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emotional
Death of a Long-Term Spouse
Legacy of Love or Monument to Misery
When long-term relationships end due to death of one of
the partners, there is an inevitable adjustment to the
new reality of life without someone who has always been
there. Adaptation to the radical changes in life following the death
of a loved one is either enhanced or limited by the ideas that we
have learned over our lifetimes about dealing with loss.
There is no doubt that in the immediate aftermath of the death
of a loved one, pain and confusion are two of the most probable
emotional reactions. Even following a long-term illness, where there
has been substantial time to prepare, the overwhelming impact of
the reality of death is devastating. It quickly becomes obvious that
there is no way to effectively prepare for the finality of death.
While we recognize that all relationships have ups and downs
and highs and lows, for purposes of this discussion, we are focused
on long-term relationships that were essentially good. Over the
course of 30 years of helping grieving people, we have always tried
to listen very carefully to what they are saying to us. What we heard
were accurate reports of wonderful relationships, yet there was a
tremendous amount of pain attached to the memories.
Death of a Long-Term Spouse
It is obvious that in the first few weeks or months following a
death, a grieving person would be overwhelmed with a level of
emotional pain that is difficult to describe. In fact, that kind of reaction
is quite normal. Even though we spend a considerable amount
of our energy trying to dispel the myth that time heals all wounds,
we were confused with the frequency with which we observed
people to be in an intense level of emotional pain long after a death
had occurred.
It was at that point that we realized that almost immediately following
a death, people often develop a relationship to their pain,
which sometimes seems to supersede their grief about the relationship
with the person who had died. As we observed this all-too-common
phenomenon, we realized that many people were inadvertently
Page 8 — Healthy Cells Magazine — Mid-Illinois Springfield / Decatur — September 2016