Worse or Better?

"Maybe some people get let off the hook, but most of us have to carry some big weight through life.  We lose someone or something important.  Then our job is to feel close to God, to love other people, and be happy anyway.  We learn to live carrying the weight of that loss."--Melodie Beattie, The Grief Club, page 22. 

I found the temptation almost irresistible--the desire to compare bereavement experiences.  Well, comparing experiences wasn't so bad.  The temptation was to decide that one kind of grief experience was better or worse than another.

Is it worse to suffer a sudden and unexpected loss or to suffer through months or years of debilitating decline?  Is it worse to be widowed because of cancer or crime or accidental calamity?  Is your grief somehow better or worse--more or less intense--than mine?

I'm not sure of the value of such conversations, yet I couldn't help but enter into them.  When I talked with other bereaved people, there came a point almost always when we got down to this topic.  Perhaps it was a way to establish some common ground.  Maybe it was a way to get some distance from our own pain.  Perhaps the experience of loss made us bereavement connoisseurs.

I don't know.

Here is what I do know after many such conversations.  My grief is worse than your grief because it's mine.  And your grief is worse than mine because it's yours.  There is no comparing one experience or story or history or reaction to another.  Each instance of bereavement is unique.

I try to remind myself of that over and over.

That doesn't mean that no common patterns exist.  That doesn't mean that we have nothing to say to one another that might be helpful.  That doesn't mean that we have no common ground as bereaved persons when we talk to one another.  

In fact, the only people I could really talk to were of two categories--those who had lost spouses in one fashion or another, and those who were well into a twelve-step recovery program.  The former folks had some idea of what I was going through.  The latter folks had some real answers for how to go on.

That being said, I need to remind myself over and over of several things now as I share with and offer support to other bereaved people.

To compare is, at least potentially, to judge.  And my experience is that nothing brought me up short faster than the feeling that I was being judged based on how I was grieving.  I felt damaged and incompetent and shamed and worthless enough.  I didn't need to feel that somehow I was screwing up my grieving experience as well.  So I try not to compare, if I can help it.

Since every bereavement experience is unique, I really have no advice to give to anyone else.  I can share my own story, and that might help someone else.  But I have no idea what it is like for another person.  

The things that worked for me may be useless to someone else.  I've been asked, "How did you get through it?"  For one thing, I'm not quite sure.  For another thing, I don't think I would recommend my path to someone else.  For a third thing, what worked for me probably won't work for someone else.

One more thing I try to remember is that every grieving person has something to teach me.  If I can stay in touch with that--if I can remain open and teachable--then I can learn from others.  If I'm learning from someone else who is grieving, then I might stand some chance of doing some good.