Early Grief

Grief is something not always experienced at the time of physical loss. Often it happens years earlier, in a single moment, or more subtly—in increments—over months drawn out into decades.

When grief is located earlier on the timeline of death, it is usually because the reality of a relationship with another person, or the behavior of that person, has been able to be put into proper context, allowing an emotional working—through which leads to a realistic acceptance. 

In this, the grieving person frequently finds peace with the other person, and with themselves, that otherwise would never have happened.

That is because this early grief, as I like to call it, frees the grieving person, finally, from wishing and hoping.

When a relationship or person can be truly and unequivocally accepted as never going to change, grief can, and does, usually follow at some point (anger or other emotions may precede grief, and as those are worked through, then grief can flow). 

This acceptance ends the never-ending cycle of getting one’s hopes up only to have them dashed once again.

Acceptance brings wishing to a stop as well, because the grief of dreams not panning out is essentially what acknowledges that the dream is dead, and in fact, was a dead dream all along (in spite of many efforts by the grieving person over the years to make it come true). 

To better illustrate this, we can take the example of an alcoholic parent, for whom everything was tried to assist them towards, and support them in, sobriety, to no avail. Once honest and sincere acceptance that this person is not going to change, or respond to anyone’s efforts and love, occurs, we can and most likely will, have no other response but to grieve. 

It’s what the world calls “reality sinking in.”

The grief experienced in this situation is for the admitting that there is nothing more one can do for the parent’s alcoholism, but it is also for the lost relationship that could have been but never was (or was once, and lost to drinking). 

And it is also for the life the parent has lost to their own drinking.

One may also grieve over no longer holding out any hope, which has, in the past, provided some semblance of comfort, along with the delusion of, “If we could just find the right answer (or pray hard enough), we could control the situation."

It isn’t that we give up and call it quits once reality, and healthy grief, takes place. 

Certainly if the alcoholic rallies and begins steps to recovery, one can—making sure to manage expectations—be there for the person. 

It is more a matter of attitude and perspective. 

Once the grieving person has found closure in the situation being what it is, they are always open to the alcoholic’s recovery, but not expecting it. 

Having grieved, they move on in peace that, when and if the time comes for the parent’s sobriety, the son or daughter will be in a much better place to maintain an objective, and cautious approach and response—made all the easier by the fact that they have already grieved. Any emotions—and delusional dreaming—that recur will be much easier to keep in check.

So when the day comes that the alcoholic passes from this earth, and some of those related to them do not appear to be in grief, it is because the grief the onlookers are expecting to see has taken place months, years, or even decades before. 

I used an alcoholic as an obvious example. But this process applies to a variety of every day relationships and situations, the details of which are unique to each and every person, mind and heart. 

I believe the stereotypical measure of grief, based on how much emotional output is exerted at a funeral, or even in the last years or days of a loved one, is a misread.

Early grief is just as much grief as present, sudden, “at-the-funeral” grief, and is also expressed through tears and anguish—most likely when nobody was around to notice, and occurring long before a deceased’s heart stopped beating.

Copyright Barb Harwood