of a trail
or they overestimate their own abilities,
and pretty soon they're deep in the woods,
lost, exhausted, and scared.
The same thing can happen on the journey of grief.
This is a journey you never wanted to go on,
and when you started on it,
you probably didn't think it would take this long
or be so intense.
You may even be wondering if something is wrong with you.
Perhaps you feel lost, exhausted and scared.
In today's GriefShare,
we' ll help you understand why grief takes time,
and how your circumstances
and the choices you make affect its intensity and duration.
Thanks for joining us.
[Music]
In our last session, we mentioned
that everyonés journey of grief is unique.
One reason that's true is because each
of us is grieving a unique relationship.
But your grieving process will also be shaped
by the circumstances surrounding your loved one's death
and the choices you make afterward.
Your circumstances and the choices you make also affect how
intense your grief is and how quickly the pain will subside.
So today we want to share some
of the unique individual factors
that directly affect your journey.
And the first one is: How well you take care of yourself.
Brad: I think so often we think of grief
as a purely emotional struggle,
as if it were just this constellation of sadness,
and fear, and anger, and confusion.
But one of the things that often gets neglected is how much
of a physical toll we go through in the process of grief.
And so a few points that I would recommend to folks
is they prepare for these early stages of grief as much
as you can, make sure that you sleep well.
Sleep is a good thing, and it is a gift from God.
I think it's okay to pray for sleep.
If you're having trouble sleeping,
talk to your physician and go to them.
And this is not necessarily a long-term struggle
where you would always need assistance with sleep,
but during this season where you're going
through such a physical toll, that's important.
Oftentimes sleep gets disrupted,
especially if who we lost was a spouse because so much
of that evening routine of just there being not somebody there
with me and the time when I'm getting ready
to sleep can be a time of intense remembering my loss.
And so taking some additional steps
of doing something very soothing and relaxing
like taking a hot bath, playing some quiet music
in the background so that my thoughts can attach to the music
and my thoughts just aren't there to spin
with no destination and I begin, that becomes the time
when I can't sleep because I'm thinking most.
Another aspect of dealing with the physical toll
of grief is diet and exercise.
I'm not looking to be Rambo, I'm just doing it
to get my arms moving and my legs going.
So I go to the gym.
I just go in there and I'm going to bike.
I do bicycling for twenty minutes.
Then from there, I go on to weights.
Weights, I do no more than twenty pounds.
And then from there, I go on the treadmill.
And the treadmill I do for about ten minutes.
Joseph: I had to develop a strategy
on how I'm going to live
because I was so used to my wife's cooking.
And I would go to a local all you can eat buffet
that would weigh the food for you to take out.
And my strategy was to not get macaroni and cheese,
or things that were heavy, vegetables, get the meats.
It costs the same no matter
whether it's meat or string beans.
So I get meats.
I get roast beef, chicken, pork, and fish, and shrimp.
And load that all into the container, weigh that, go home,
break it out in containers that was portions for me
to eat just a meal and freeze the rest.
Just get meats.
Because I could deal with vegetables
from the grocery store, and frozen, out of can.
But cooking the meats, they have to be specially done
by somebody who knew how to cook.
A good way to make sure you take care of yourself is
to remember the acronym D. E. E. R.
Drink fluids, Eat, Exercise, and get Rest.
And be sure to get a checkup from your doctor, too.
Nancy: In addition to self-care,
the way your loved one died also affects your grief experience.
Brad: There's a lot of factors
that can impact how grief influences you.
One would be: How long did I have
to anticipate this loss that was coming?
Was it at the end of a long bout of cancer?
Did it come out of the blue as a car accident
when I wasn't expecting it at all?
Your loved one was terminally ill and they've been suffering
for six months, or a year, or two years, or maybe five years.
You discover that you've done a lot of your grieving in advance.
And after they have died, then maybe the grief doesn't last
that long and you're faced with another situation
because other people wonder, “Why aren't you grieving?"
They begin to question your love for them;
they begin to question the relationship with them.
And here is another situation or case where we need
to let people know, “I grieved
for several years before they died.
I did it before that event occurred."
When you lose someone who is younger than you,
a child or a younger sibling,
that seems so unnatural to the life cycle
that it can be very disorienting to life.
When you lose someone your own age, it is something
that makes you face your own mortality in a way
that maybe you weren't prepared for or thinking about.
If your loved one died in an accident, was murdered,
or committed suicide, you'll have to deal
with some unique challenges as you grieve.
And we'll talk more about what those are and how to deal
with them in session eight.
[Music]
Another factor that affects your grief journey is what was going
on in your life prior to or just after your loved one died?
Iris: When my mom passed away, I can't even get a chance
to grieve because I got to run around
and I got to, you know, plan her funeral and everything.
And then two weeks later, you know, I'm thinking “Okay,
I'm going to be able to grieve now."
And then two weeks later, Kareem dies.
I was losing my job a month after my dad passed away,
so it was a rough time of life.
It's the first time I'd ever been let go of a job
and the first time I've lost a parent.
My grief was very much affected
when a close friend committed suicide a couple months
after my mom had her tragedy.
Less than what year and a half after I got back
from Vietnam, my dad died and suddenly.
And so I think at his funeral all I could think about
and all I could see was, as they were lowering his casket,
the flood of memories kept coming back
of my two earlier brothers' deaths
with it just taken place within two years.
I felt like I didn't get a chance to grieve.
Then I got pregnant.
Another thing that happens in terms of creating the impact
of grief is how we associate the loss with things
that were going on at the same time.
Sometimes we do that through regret.
And we say, “Ah, if only Grandma had lived two weeks longer,
then she would have made it to the wedding."
And there's kind of this permanent regret memory
attachment to my wedding and the loss of Grandma.
Other times it is association, and we begin to think,
“We went to the beach, and that was the last thing
that we did together before I lost them.
I don't know that I'll ever go
to the beach the same way again."
Or sometimes it's through guilt, and we begin to think,
“Right around the time
that I lost this person I had also cheated
or fudged a little on my taxes.
And I wonder if this is God getting back at me."
And whatever the events are around our loss, I think we have
to be very careful about the kind of meaning
that we attach to that.
Because those are going to be some of the things that we carry
with us for the longest time,
even after the grief has subsided
is the meaning that we give to events like that.
In our last session we shared some key goals
of grief recovery.
And there's a relationship between
the goals of grief and the journey of grief,
which is this: The more effort you put
into pursuing those goals,
the sooner you'll heal from the pain.
The trouble is, accomplishing these objectives isn't easy;
in fact, your efforts can seem to be only adding to your pain.
So many people resist trying in the first place.
Sue: Several people told me, “Well, talk about it.
Talk about him.
Talk about what you're feeling.
Get it out."
And I didn't want to get it out.
I wanted to stuff it and just hurt
because I didn't want reality.
I didn't want to feel the pain.
But there's no escape from actually facing the pain
of grieving and going through it.
I would say, “Tell me something you remember
about Grandpa that you loved most."
And so for them it was a way for them to be able
to talk about their grandpa.
Of course, we would all cry our heads off.
They would afterwards get out a box of pictures;
we'd spread the pictures out on the floor; we would talk
about things that we did; we'd share memories with one another;
we'd cry; and then all three of the kids would pile up on my lap
and we'd boo hoo for a while.
And one afternoon my youngest daughter had said to me, “Mom,
why do you get all this stuff out and make everybody sad?"
And I said, “No, no, no.
You don't understand, honey.
I'm not trying to make everybody sad.
We're already sad."
I said, “I want to get these pictures out and look at them,
and remember your dad, and cry if I have to.
And I'm going to keep doing it until one day I can look
at these pictures and smile again.
Then I'll know I'm healed."
And I think we have to do some of that in the grief process
because I think part of not healing
from grief is not wanting to go
to those places that hurt too much.
And yet, going to those places
that hurt too much is the very thing that heals us.
Most of us as human beings do not want to experience the pain.
We just want to avoid it, and that's what I did.
I just avoided it and went on with life.
But it becomes a burden.
It's kind of like a wound.
When Vinnie had his second surgery,
his stitches had come apart.
He had his kidney, prostate, bladder,
and lymph nodes removed.
It was a huge incision.
The stitches came apart.
He was put on a wound vac for three months.
During that time, a nurse came to the home three days a week;
unpacked the sponges and the bandages; had to clean all
that up; had to redo the wound three times a week.
It was a gaping hole.
It was excruciatingly painful for him.
And I would go, and he'd grab my hand and hold onto it
through this whole process.
I realized later after Vinnie died it was interesting
that God showed me that process because dealing
with our grief is pretty much the same: We have to go
to that place that's painful, we have to reopen those wounds.
It's the only way we can be cleansed and we can be healed.
If Vinnie had told the nurse, “This is too painful, go away,"
it might have looked okay for a while on the outside,
but on the inside infection would have grown.
And I think that can happen to people in the grief journey,
which will make it a lot longer.
And our promise from God in going through is that He will be
with us all the way on that journey.
So when we talk about and think about this journey,
I think it's important that we do use that word “we're walking
through grief." We're going through the pain in order
to heal because pain does heal.
Gail: So I highly, I highly recommend people just go
to those places, look at those pictures,
even though it's painful.
Go to those places that you visited that were special.
Don't avoid that restaurant that was your favorite restaurant;
go there with a friend.
Yes, it will be hard.
Yes, you will cry.
But yes, it will help you move
through the journey a lot faster.
[Music]
Amy: I immediately went back to work so that I didn't have
to think about my father's death.
Female Narrator: For five years Amy refused to talk about her dad,
look at videos of him, or do anything
that would remind her of her father.
Amy: I was very fearful of going through any process
that would make me have to revisit my father's death.
I was afraid the pain would open a door to something
that I couldn't handle.
Female Narrator: Eventually, Amy's attempts to avoid pain hurt her even more.
Amy: I started experiencing depression.
It was slow at first.
It began with just overwhelming feelings of being discontent,
and it started escalating.
And eventually the depression
and the emptiness was more overwhelming
than the thought of facing the grief.
Female Narrator: As much as she was hurting,
Amy was able to function for a while.
Amy: From the outside,
no one could really tell what was happening.
I was into my work.
I was being social.
I was close to my family and no one noticed.
But on the inside, again, I felt those feelings
of discontentment and emptiness.
And I knew something was wrong.
[Music]
The process of finally dealing
with the grief began with GriefShare.
It's very much like going to the ocean and wanting
to take a swim: You've got the initial wave that comes at you;
and then you have to face it, let it come over you;
and then you shake yourself off and get ready for the next one.
And the process of GriefShare helped me do that.
With each wave that came, with each new lesson that I learned,
I was able to let it wash over me, process it,
and use it to move forward.
Female Narrator: These days, Amy can face the reality of her father's death
and comfort herself with his memories.
I love talking about my father now.
I love sharing his stories.
I love watching videos.
I love looking at the pictures, the memories.
He was a wonderful man.
Now I feel like having accepted the loss,
I can now celebrate the life he had
and feel joy for those times.
So you must hurt in order to heal.
But as Amy discovered,
God graciously keeps the pain from overwhelming us.
As it says in Isaiah 42:3, “A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out."
The journey of grief is certainly an overwhelming
experience, but as you pursue healing and grow
in your dependence on God, you'll discover
that He is gently caring for you and keeping you
from being crushed in this season of your life.
[Music]
So when do you think you'll go
through your husband's clothes?
I don't know.
I've been avoiding that.
This may not work for you, but I found that it helped me
to go through it as soon as possible.
I just didn't want all those things sitting
around reminding me of her.
It was too painful.
I don't know about that.
Well, don't feel rushed.
It took me a long time to go through my husband's things.
But my kids, they keep pressuring me to go
through everything right now.
Sometimes I just want to tell them to, “Do it yourself."
I don't know if I'm ever going to be able
to sort through his things.
I still have my mother's purse, of what she had
on her possession when she went to the hospital.
And in this purse was just personal things,
her lipsticks; her wallet; all of, you know,
whatever credit cards; whatever license and everything.
She had, like, a little rain cap.
And so it still sits in the top of my closet to this day.
I haven't been able to just relinquish that.
And, you know, the relinquishing is more of 'Well,
what is the proper thing to do?"
With my personality I wanted a list, I wanted a checklist.
I wanted to, you know, “After
so many days you can stop wearing the ring,"
or “You can take the pictures off of the refrigerator or all
of the framed photos that you have.
Then it's time to take those away."
What do I do with the things that are in his closet?
What do I do with the things that we have here in the house
that belonged to our loved
one and I don't need them?
They feel like if they get rid of something,
maybe clothes or objects that belonged to their loved one,
they are some how betraying that person.
They may feel confused, “Does that mean I love
that person less now because I'm getting rid of these things?"
But I realized there's not a checklist like that
and that you kind of just have to trust your heart,
trust you'll know when it's time,
which in that moment it feels crazy.
I just knew that it was not time for me
to take off my engagement ring, and so I kept wearing it
for a number of months.
And then one day I thought, “I think I could put this in a box
and I think I could give this to David's mom someday," you know,
or, “I think it's time that I could put David's picture
into a scrapbook or into my prayer book."
Like, I think it's okay.
After a loved one dies, you're often faced
with the question about what to do with all
of his or her belongings.
You may be surprised to learn that what you do
with those items will also affect your grief journey.
Nancy: The process of going through their possessions can help you
reach some of your grief goals.
Dr. Smeenge: When Rick died, my only daughter was home from college
as a freshman there for the funeral.
And she seemed really intent to go through all of Rick's,
her dad's, belongings not so much because she wanted anything
from that, but just because she thought it would be very,
very helpful for me that I didn't have
to deal with all the stuff.
And I think that that's often true,
that people around us think
that they're doing grieving people a favor
by just getting rid of everything quickly
so because otherwise it will hurt or it will be painful
for people to have to go through all the stuff.
And what they don't really realize is that that's
like a goldmine for grieving people.
Dr. DeVries: After a person dies, all of the physical stuff
that they had accumulated or used
or wore is still there in the house.
And I know that after my wife died,
all of that was there and I had to deal with it.
What I didn't realize at the time that I started going
through that stuff is that that helped me work on almost all
of the goals of grief that I think are involved
in this grief journey.
It helped me, for example, to realize she's not coming back.
I mean, I took one look at the closets
and they were stuffed full of her clothing.
And I had to take those out and put it somewhere.
And I knew that I was doing
that because she wouldn't be back to wear that.
Looking at all the belongings
of a deceased person elicits emotions for people
where they can remember, “Oh, I remember when she or he got this
and they wore it to this event."
And it may bring smiles, it may bring tears.
But it does bring memories, and that's so important
for us when we're grieving.
In order for you to benefit from sorting
through your loved one's belongings,
you must go through them yourself.
And if you feel like you can't do it now, that's okay.
Just wait until you can.
I had to say, “You know, Sarah, I know you want to go
through this stuff and you think it's going to be helpful,
and I'll do some of it with you, but I'm not ready
to get rid of everything."
You know, I want to go through this
and I want to keep it there.
And you do it progressively.
In the counseling setting, a counselor would work
with a person to help them.
We call it “exposure” to expose them
to the fearful situation but progressively.
It doesn't mean you'll suddenly walk into that room,
but it might be one day just walk close to the door;
might be another day just crack the door open a little bit;
might be the next day you just crack
that door open a little bit and turn on the light; and finally,
it will come a day when you can walk into that.
Day at a time, day at a time.
And just kind of trust that you'll know
when the time is right to make that next step.
And no one else could tell me.
Like, if a girlfriend would have come over
and said, “Okay, Cindy.
It's time to take down these pictures,"
that would have been very painful for me.
Like, it was something that I had to decide just
by walking through it.
I can't go through his things right now.
He was quite a pack rat.
We have things from his first office from 1993 still
up in our storage room, old fax machines and records.
And it's a lot to go through, but I can't do it.
I know sooner or later I'll have to.
I'll just have to hold the right hand of Jesus.
I actually at this point have cleaned out virtually all
of his clothes and donated them for the homeless in Raleigh.
The process was ready, and it was right when it happened.
I just refuse to let people push me into their time zone.
Their life wasn't my life.
When someone just said, “It's been eight months,"
it's like, “Yes, I know.
I'm just not ready yet.
When I'm ready, I would love to have your help."
[Music]
Our God is the God of all comfort.
I can still remember that first night going to bed alone.
And as I closed the door in my room, I remember just crying
out two words to God, “Help me.
Help me." And you know, He did.
I waited until everybody went to work,
everybody went to school.
We had a treadmill on the third floor.
And I would go up there and run as hard as I could and scream
as loud as I could, and know that no one could hear me
but God and yet it really brought great relief.
And as a pastor, I've heard that from God's people
so many times where they have said to me during the time
of their grief, “I sense God's presence more than ever before.
I sense the prayers of God's people more than ever before.
I'm finding a level of strength and hope like never before.
God's Word is true.
He's comforting me, and this opportunity
of grief is helping me see that in a fresh and powerful way."
What brought me the most comfort
for my grief was developing my relationship with God.
I took the time that I had, that I was alone,
and I spent it with God.
And I developed my relationship with Him by reading my Bible
and by reading devotionals.
God was really speaking to me through His word.
And I would take those things, and I would own them for myself.
I would take certain scripture verses,
and I would own them for myself.
It is important for us to turn to God,
to cry out to Him, to go to Him.
James 4 says, “Draw near unto God
and He'll draw near unto you."
So every grieving person has the responsibility
to draw near to God.
And we draw near to God in a number of ways,
as we draw near to God in prayer, we draw near to God
by going to God's Word.
And I now have a place I call “God's place."
And you say, “Why do you call it God's place?"
Well, I used to sit out there and read the Bible.
As I'm reading the Bible, I feel a little warmth
on my right shoulder here.
I says, 'What's that?"
So I look up and there's between the trees,
I have trees in the back, the sun is shining through
and with a little empty spot in the trees where the branches
and leaves are coming through, shining right on my shoulder.
So I said to my daughter, “Rob, this is what I experienced."
She says, “Dad, do you know what that is?
That's God and Margaret smiling."
Keeping a written journal is one more choice
that can make your grieving process less confusing
and disorienting.
Nancy: Journaling helps you acknowledge thoughts
and feelings that are sometimes hard to identify.
Dr. DeVries: You may have a feeling inside of you.
You don't really quite know what that's like,
but when you're kind of forcing yourself to put a word to it
and put it on a piece of paper, it often will help clarify what
that is, “Am I really angry?
Or am I sad?
Or am I regretting something?"
And to put that down and to see how your thinking
and your feelings are going together or not going together.
Because a lot of times what you're saying
to yourself affects how you feel about it.
Sometimes I hear people saying, “I'm not sure
that I am moving forward."
But if the individual has been journaling, what we can do is
to go back and look at the first month of their journaling
and compare it now to their tenth month and they realize,
“Oh, look at the differences, look at the changes."
It's not real prettified when I'm writing it.
It's pretty country-sounding.
But it didn't matter.
It was just what was coming out of me.
And I wrote those down.
And I kept it up.
I didn't think it was doing anything for me,
but I kept doing it anyway.
I looked back on that journal about six months later,
after I had forced myself to do it.
And I read back in some of those early days
and I recognize immediately, 'Wow,
I have made some progress."
It was also a way of validating myself as I did it
because it says, “What you think and feel, Susan, is important."
Then I took it to the next level and said,
“So that was uncomfortable, or hurtful, or upsetting
to me this time; how am I going to handle it next time?"
And so it was a good lead-in for me to start preparing myself,
like, “I think I need to do this" or “I think
that would be helpful for me next time."
At first, I started pouring out about my sorrow,
how much I miss mom, sister
and then eventually I think I swung to a direction
where I just started talking about life in general.
You know? I went from “I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.
Here's what I'm doing today"
to “This is what God is doing in my life.
This is what my grandson is doing.
This is what my children is doing."
I still mention mom, you know, but not as much,
or sister much, as much as I did when I first started.
You know, one of the things that people say
that really helps them in the process
of grieving is journaling, writing.
And I really believe that is because of that action
of moving a pen or even typing on a keyboard is related
to knowing that there is something going on right now,
and the brain starts thinking about whatever is going on now.
Even if you're recollecting things from the past,
you're putting your attention to an action that is only going
on now, it's not going to happen in the future
and it's not that it happened in the past,
but you're focusing your attention to the present moment.
And sure enough, people say that it's something
that really helps them.
Your GriefShare workbook has a number of prompts
to help you get started journaling.
You can find them at the end
of each week's note-taking section.
Try to complete this week's journaling exercise
and see what you think.
Male Narrator: This week's From Mourning
to Joy exercises introduce you to David.
Learn how he got comfortable asking others to help him
after his wife's death.
Plus, you'll find hope and encouragement
as you complete each of this week's exercises.
During the next session of GriefShare,
discover how grief affects your relationships.
I was chatting with a girlfriend on the phone,
and she was complaining
about how messy her husband was leaving the kitchen lately.
I said, “You know, I wish I had that problem."
Sometimes people will share a truth with you
that has meant a lot to them, but it feels
like a slap in the face to you.
I don't really think there's any way people can get
through grieving if they're with people the majority of the time.
The journey of grief is long and tiresome.
But as you've seen today, there are things you can do
to make it more bearable.
In coming GriefShare sessions, we'll continue
to share insights that will help you move from painful memories
of your loved one's death to less intense feelings
in which you cherish his or her memory.
This is important information that you won't want to miss.
And remember, you're welcome to invite a friend
or a family member who is grieving to join this group.
Thanks for coming.
We' ll see you next time.