Giving up our grief, 'getting over it,' is not necessary

Is giving up our grief possible? Or even a good move? And what does this mean anyway?

Recently I read a short essay on this topic ("In Healing After Loss," Martha Hickman). The gist of the article was that one may get stuck in grief and be too focused on the death - instead of appreciating the life, presumably the good life and accomplishments or contributions of the beloved person who died.

As much as I like Hickman's volume of daily readings, I disagree with this particular entry. Unless it's a serious psychiatric illness, I don't think people get stuck. I think grief has many manifestations, time frames and sensations. One of them is long-term grief, i.e., grief that never goes away.

I think long-term grief is still not very well understood by many, maybe most, people - at least not in my experience.

And even when it comes to psychiatric views on grief, there is not a very good history. I remember that failure to "get over grief" (in a year or two) was, in the not so recent past, sometimes treated as severe depression requiring shock treatments. This was a practice as recent as 1960 - an awful practice now abandoned. However, many people still expect their friends and relatives to give up their grief, or as the sayings go - "get over it," or "get past it."

I know there are a couple people close to me that wish I would give up my focus on, and maybe my writing about, grief and long-term grief. Neither of which I plan to do. That's because I've learned I can "have a life" and still cope with long-term grief. It's because remembering my dear Baheej's fine qualities, joy of life and kindness to others that I can do this.

Of course, he wasn't perfect; none of us are. But one of Baheej's many fine qualities is that he extended himself to others - offering his advice and other simple ways of helping people, when help was needed. I know from family stories that he inherited and learned this quality from his father, who was a positive role model, and from his mother, who also was a kind and generous person.

I also think experience is a great teacher. I have been blessed with learning a lot about grief not only from studying, and reading memoirs, but from the experience of friends and readers, and my own experiences, of course. Yes, readers send me accounts and ideas based on their own experience and that of their friends and family, which I greatly appreciate. Very affirming. This has greatly expanded my own understanding.

So the point is: The purpose of this column is simply to share ideas on coping with and managing grief from what I've learned - from study, my understanding of family dynamics and community, my experience, and the experience of others. I have always hoped this would be helpful, and would expand our shared understanding of the complexity of grief.

When I started the column, I wanted to alert people to the existence of long-term grief. It was something pretty invisible at the time, and I guess it still is. But I think we've made some progress.

We need to learn how to manage or cope with grief, but we do not need to give it up. And in the process, we explore this and many other complexities of grief. Onward.

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a doctorate in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at www.dailyherald.com/topics/Anderson-Kleif-Susan.