Discussions on Reconstruction…  

Life goes on! Reconstruction begins:

Although we can sometimes be immobilized or hyper-activated by our early grief, although we may find ourselves in a fog of confusion, there are things that not only need to be done, but we need to do them. Finding our way through this is one of the very hardest of the early lessons we may have to learn and we all seem to have to find our own way to do them and learn them. 

Discussions on Reconstruction…

As we’ve talked about before, for many of us, the beginning of our grief journey often happens in a fog. As time passes, and our grief begins to become less demanding, we are faced with the tasks of taking control of our lives back into our hands, of learning to make (good) decisions, of charting new directions and of building a new chapter in our lives. 

Ch-ch-ch-Changes:

Grief has changed our lives. So many of our sure-of’s have been lost with the passing of our spouses and partners. We now have to choose and learn how we want to go forward.

I personally found myself clinging and holding tightly to every part of our life that remained and I wasn’t willing or able to change anything I could keep from changing. I wanted it to all remain static and unchanging forever because it kept me in contact with Andi and all the parts of our life together. Things stayed as unchanging as I could make them be for years!

However, I know people, as some of you probably do, who chose to make all kinds of changes quite early on, from not only moving or storing clothing and possessions but to giving away most of not only their loved ones clothing and possessions but lots of the decorations and objects in their homes. Other people chose to move to a new home to facilitate “moving forward” in their lives and perhaps to stop some of the “grief-triggers” that remaining in the homes they shared with their loved one created. 

That works in different ways for different people. Without judgement here about either path, I know some people who sold their homes or sold their loved ones car or truck very early in their bereavement, only to wish later on that they had moved more slowly. I also know some people who made those same types of moves or changes early on and remained quite satisfied with their choices.

I think it’s important to remind you here yet again, that there is no timetable for when or if you have to move or remove anything from your life. If you want to let stuff go quickly or you want to keep it forever, it’s all ok but it’s only the right time when it’s the right time for you. There is no schedule you have to follow except your own! And you can change your mind and your direction anytime along the way as well.

Throughout your bereavement, it’s why you do things that’s important. It matters that you do things with intent for your own purposes and not because it seemed like a good idea because someone said you should or because you read something in a book or online. There is also a lot of push from the “non-bereaved” to do stuff quickly and get on with your life that we may need to or want to carefully filter.

Unfortunately, sometimes, financial, work, health or family matters force some decisions on us long before we are ready or wanting to make them.

I’ve talked with people who were forced to go through some of those changes unwanted and it always seemed from my perspective, that they had been very sad and often confused and angry by being forced into those positions. But I also saw that once it had been done, once they had been in their new situation for a time, they began to rise out of the shock and distress it had caused them, on top of their bereavement, and they too began to find a new equilibrium that became almost a baseline for them to begin building on as they went forward.

What to leave in, what to leave out:

At some point along the way then, we will all probably need to make decisions about what we want to let remain and what we want to let go of from our lives with our loved ones as we build the next chapter of our lives without them. 

One tendency seems to be, as it was for me, especially early on, to hoard every little thing that reminds us of our loved ones and keep things pretty much as they had always been. This goes for material items and the way our living spaces are arranged, to how we navigate through our lives and the things we do, the way we do them and sometimes even the order we do them in. It can also include our emotional connection to them all.

The opposite tendency seems to be to relatively quickly change things, hoping or finding that the changes we make in the material world will mitigate some of the difficult feelings that these material objects and activities bring us during our grieving.

Either way, we all probably have a house full of stuff we’ve accumulated during our lives with our loved ones and there probably will be, at some point, that is unique to each of us, a need to “clean house” in some way; to change some things to lighten the load. We may need to perhaps emotionally and physically “down size” so the actual daily burden of things is reduced so it becomes more accessible and manageable to us. 

Since we will have to find ways to do the things we are responsible for alone, now that there is only one person available to take on all the tasks, we will also now have to find ways to manage all the possessions and tasks of a two person life on our own. 

Picking up the pieces, taking on the tasks…

Finding continuity within our grief fogged brains sometimes seems almost impossible. The same is true for beginning to do the normal tasks that define our lives. At some point, which is different for each of us, we will have to start putting a life together that includes all or most of the everyday things that make up any life. 

At it’s most simple level, we need to find food and bathe, keep ourselves healthy and keep our personal space at least relatively clean. We need to maintain our homes, especially if we own them. We may also need to do more complex things like taking care of a child or a pet or a job or a business. Picking up these kinds of pieces of our lives takes concentration at a time when we may have so little of it to devote to those things and when even their importance can seem very questionable. But it is something we will eventually have to learn how to do.

Finding the energy to do our normal stuff and then to take on the stuff we relied on our spouses or partners to do and then learning how to do it requires energy and focus:

As I’m sure everyone knows and as we talked about at the last meeting, in most marriages and partnerships, things that need to be done are almost always shared out between the two spouses and partners. 

I want to remind you that there has always been a list of things to do in our lives but now, while that list of things to do continues, we often may find we have little or no energy to get up and do them. Now, sadly, all the material tasks and jobs and repairs and that endless-seeming list of things life gives us to do must be done by us, on our own. What was once a two person life still contains most of the same things, the same needs and responsibilities but now, it’s all on us to not just do it all but in many cases to have to start from scratch and learn how to do a task in the first place.

One thing I’ve learned is to try to find good help when we are up against things we don’t know, don’t know how to do or aren’t physically or mentally able to do, even if we used to be able to do them. If it’s possible, it’s good to get recommendations or help from family, friends and neighbors. If your neighborhood maintains a list of qualified and vetted service people, it is always good to check those resources. 

At least for the first time a task needs to be done, we may need to get some help, find a friend or maybe hire someone and then watch and pay attention and ask questions so we can duplicate the task in the future, especially if it’s a normal, routine task like starting the lawnmower or turning on the sprinklers or cooking a turkey, sewing on a button or doing the taxes. We may also need to regularly hire someone to do the physical tasks we are no longer able to do…..And there’s always You-Tube!

I think there are traps here to be aware of too. If we don’t begin to start doing the necessary tasks in our lives, the longer we wait, the more habitual it becomes to not do them and the more excuses we find to put things off or avoid doing them. The more we put things off, for whatever reason, in whatever way, the easier it becomes to find ever-new excuses to not do things and to excuse ourselves from doing them because we are grieving, even long after our grief begins to taper off in its intensity. 

More Changes:

When and if you make changes, especially big changes, in your life while you are grieving, it is good to try to let them be your own decision when and if you decide it’s time to do them. If possible, it might also be good to wait until the fog has thinned a little and you can see more clearly before you make major changes in your life. Some grief studies suggest waiting a year or more if you can, before making large or drastic changes even though they may seem like a good idea at the time.

Also, if possible, no one else should make these choices and decisions for you because it’s your grief and your heart that needs to be comfortable with the choices you are making. In the end you have to listen to your heart and let it guide you to your own personal solutions. But from another perspective, if many or all of your friends and family are telling you they think you are making a mistake, it might be good to at least consider what they are saying……

It’s another “no-one-right-answer” situation. What I have seen says that when it’s possible, it’s everyone’s decision to make in their own way and again, in the end, it’s only the right time when it’s the right time for you. 

Making decisions without our loved ones:

This can be one of the hardest emotional and mental things we have to learn to do. In most marriages and partnerships, there are not only shared tasks, there are also shared decisions. We discuss things and we decide together what we want to do or how we want to proceed or do things. There are also the individual decisions we made based on our individual roles within our marriages or partnerships. 

As hard as it can sometimes be to do our own individual decision making during our bereavement, the need to learn to do all the decision making we used to share, just like we need to learn to do all the material things we used to share, is a major step we eventually are going to have to take going forward. 

Especially if the person who is no longer there was making most of the decisions about a particular part of our lives, we now have to pick up the ball and without support or help from that person, we get to do it ourselves. We need to learn to take on the every-day decision making processes and learn to find the energy to continue making them and perhaps learn to do them as well as our spouse or partner did when they were the ones making those choices. 

This is a daunting task with no easy or convenient solutions. I found it to be and it still is one of the most difficult things I have to do. It was also one of the things I found I missed most often as I went forward.

For me there was also a massive loss of self confidence during my early bereavement that made it especially difficult for me to make decisions. As most of us did, I had relied on our shared decision making to make so many of the choices in our lives and now not only was I alone having those decisions to make but I found myself in a place where I doubted my ability to even or ever make good decisions about anything!

I believe it’s ok to ask for help here too and to allow and sometimes delegate trusted friends and family to help us make some of these decisions and also to help us learn how to make them again on our own. As before, I think we need to make sure, if we can, that they are our decisions in the end because we will have to live with them and the consequences of them. 

It’s usually OK to allow people to help and take some of the burden off of us, especially early on but we also need to try to make sure that as many decisions as possible come back to us for final approval before they are implemented so we have the final say and control over what is done or said or promised in our name.

If this all seems daunting, as I mentioned at the last meeting, we might also remember that there are a lot of people who never had a spouse or partner to share those responsibilities and decisions with and they learned to take care of business without someone to share it with or help them decide! We may not necessarily want to, but we can learn to do that too…

Hope and Healing:

Our healing journeys are going to be full of changes and decisions and learning to do things we have not usually had to do before. We will have to find ways to do the material things necessary to living a full life, we will need to learn to find the energy to do those things and we will have to learn again to make good choices and decisions without the help of our loved ones. That is what the majority of our grief and healing journeys will be about as we work to create the next part of our lives!

Questions: 

**Where are you at in your physical or mental “house cleaning” process?

Which are you more comfortable with, holding on tightly or making changes early or maybe some of both?

**What have you had to learn to do that you never did before?

How did you figure out or get help to do it?

How did it make you feel when you actually did it?

How are you dealing with the inertia of your grief and finding ways to do the things that you don’t feel like doing that still need to be done?

**How are you doing in learning to make decisions on your own?

**If you have begun to take on the tasks and make the decisions you used to share, what strategies have you used and how might you continue the process?

How does it make you feel to have to make those decisions?

How does it make you feel when you actually do make a (good) decision?

**Do you think you need to be “proactive” in approaching the building of the next part of your life? How might you do that?

Do you feel you have established any habits of grieving in your life? How might you work to break them?