In a way, the title of this column is ironic — most of us deal with grief by not dealing with it at all.
I am in no way a psychologist, however, when we experience loss it is undoubtedly a heavy burden that weighs on all involved in various ways.
We often don’t know what to say to those who are grieving and even more so, those who are grieving don’t really know what they want to hear. In both cases, it seems like nothing will help.
So many people have lost loved ones over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and haven’t been able to celebrate their lives in the way they hoped.
For me, the two losses I had over the past eight months hit in different ways and I was hoping by writing about them, we can all reflect on the ways in which we can talk about our grief and how it takes hold of us.
In September of this year, I lost my grandfather. He was 99 years old. The man lived a great life. He was born in P.E.I. to potato farmers and his father was eventually a lighthouse keeper for several decades at an iconic lighthouse on the island.
My grandfather travelled a different path, moving to Toronto to join the war effort at the height of the Second World War. Only, he was unable to enlist. A broken arm as a child, that didn’t heal properly because he never saw a doctor, wouldn’t allow him to hold a gun.
So, he found a different way to help.
He made his way to Hamilton Gears, where he cut gears for nearly three decades before retiring. The retractable roof at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, where the Blue Jays play, still has gears that he cut.
That experience helped him develop a nose for fixing things and he was the guy who everybody called when their sink was leaking or they had a project.
He was still driving well into his mid-90s.
As he slowed, my mom and her siblings decided to move him into a seniors facility. He seemed to enjoy it there and was doing great before a stroke.
After that, he didn’t talk much but he was always smiling, always happy. He was the type of person who never had a bad word to say about anyone.
We knew the day would come when he would pass and I kept thinking every visit home to Ontario would be the last time I would see him.
The last time I did visit, we played cards like we always did, he won like he always did. It was only a few short weeks after that when he died.
We were able to have a small funeral, with close friends and family. It was important to say goodbye. In my own way, I kept saying he was old and it was his time, but maybe that was my way of grieving, my way of coping. I was sad but I didn’t really know what do to.
When you lose someone, isn’t that so often the way? You just don’t know how to feel. There’s an emptiness — a sadness that you can’t quite come to grips with.
The other loss came only a few weeks ago when my fiancée and I had to put our dog down. It was an entirely different type of grief — of loss. He was only eight, but had an aggressive form of cancer and just wasn’t going to have the same quality of life. We made the difficult decision to put him down before the cancer became too much for him to handle.
There were some hard days when we felt like it was too soon or not the right time to do what we knew we would eventually have to do.
We cried — we laughed at old photos or videos of him playing or barking. I’ll still scroll through my phone and see him and try to fight back tears.
It was a different kind of grief than what I experienced in September, obviously. And yet, it was much harder to process. I wasn’t ready for that moment.
Grief takes hold on a schedule we’re not prepared for or privy to. It hits you when you least expect it. Could be anything that triggers the unexpected overflow of emotion.
I’ve lost enough family members over the years to know that it all eventually gets easier, but the loss never totally goes away.
This is all to say, there’s no perfect way to deal with loss. There’s no book to guide you through it, no five-step plan to get over it.
You deal with the waves as they come, you honour those you’ve lost however and whenever you can, and you try and make them proud by the way you move forward — the way you live going forward.
Byron Hackett is the Managing Editor of the Red Deer Advocate.