Hurry Up and Get Over it!!!

Well…I was at a book signing the other day (which I might add, went very well. I got a great response from some amazing folks who just needed some compassion and a little encouragement after suffering some terrible losses) and was having a very heartfelt talk with an older lady. She had lost her husband of about 50 years, a little over a year ago. She talked with me at length of how her family wanted her to “hurry up” and “get over it” – meaning the death of her husband!

It’d been a little over a year and all the literature that I’ve ever read generally states that most people start to get back to normal about a year out. I imagine their thoughts were “It’s been a year! Surely she should be over it by now!” They probably aren’t really as heartless as I’ve implied, but when you’re in the middle of such a painful situation and someone tries to hurry you up in your healing process, that’s exactly the way that they sound to you.

I actually had someone very close to me ask me that exact same question once. “You aren’t over it yet?” I didn’t know how to respond! My response today would be “No, and I never will be!” I will feel better and I will be able to move on, but I will never “be over it!”  I lost my other half – meaning there is a part of me that is now missing. I will never have it back. There is some peace in thinking of the afterlife and thinking of seeing him again, but until then there is an enormous hole that can’t be filled.

Relationships take time to cultivate and I had 21 years invested in mine. Every year I loved and understood my husband more. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t perfect. We had our share of fights. I just knew at that point that after any argument things would be fine. New ones aren’t like that. In a new relationship any disagreement could lead to an end. When you’ve been in a long term relationship you realize you’re in it for the long haul and know that a little bickering isn’t going to end it. That’s where we were. I can’t imagine how that woman must’ve felt. She had more than twice as many years invested than even I had.

I know there are others out there that feel like people should hurry up and move on. My advice to them and to this woman’s family would be:

Don’t rush her. Let her decide how long is long enough to mourn the death of her best friend!

Don’t judge her for her anger, bitterness, the crazy things she does or the nasty words that spurt from her mouth. Let her experience all of her emotions.  She will learn to overcome those. Remember you can’t  know how you’d react if you were in her shoes.

Be there for her when she needs you, but don’t crowd her. There will be times when she needs someone to lean on and there will  be times when she can’t stand having others around.

Expect her to have good days and bad days. Some days she may be exceptionally happy and other days you may think she’s gone off the deep end. Give her time and there will tend to be more good ones than bad.

Understand that each person will experience grief differently and at a different pace. Some get rid of their loved ones things right away while others may hang onto them forever. Some want to talk about the loss all the time while others can’t speak of it for quite some time. Some people find peace doing activities that they did previously with their loved ones, while others may never do those things again.

Just let her be herself. She probably doesn’t know who that is right now. She only knows who she was when that other half of herself was still there. As time goes on she will slide into the role of who she is now and just know that it won’t be the same person as she was before, but she will figure it out.

In conclusion – don’t rush her – give her time to grieve.

-Gayle Dunlap-Kowalski