By Lennlee Keep
So Sorry for Your Loss
When my husband died, a lot of things surprised me. Friends and family showed up en masse. People I hadn’t heard from in years reached out to give their condolences, and there were calls, cards, and casseroles galore, all of which were very comforting and deeply appreciated. But after a month or so, everyone returned to their regular routines, which is understandable, but there was no return to normal for my son and me.
While Sister Úna shares her journey toward letting go in Sister Úna Lived a Good Death, we see that her story doesn’t end with her loss. There are the ones to leave us, and those of us left to grieve. Dealing with the world after the death of a loved one can be an isolating no-man’s-land. While I was surrounded by a supportive and loving community, in the months after my husband’s death, I found that many people wanted to help, but didn’t know what to say or do.
Sister Úna and friends in the documentary Sister Úna Lived a Good Death.
Best-selling author and journalist Dina Gachman had a similar experience when she experienced the heartbreaking loss of her mother and sister, which she recounts in her book So Sorry for Your Loss: How I Learned to Live with Grief and Other Grave Concerns.
I saw so much of myself in her book. While it gave me hope and comfort, it also helped me articulate what I needed. Gachman gives great advice for people supporting someone else through grief. “I think there’s so much fear, like, ‘I’m going to say the wrong thing. I’m going to trigger them.’ And what people don’t realize is that a grieving person’s already triggered. There’s nothing you can do to make us feel worse except saying nothing.”
Amen, Dina. To this day, someone mentioning my husband’s name makes me smile because it means someone else is also thinking about him.
The Myth of Five Stages
There were also times I felt that I was “bad” at grieving. Turns out, maybe I was led to feel that way.
One of the most prevalent and potentially damaging myths about grief is that it happens in five distinct stages. Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced this idea in her book On Death and Dying. In it, she outlined five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Initially, Kubler-Ross posited that the five stages described the feelings of a person facing their death, not those left behind. But in the book’s second printing, she expanded the definition to include those experiencing the loss of a loved one. In a new book published posthumously in 2004, she wrote that the five stages are “not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or goes in a prescribed order.”
I wasn’t alone in thinking that I was a “bad griever.” Using the stages of grief to gauge a person’s progress has left millions in mourning with the feeling that they are somehow doing it wrong. Equally harmful is the idea that once the stages of grief are “complete,” it is time to move on.
The medical profession seems to agree.
In 2022, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders update (DSM-5) included a new diagnosis: prolonged grief disorder. The definition of “prolonged” seems vague, and the description closely mirrors the feelings and behavior of anyone who has lost someone they love. The American Psychiatry Association estimates that 7%-10% of people who have experienced a loss have this disorder.
“The five stages model was meant as descriptive but has become prescriptive,” wrote science writer Ada McVean. “Bereaved individuals can feel like there are certain reactions they should be having and that they are somehow grieving wrong by not having them. There is no set pattern of emotions that must be experienced to come to terms with death, and we can seriously harm bereaved individuals by comparing their experiences to a non-evidence-based, not-even-meant-to-describe-their-experiences model.”
Grief is a topic that has been brought out of the shadows.
Joan Didion and “The Look” of Loss
Whether art changes with the culture or changes it, many writers have shared their experiences through grief and loss. No one can understand someone moving through loss like someone else who has experienced it.
Author Joan Didion said it best in The Year of Magical Thinking, her National Book Award-winning book about the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne:
“People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face, and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist’s office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes.”
I am certain I had that same look. In the book, Didion also explores the surprising nature of grief and how it is rarely what we would expect. She found profundity and the absurdity of these complicated feelings. Things that would have seemed unreasonable before suddenly seeming to be the truth: “I could not give away the rest of his shoes. I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return. The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought. I have still not tried to determine (say, by giving away the shoes) if the thought has lost its power.”
Terrible, Thanks for Asking
Grief is as multifaceted, layered, and complex as those who have died. Nora McInerney has become an expert at steering through her own grief and guiding the newly bereaved through this strange land. Several people forwarded me her topic of grief in her much-lauded TED Talk and her podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking. She also has several best-selling books on the subject, including It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too). She is adept at navigating the pain and sadness surrounding death and dying with empathy, expertise, and, sometimes, a little levity. The levity is important. I was surprised at the humor sometimes found in the sadness and the sheer absurdity of grief.
At 31, she lost her second child, her father, and her husband, Aaron, all in six weeks. Aaron and Nora wrote his obituary together, showing humor and creativity (as they revealed his true identity to be Spiderman).
As Nora wrote in her Substack newsletter, She Tried, “I was ready for the sad, which meant I was ready for the crying. But grief, it turns out, is more than just crying. Sometimes it isn’t crying at all. Sometimes, it’s absolutely no crying whatsoever for many days, and then an unleashing of emotion completely incongruent with the time and place.”
Nick Cave and Grief
After my husband’s death, many friends directed me to the work of singer/songwriter Nick Cave. He and his wife lost their son, Arthur, in a tragic accident. The loss gave Cave a new perspective on humanity. He understood that his loss connected him to others who were grieving. Like Didion and Cave, I also found that grief recognizes the grief in others. Those who have lost a loved one are like an invisible network of strangers who just understand each other.
Cave wrote an album called Skeleton Tree about Arthur’s death, and the making of Skeleton Tree was chronicled in the powerful documentary One More Time With Feeling, which I found to be the most profound film on loss that I have ever seen.
Cave’s need to connect with his fans and communicate with others experiencing grief led to the creation of The Red Hand Files. People write to Cave from around the world, and he selects a question to answer each week. Cave is candid about his grief and approaches others’ stories with curiosity, tenderness, and a shared insight into one of life’s most painful passages. Since 2018, the Red Hand Files has been an ongoing conversation about love, grief, hope, and faith. He has also toured the world with The Red Hand Files, having these conversations with people in person.
In October 2018, Cave posted a letter from a reader named Cynthia, who had experienced many significant losses in a few years. He wrote beautifully about his son’s death in response: “Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.”
Cave found himself so touched and inspired by the question and conversation that he also wrote a song called “Letter to Cynthia”:
“It seems to me that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable.”
I was lucky enough to have seen The Red Hand Files tour in person and got to ask Nick Cave if he agreed with Didion when she said, “Grief is a form of temporary insanity.” He responded that he felt grief wasn’t necessarily insanity but a different place altogether. I agree.
Loss and love are two sides of the same coin, and the price of admission. As William Faulkner wrote, “Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.”
The author hugging Nick Cave at a show in Austin.
More Resources for Grief
Reimagine’s mission is to help all people face adversity, loss, and mortality, and channel the hard parts of life into meaningful action and growth.
End Well Project’s Guide for the Griever
Lennlee Keep is a nonfiction writer, filmmaker, storyteller, and reticent D&D player. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, The Southeast Review, and ESME. Her films have been shown on PBS, A&E, and the BBC. The ex-wife of a dead guy, she talks about death more than most people are comfortable with. She is working on a memoir about addiction, grief and a literally broken heart. She lives in Seattle with her son and their guinea pig, Chuck Norris.
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