A new clinical diagnosis is meant to address extreme episodes of grief that last longer than a year. But the truth is that grief rarely, if ever, really resolves much faster. Here's why.
Avoidance of reminders that the person is dead.With children and adolescents, I think it is particularly cruel to give them six months or less. In 1979, I was two weeksof my fifth birthday when my father died from cancer. Neither my grief as a young child, nor my paternal grandmother’s grief from losing her son, were resolved within these suggested timeframes.
In fact, when I was six and in kindergarten, my class was asked to make Father’s Day cards. This moment came more than 12 months after my father died, and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to tell others he died.Perhaps it is because death in many ways is an adult issue that as a very young child I was being tasked with processing.
Whatever the reason as a child, I can tell you not only did I feel intense feelings when people asked my father, but my identity as the daughter of my father was deeply disrupted. And I can also recall my paternal grandmother telling me a full three decades after her son died, she still felt as though a part of had died. She often said, “It was the reverse order of things.”
Parents shouldn’t bury their children. And yet, it happens. Millions of parents lament their children, and they do it with intense sorrow. The truth of the matter is, no matter how hard the bereaved tries to suppress their sadness, nothing and no one can fill the void. People and relationships aren’t furniture. Simply removing them from one’s line of vision and replacing them with something similar or new won’t mend a tattered heart. What makes the difference is accepting that the death of a loved one significantly alters one’s life. Nothing ever is the same.