In the last few months, a lot of my new clients have presented with grief and loss. For some it was a recent death in the family and for others the death was a few years ago.
The more you love someone the more you will miss them when they are gone.
The more you care for someone the more you will miss them when they are gone.
Sometimes you do not know what you have until it is gone.
So, if you are missing them heaps that suggests to me, they meant a lot to you.
However, I often see people who regret they did not make up with the person before they died or was living a life that hurt the person who has died.
A common theme for all the people I have seen in the last few months, has been that they were struggling to come to terms with the loss of their loved one.
Some had started drinking quite heavily to drown out the pain of the loss to find drinking only made them feel worse. Others had tried to get over the loss by working extra hours at work. They too found as the drinkers this did not work.
Whatever you do to try and remove the pain of the loss, it is not going to remove the pain of the loss quickly.
However, I believe there are a few things you can do to help the pain lessen and over time it will not be as noticeable, and I would like to share them with you.
1. Every time you feel sad/upset with their passing, remind yourself of a happy memory of them. This will in time, to help your brain to look at the good times you had with them not the fact they are no longer with you.
2. Live your life in a way that honours their memory. When my mother died, I honoured her memory by caring for my father who had dementia. When my father died, I honoured his memory by making sure his estate was distributed the way he had intended not just what was written in his will.
3. Be the person they would be proud of. Would they have wanted you sit around mourning for them and putting your life on hold?
4. Did the two of you have a trip or something special planned when you retired, finished uni or …? If so, why not do that something special when you achieve whatever it was. Yes, taking the trip will be a sad time, but you are doing it in memory of them.
5. Whatever, however, you mourn their passing and no matter how they died do not let their death be in vain. If they died of cancer, raise some money for cancer. Over the years I have attended several workplace safety training days where somebody whose loved one died in a workplace accident, now goes around encouraging people to work safely and not become a workplace death like their loved one.
None of these will be easy to do, but they will ease the pain of the loss of your loved one.
Remember the more you love someone the more you will miss them when they are gone.
How have you dealt with your loss of a loved one?
