If there is no way to overcome a great loss, there is no way to move forward in life. A bereavement professional will advise you to think about what the person you lost would have wanted for your life.
Decades together with your spouse, and after his or her death, you should move on alone. Life feels pointless and you feel half-hearted, insecure even. How can anything be anything when he is no longer sharing everything?
A similar grief can be felt by anyone who has lost a loved one: a mother, a father, a child or someone they love. The illness may have lasted a long time or come on quickly. Sometimes an accident takes you by surprise.
Great sorrow is a heavy burden, which can become even heavier to carry if you are stuck with it indefinitely.
But what if you just stay? If everything changed, and nothing felt the same. If the will to live just doesn’t return. Even after years.
Even then, all is not lost. You can learn to think differently.
Minna Tani, a counsellor at the Kymenlaakso Cancer Association, has seen this countless times in her work. She has been working with hospice patients and their relatives for twenty years.
The chronicity of grief is shown when you cannot take care of yourself or leave your home.
«Grief can sometimes become chronic. It is influenced by many things, and it is very individual. For example, if you are completely incapacitated for a long time, unable to take care of yourself or leave your home, this can be a sign of chronicity.»
Although the grief itself can last for years in its various forms, Tani says it is worth seeing a doctor for such symptoms after six months at the latest.
«Fortunately, there are also plenty of psychologists in health centres to talk to.»
However, grief does not always settle on you in such a way that it covers all your days, weeks and thoughts. It can go away and come back. Grief is a ripple effect,» says Minna Tani.
«Sometimes it can feel easier, sometimes harder. Grief can come back in two years or so with a crisis. We shouldn’t talk about stages of grief as if they were always the same for everyone. Otherwise, we load an unnecessary burden on the bereaved, who will not act as the textbooks tell us.»
