Grief Due To Separation (Dr. Brent Lindquist)

Welcome to another edition of MemCare by Radio. I'm Scott Hollinger and I'm your host for today and I'm glad you could be with us. Before I start in on the topic today though, I feel that I should tell you a little bit more about myself so we have an understanding. You see, I'm not the kind of person you would consider overly emotional or unable to handle pain and I don't cry when I'm watching movies. While I'm not the biggest guy around, I'm far from the smallest. I'm 12 kilos over what is considered the normal weight for my height. But no one, especially my doctor, considers me overweight. I've had 7 surgeries and months of painful rehabilitation, broke both my arms and torn my left shoulder so badly they had to stitch the muscle back together again so I could use it. Through all those painful events, I never shed a tear. I may have yelled a few times at the pain, but I never cried. However, an event occurred last week that caused my wife and I to fall into each others arms as we wept long and hard. No, we didn't suffer a death in the family or some other disaster. Well, not exactly. You see, last week just a few days ago we watched our eldest son Christopher achieve his dream as he walked through the gate at our local airport on his way to University. He had worked hard to qualify for a full scholarship at this school and that hard work had paid off. So, he was off for one of the best educations any school in the US can offer. The disadvantage is that the school is located about 2500 km away and the school is strictly regimented because of the difficulty of the studies. This means we'll probably only see him about four times a year. And when he graduates, while it's possible that his work might put him near our home, it's just as likely he'll be on the other side of the country. With that simple act of walking through that airport gate our son had walked into his future and we watched him head into adulthood and out of our sphere of direct influence. It was about two hours later we were back home and preparing for dinner when it suddenly hit me. Grief, deep and intense as in nothing I'd ever experienced. Almost as thought Chris had not really left for school but had died or left forever. At the airport, I'd been smiling for him and encouraging him not to worry and that we would be praying for him. But once we got home, I pretty much fell apart. There had been only a few other times in the past when I've experienced this kind of grief. The first time was when I was 7 years old and my Grandpa Hollinger died of leukemia. He really was my second father and an extension of my dad. Grandpa was the first close family member to die during my life. He's also the man, after my father, I have loved the most. I have to admit the grief over Christopher's departure was a bit surprising to me. After all I would see Chris again. In fact, our family will see him in just a few weeks when we go to visit him. Suddenly I'm asking myself "is this grief normal?" My wife can tell you I'm seen as a manly man, due to my size and athletic abilities and that is a pretty accurate description I feel. But she had never seen me cry so hard before. Actually, I don't really cry much ever. All I could tell her is that I have never watched one of our children leave home before. What about this kind of grief? Is it normal?? I have a feeling it is. So what I've done today is I've invited Dr. Brent Lindquist to our time so we can talk about this and some coping mechanisms to help us through it. Yes, I said 'us', because I'm including you too. I know that if our family is going through this then chances are, there are others listening who are going through the same thing or will soon be facing what we are facing. This conversation between Brent and me was recorded as we talked to each other over the internet. My first question to Brent, then, was if the intense grief our family is going through right now is normal.

I think what's surprising to us men in particular, if we can talk about sexual stereotyping today, is that we don't often grieve in the same way that women grieve. They're very much in touch with their feelings. They're thinking about it. They're worried about it. Perhaps you even can recall sometimes leading up to something Naren might have been sad in expressing that and your comment was to yourself maybe "oh that's not that big of a deal” and then all of a sudden the stuff hits you when you least expect it. I think also the surprising part about grieving the loss of people who are alive but just not around us anymore is that we don't see that as that big of a deal. I think it's evidence of a normal relationship though -- a healthy relationship because what you're saying is "wow, this was a big part of my life, the presence the physical presence part, the connection face to face, mono e mono if you will, and I don't have that anymore.

Right.

For me, as painful as it is to experience what you're feeling, I'm saying to myself “hey good job guy!”

So as I listen what I'm hearing Brent say is that the tears we shed, the grief we feel are normal. But then I asked Brent, “Are these feelings positive?”

Yes. Then the next question is, “Well how long should this continue?” or “Will this continue?” or “If this continues doesn't that become a positive yet painful reaction to life?” Was that going to be your next question?

Yes!

You know that's a little bit more troublesome to carefully identify. I think a good on the street kind of model, a good folk theory, would say to what extent is this grieving impacting your daily living, your daily functioning? If it turns out that you haven't been able to go to work for three days, you've been at work but you've left early for the next two days and then you got what you feel is the worst cold that you've had in decades and you miss most of the next week and the doctor says you don't really have a virus or anything like that but you're just feeling kind of blue and moody and things. You know that's getting towards something that says hmm it's a little bit of a reaction. But I would expect that you would probably perk up you know, just the act of doing things at work that makes a big difference and a big help. You probably wouldn't think a lot about things unless he called or someone stopped in and with their most compassionate, empathic face to ask how you were doing and then you know, you'd get all choked up. I think that you know next week you're probably going to say, “I didn't get as upset as I did before” or “you know, I didn't cry that much after I talked to him on the phone”. You look forward to him saying, “This has been great. I can't believe how hard I'm working. I'm learning a lot. They're not hazing me too badly...” or you know he gives you an appropriate response so that you don't worry. You're going to be more excited. I've made the distinction in the past about what I call direct grief and indirect grief. The thing that's interesting to me about all of this is that with direct grief you know you're grieving. I mean I'm crying and it's about Chris and it's I'm upset and I'm sad and I'm moody. Indirect grief is when your wife says, “Why are you so angry?” “What do you mean; I’m not angry!” “You're angry, saying you're not angry, and you're sharp and your normal sarcastic, cynical whit which people laugh at kind of gets a little bit too rough on the edges. You know, you're just out of sorts.” Well at times like that, it's important to say what's going on. Is this related to the fact that I'm grieving? Some people say “No.” But I think it is. I think it's important that you look at everything within that framework for a little bit and whether or not it's because I'm grieving the loss of my son going away to school or not, I still need to work on not being sharp and angry with my wife. OK help me to sensitize myself to that and work on that.

One of the aspects that our family is relearning, or maybe actually we're learning it for the first time, is what it means to be in a constant attitude of prayer. For our family, this has been the solution as we work through this process of separating from Chris. I then asked Brent about other solutions and ways that people can work through this.

Well as a general thing I think we need to remember that good grief is grief that is acknowledged, expressed and experienced and so the issue is -- the question that comes to mind is: Are you avoiding this? Are you not wanting to deal with it? Are you trying to stay busy in the weeks up until the child leaves or something like that? You know, maybe now is the time to stop and say, “I want to create a couple more memories - just a couple more memories in these last few weeks.” Now the interesting thing is that the child may be pushing away because they're dealing with their own sense of departure and loss. I remember six years ago now, seven years I think when we were getting ready to take Sarah to Texas to go to school. The last six weeks it was very tense. I mean we were trying to do things and it was in the back of everybody's head, 'this could be the last time we do this together as a family you know'. And instead of flying on an airplane we drove and it was three days of -- 'well it's the last time we'll be in a hotel together, well it's the last time we'll swim in the hotel swimming pool...'. I was a complete wreck by the time we got to Dallas, I couldn't really enjoy things and she was reacting to me. You know (and I use it as an example) that those final moments of departure are not necessarily going to be the ones to shine as an example of true love or whatever. I mean -- they're going to be there. They're going to be potentially intense and you get on with it. I mean a week later we were talking about how tense we were and a couple of months later we were laughing about it -- how intense we were you know and stuff like that. When the child is going to come home at holidays, you think about those times, think ahead to the good times that are happening. I guess I would say try to insert as much normalcy into your day in terms of thinking and praying about your child - communicating. You know if you call your kid, ask if it was okay to call. "Now mom, you know you're calling me too much.” 'Well what would be appropriate for you?” “Well, let me call you.” “Well, you know -- that's a ticket to not hearing for four months.” So, I would come back and say "you know what? I'll give you two weeks. If I don't hear from you in two weeks, I'm calling you”.

Well, okay, that's reasonable. So negotiation and back and forth happen. This is a normal part of life, albeit a painful part of life, and you get through it. You have to look to the getting through "Lord thank you for this although I'm not really thrilled with the pain I'm going through but I really am going to rejoice when I'm not as in pain in the future and Lord make that come quickly please.”

I'd like to thank Dr. Brent Lindquist for his words of counsel to help us through the grief of separation from loved ones. It has been very encouraging to me and I'm just glad I was able to share it with you.