Please don't say "Sorry for your loss"
A complicated relationship with my dad has led to complicated grief.
Last week, readers offered condolences on my news that my 93-year-old dad had died after a long decline. The paragraph about my dad was just one of three newsy updates in my post. How odd, I thought, emailing my editor to remark upon the responses. Aren’t readers interested in my other big news: my podcast ending after five years, or that I’ve been on Substack for exactly one year?
A few days later it came to me: I had failed to acknowledge the life-changing loss of my dad—to readers, who understood it right away, or to myself. The death of a parent (or both, as my mom died last year) is a life-altering change that requires slowing down to digest. I’m just starting to do that. Why did it take me so long?
Well, it’s complicated. I’ve heard that grief is complicated when the relationship with that person is complicated. So it is for me with my dad. It was a relief to see my dad released to the hereafter1 after a long period of debilitation. It provided closure, I thought, and peace for him. But despite loving my father very much, I’m not feeling the sadness we associate with grief. Instead I’m feeling a bit numb, confused, guilty, and even fearful.
It’s time to acknowledge what that means. I hope what follows will be useful to readers, as we all have major events, or periods, in our life that are so life-changing we simply can’t absorb them right away. I’m thinking of what’s below not as tips for you so much as guideposts for me, to help me digest and understand the loss of my dad. And if they end up helping you, too, all the better.
Avoid avoidance (the numbness)
The numbness for me comes in the shape of avoidance. Simply put, I don’t want to feel my feelings about my dad’s death. I want to ignore them. I want to shut the door on the departure of our family’s patriarch, as it marks the end of an era for me and my family. While I appreciate the many “so sorry” condolences left by readers, the reflexive notes feel wrong and just emphasize how much people don’t understand. I know that the phrase “I’m sorry for your loss” is meant to convey sympathy and caring, but my internal response is “Oh, you have no idea. It’s so much more complicated than that.” What I’ve found most healing so far is a snail mail letter from a relative describing a revealing encounter she had with my dad. It breaks through the numbness and reminds me of all the positive things about my father’s larger-than-life personality and impact on the world around him.
Accept confusion
In the past several weeks I’ve had to remind myself, explaining, “You’ve been through this before when your mother died. You know that even if a parent is very old and you have in a sense ‘lost’ them before their death, it’s very different when they actually die.” As a close friend said to me, “It’s a mystery, isn’t it, that someone can exist and then suddenly not?” The mix of feelings at the loss of a parent–surprise, regret, relief, sadness, tears–quickly leads to confusion. I’m reminding myself to sit with that disorientation.
Let go of the guilt
The guilt, the guilt… over all the unfinished business. There’s lots of well-meaning advice on how to bring things to closure with an elderly parent. We’re told to be sure to resolve conflicts (“You’ll regret it later if you don’t!”), to clear up misunderstandings, to make things right. There’s even a four-part mantra2 for what to say at someone’s deathbed: “I love you. I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you.” I was looking forward to holding my dad’s hand and saying those words to him. But he died two days before I got there. Would he have been receptive if he were conscious and alert? I really don’t know.
Banish the fear of being judged
Part of me believes that if I don’t grieve the way other close family members do, then there is something wrong with me. If my conflicted feelings about my dad don’t jibe with his public eulogies, then I am a bad person. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing about my complicated grief; I shouldn’t say anything publicly; I should keep all this under wraps. But I don’t want to. This is what writers do: they give words to things that are difficult and even unmentionable. I keep reminding myself: this is how I create. And so.
Make sense of it all
This is where I am now, trying to integrate the enormity of my dad’s death into my life. I know it will take time. My challenge is to embrace the fact that I will not have closure with my dad. I am still working on compassion and forgiveness towards him–and myself–and that’s okay.
Moving forward, my goal is to take responsibility for eradicating the self-doubt that is a central part of who I am. I have long put the blame for that self-doubt on my parents. Even at 72, it’s not too late for me to stop blaming, to start accepting myself as a flawed human, and to learn to like and trust myself a lot more.
I’ve written about my dad here, and my mom here. And on a final, happy note I wrote about my dad taking our extended family on an extraordinary day trip to see the April, 2017 total eclipse.
Questions for readers…
If you’ve suffered a loss, what is the most meaningful response you’ve received? (It’s okay if it was “I’m sorry for your loss”!)
When something in your life is emotionally messy, do you ever feel like you just want to avoid it? How do you handle those complicated feelings?
Don’t know if I believe in an afterlife, but I just finished Sebastian Junger’s new memoir, In My Time of Dying, and he’s definitely got me wondering.
This mantra is variously phrased and sometimes attributed to Hoʻoponopono, a traditional Hawaiian practice of reconciliation, forgiveness, and restoring balance. The word roughly means “to make things right.”
My own very difficult, damaged and damaging mother died last year from dementia and I feel very fortunate to have been with her as she died. I noticed that many people, projecting their own relationships onto mine, said something like, "You must be devastated". I wasn't. Having her as a mother had been a very hard road for us both. I am the unmothered daughter of an unmothered daughter. Through her dementia, some of the barriers came down and she was able to show me some tenderness, and that made a big difference at the end. But I'd done my grieving whilst she was alive, and I'd made my peace with her limitations; I knew that she loved me as best she could. It hadn't been enough, but it was good enough to know that at the end. You might find this essay I wrote here on Substack "It's easier to love my mother now she's dead" might ring a bell or two. Or not. Grief is a part of love, and we all love differently. Hugs, Jody x
https://jodyday.substack.com/p/it-is-easier-to-love-my-mother-now
When my father died, it meant a lot to me when people said they were sorry for my loss. Even if it’s an imperfect phrase, I found it better than avoidance. I remember to this day the people who said nothing. That hurt—it was as if they weren’t brave enough to be with me in that devastating time, even though my relationship with my father was very hard.