(This is an adaptation of an article that originally appeared in Verdadera, a student run publication of Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, CA, February 2008)

One morning several years ago, I was rushing to get to a meeting and as I hurried down the driveway to my car I froze in my tracks. There, in the street next to the curb, was my cat. My cheeks were wet before I reached his small black body. Clarence was cold and stiff as I picked him up, so I knew he had passed away sometime in the night. I don’t know how long I sat there on the sidewalk with him before I carried him up to the house, gently wrapped him in a towel and found a box to lay him in.

Many of my clients are dismayed and surprised at the intensity of their reactions to what can seem like rather trivial losses. While it can feel like you must be crazy to have this much grief, this intensity is actually a common reaction, since in some way, our losses frequently become connected with each other, like beads along a string, or knots inside a net. Any new loss, big or small, can trigger a whole network of previous losses, some extending into the distant past. This is true not just for losses due to death, but for other types of losses as well. I knew as I got in the car and drove away that I wasn’t just weeping for Clarence, I was also crying for the other pets I’ve buried, and even more for the those that I have loved and lost to death. I was mourning the loss of a time before death had entered my life. I was grieving all that I would never be able to replace.

Fortunately, the meeting I was heading to was with a group of therapist friends who were all pet owners and thus they were ready with the box of Kleenex when I burst into the room and told them about finding Clarence dead. We shared our pet stories and soon we began to bring up other losses we had experienced. I must admit there was a small part of me that was thinking ‘hey, wait a minute, this is about me and my cat – not you and your dog’, but I knew that there is a domino effect with loss. Just as I was also thinking about our other two cats who had died not long before Clarence and remembering my tears hitting my grandmother’s casket, talking about my loss triggered many sad memories for my friends.

As we go through life, we are faced with many different kinds of losses. While the first thing that comes to mind when I think of loss may be the death of pets, grandparents, friends, parents or siblings, we are also faced with everything from the loss of our childhood innocence, to the loss of our family to divorce, to the loss of hope or faith. Friends move away or are lost through unresolvable conflicts. We fall in love, then somehow it dies and the relationship ends. We go from one school to another, we move to a different neighborhood, we have to let go of dreams. All these are losses that impact us to varying degrees. We are especially vulnerable when the loss is particularly significant or we are faced with numerous losses close together.

While listening to the students’ submissions for this issue of Verdadera, I was struck by how deeply impacted they were by the loss of friendships. The very real grief of losing a dear companion was complicated by a sense of betrayal and disillusionment at how the friendships came to an end. The loss of trust in others and the loss of faith in the safety of relationships left the students feeling isolated and adrift.

Whatever form the loss comes in, our reactions to it often shock and bewilder. It can be helpful to recognize that we all go through a common process of dealing with grief. The stages of grief were initially developed by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross to help understand and describe how we deal with the death of a loved one. But the steps are similar regardless of the type of loss. Obviously, the more significant the loss, the more intense the reaction. The basic stages of grief that she delineated are:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

It is important to be aware that while these appear to be laid out in a nice predictable series of steps, as we go through it, grief is actually much messier and more confusing. Many of my clients refer to it as a roller-coaster of emotions that overwhelms them and leaves them drained and exhausted. We can cycle and recycle through the various stages at different speeds and sometimes we get stuck in any one of the stages for a long time. We might think we’re done with the anger, but something happens and we’re inexplicably raging at the injustice of it all once again.

It is also common to re-experience the stages at particular anniversaries or meaningful dates. The first year after a major loss is filled with ‘firsts’: the first birthday without the loved one, the first Halloween, the first Thanksgiving, etc. Thereafter, we find ourselves thinking about those we’ve lost at special times throughout the year. For example, I always think of my grandmother on her birthday, even though she’s been dead for more than 30 years. Sometimes, my clients are confused about how they get depressed at a particular time every year, and upon close examination, we realize this is the anniversary month of a significant loss, which may have occurred years, maybe even decades, ago. Our bodies remember, even when we’re not consciously aware.

How well we cope with our grief depends upon many factors, some of the most important being:

• the significance of the loss
• the strength of our support system
• how many other losses we have experienced
• our basic personality style
• our ability to reach out to others

While we all try to handle the loss in our own ways, some coping mechanisms are more hurtful than helpful. The desire to get away from pain is very real and very powerful, and can lead many people to attempt to numb it out with alcohol or drugs. It’s also common to pretend to deny the pain and push it to the side by distracting ourselves with intense busyness. Telling yourself “it’s not such a big deal, just get over it” is not a helpful strategy in the long run, the pain just surfaces later in a disguised form.

One of the most common ways of dealing with the grief – not talking about it – is also one of least helpful. It is too easy to isolate oneself and pull away from others who could be sources of support and comfort. Sometimes we say we don’t want to burden others, sometimes it feels silly, sometimes we fear we’ll be thought of as weak. Whatever the reasons we tell ourselves, silently carrying the weight of our grief allows it to rule us for longer than it needs to.

It was very helpful for me to be able to sit and cry with my friends shortly after finding my cat. That was exactly what I needed at that moment. They helped me deal with the shock and get over the belief that there was something that I could have done to prevent his death. He had lived a long time and we knew he wasn’t going to last much longer. By venting my initial pain with them, I was better able to later help my young son process his own grief. As the days went by, my friends understood when I seemed moody or preoccupied, and they periodically checked in with me to see how I was doing.

All cultures have developed highly ritualized ways of dealing with death. Most involve a funeral and some form of gathering afterward, where friends and relatives gather to commemorate the dead with stories, jokes, and reminisces. Often there are detailed rituals involving food, music, flowers and pictures. There are proscribed periods of mourning, dictated by the level of intimacy with the one who has died. There are behaviors one is expected to avoid or engage in. These customs and rituals help us get though the initial days of grief by providing a structure and framework to follow, as well as public recognition of the loss and a period of time to set other responsibilities aside.

Even the farewell and graduation parties we throw are rituals we’ve developed to honor the loss of one life stage as we move onto the next. However, for many other losses, we may find ourselves feeling lost since there are no cultural rituals associated with them. We don’t have culturally approved customs for relationship breakups, lower than expected grades, loss of faith, or not being accepted to a team, school, or group we’ve applied to. For these types of losses, it can be healing to develop personal rituals to help us deal with the strong emotions and accept what has occurred. For example, some people destroy old love letters and pictures to help them get over a breakup. Others write poetry to express their feelings. Playing or listening to sad or angry music can be useful as we grieve. Grief is a very complicated process involving many different, sometimes conflicting emotions, and we all need to find ways to express it or it can come to control us.

It is very important to find constructive ways to deal with the grief. Reach out to others, whenever possible surround yourself with people who care about you. It is not a sign of weakness to seek professional help when it seems like the grief is taking over your life, or has been going on for what feels like an unusually long time. Asking for help when the load is too heavy is an indication of courage and self-preservation. You owe it to yourself and the people who care about you to reach out for the resources that are available, both personally and in the larger community.

One question that comes up occasionally in therapy is ‘how do I help my friend/parent/child deal with their grief?’ We all know people who have lost someone/something dear to them and we don’t know what to say or do. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that you cannot take away the pain, you cannot bring back what has been lost. What you can do is be there with them in their pain. Sit with them. Talk with them. Cry with them. Hold them if they want to be held. Ask them what they need from you. If they want silence, be quiet. If they want to be distracted, take them to a place they like to go. Try not to lecture or minimize the pain. The pain is real; even if you have the best intentions, telling someone it’s not really that big a deal will only make them feel worse.

When Clarence died, we did what many do with the death of a pet, we buried him in the yard. We shed our tears and laughed at the memories of some of his antics. Not long after, we planted a white camellia to mark his grave. It took us a long time to really accept his death, and it was several years before we felt ready for another pet. I’m very happy that we now have two cats who are both young and healthy. The others will always hold a very special place in my heart, and I smile when I occasionally call these two by the names of their predecessors.

If you ever wonder whether your own or someone else’s grief reaction is severe enough to warrant professional assistance, please feel free to contact me. I’d be happy to answer your questions and discuss your concerns. Some websites you may helpful, either for professional assistance or information are listed below.

http://maureenjohnston.com
http://www.billwilsoncenter.org/thecentre/index.shtml
http://www.associatedcounselors.com/
http://www.scv-camft.org/therapistfinder/
http://www.righthealth.com/Health/7%20STAGES%20OF%20GRIEF-s?lid=yhoo-ads-sb-9456923278
http://www.uiowa.edu/~ucs/griefloss.html
http://vetmedicine.about.com/od/lossandgrief/Loss_and_Grief.htm