Jane came into my office having said goodbye to her husband two years ago. Her son accompanied her to her first session. Her son explained that Dad had died two years ago and that Mom, a frail woman in her 80s, still had no closure, that she had been unable to get over it. I screamed inside. Two of what I believe are completely useless phrases to a grieving person.
Useless phrase #1 Get closure.
If there are two common words/phrases that irk me as a grief counsellor, it is these — Get closure and Get over it. Both begin with an annoying word — get. As if the grieving person should be able to, just by force of will, acquire something as undefinable as closure and conquer something as equally undefinable as it.
Let’s begin with closure. Formal definitions include the phrase a sense of completeness or resolution or the end of ambiguity. Often that word is linked to having a service for one’s loved on, as in “we really needed to have a funeral — for closure”. But, when we had the funeral, did closure happen? Did you actually close the book on your loved one after the casket was lowered and you drove away? No. You didn’t. Nor did the others in attendance. You marked a life. You grieved together. You hopefully had a sense of community, a sense that there are others who also loved and lost. THAT has value. But the grieving process itself unwinds and unfolds into the days and weeks that follow — with seemingly no end in sight. Having some well meaning person talk about closure does not make the grieving process hurry along or any easier.
Now, that said, having no ritual to make the end of a life, no ritual for grieving together, can and will paralyze the grief process. I have had numerous clients speak of the urn that sits and waits for the family to come to some kind of agreement where the ashes should finally rest. Those left behind make a valiant attempt at getting on with their lives but there is something left undone and that incompleteness is unsettling. Those of us who still live can help those who will bury or scatter us by leaving clear instructions for what to do with our remains. Doing so is a gift we give our families after we are gone.
Perhaps the old phrase put to rest is a better one. We put the body to rest. We do our loved one’s last tax filing and put that to rest. We take his last clothes to the thrift store, and put that task to rest. As we complete the necessary tasks of tidying up a life’s end, we can take a deep breath and say, now that piece is done.
Useless phrase #2 Get over it.
Often get over it is a phrase grievers attach to themselves. As in, “I just can’t get over it.”. Said with a sigh. When I hear this phrase, I usually reply, as gently as I can, with something like over it isn’t how grieving works. And then I add, neither is go around it and that a better word picture is move through it. Moving through allows for time, for reflection, for mis-steps along the way. Over smacks of avoidance. If I could just leapfrog over this hurdle, I’d be ok. That’s not how grieving works. There’s no leaping.
What my grieving clients are really saying is that they want this pain to be over, that they want to be at the end of missing and longing and hurting rather than being somewhere in the messy middle. But the messy middle goes on and on. Rather than focus on over it, I encourage them to allow whatever they are experiencing to be just that, an experience. I invite them to describe their messy middle, to rant and be angry if necessary, to share some black humour if black humour has already been part of their experience. And then, I add the word yet — the most hopeful word in the English language. You haven’t come to the end of your grieving — yet. But you will, because you’re here and you are moving through it. Whatever it may be.
And so, I am hereby giving you permission to white-out/delete/eliminate both of those useless phrases from your vocabulary and insist that others in your world do the same.
And as for Jane, I asked her how long she had been married to her son’s father. Sixty years. I replied that being over it in two years made no sense mathematically or emotionally. No one can live for 60 years with someone and then say good bye and not look back — and cry.
