A few months after my wife died a friend gave me a book that he said helped him after his wife had died a few years earlier. It is titled “Getting to the Other Side of Grief”, Overcoming the Loss of a Spouse. It is cowritten by Susan Zonnebelt-Smeenge, RN and Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Robert De Vries, an ordained minister and seminary professor emeritus. Both of their first spouses had died, so they experienced their own grief journey.
The basic premise of their book seems to be that grief is a journey that has a beginning and an end. They write in the preface that “the first writing of this book was done after completing our own grief work following the deaths of our spouses”.
Everyone has their own experience with grief, and there are several factors that impact that grief. There are some good points that I took away from this book, and I may post on those later. But here I will state that grief is not always “completed”. I believe that grief may never be completed. It is always there, with you, nudging (or punching) you at unexpected times. The grief is still there, but the ability to carry that grief increases similar to exercising increasing physical strength.
In my own journey I have seen my ability to carry the weight of my grief grow, but it still lets me know its there. And I’m ok with that. How about you? If you have dealt with grief is you “grief work” completed? Are you learning to carry it? Or is it still heavy?