Thought for the Week: Bereavement
Jean Harbour shares her personal experience of grief and grieving
My first experience of bereavement was as a child of eight or nine, accompanying my grandmother to the cemetery to put flowers on her late husband’s grave. He had died many years before I was born, so there was no immediate sense of loss for me. I remember walking to the cemetery carrying flowers that we had picked from the garden. I helped to fill the vase with water from a tap that spluttered and cut the stems with a pair of scissors hanging on a chain. When we were satisfied we stood back quietly and then went home while my grandmother gently reminisced.
Other deaths followed of grandparents, parents and then friends, mainly in right ordering and in the case of my mother with the chance to be with her when she died and to say goodbye. Reading and writing poetry and activities of all kinds helped with the mourning.
The death of my beloved husband James at the age of ninety-three was expected, but with the twenty-year age difference between us he had tried to prepare me for his death for a number of years. I had rebuffed his efforts either by retorting ‘You never know’ or dissolving into tears. His comforting of me also had the caveat that he wouldn’t be around to do just that when the real event occurred. So, was I prepared for James’s death? I can only honestly answer: ‘Well, in some ways.’ It was good that we had a long period before James died of awareness that his health was deteriorating and we were able to talk about our feelings of great sadness coupled with thankfulness for what we were still sharing.
James had been a probation officer and psychotherapist, and knew the importance of grief and grieving. I was reluctant to engage – angry and tearful at the thought of losing him, but he had some sound advice. First, allow yourself to be sad, and second, do nothing in haste, especially not moving house. I cared for James until his death and, of course, it was physically and emotionally draining. I often cried in private like a hurt child. Struggling with the unpalatable fact that my husband was dying I knew that I needed to find strength to continue, as I felt passionately that I wanted to be left, for my own sake as well as James’s, with as few regrets as possible. James eschewed help from carers, so I organised domestic help and a gardener so we could spend what time remained together and continue in a modified way with our normal life – seeing family and friends, going to Meeting and taking short trips in the car.
James’s death was, like himself, gentle and peaceful, and I was with him as he died. I miss him and our life together more than I thought possible. I am comforted by the fact that he had left diaries that he knew I would find among his writing, filled with humorous observations of the past, loving messages of consolation and of his own sadness at the inevitable separation. There were also files on loss and mourning marked: ‘Jean you may find this useful.’
Grateful for his advice, I continue to grieve.
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