The second step is to fully experience the pain and adjust to life without whatever you lost. It involves learning to move ahead with an empty place in life. It’s common for us to resist this. Involved in this is changing the emotion attachment and investment in whatever was lost to something new that can give you satisfaction and fulfillment.

The final step is moving ahead with life without forgetting your old life. These suggestions for recovering from the death of a loved one have applicability in many cases to most losses. They are:

            -Develop a new relationship with the deceased or whatever was lost.

            -Keep your loved one or whatever you lost “alive appropriately.”

            -Work toward forming a new identity based upon being without whatever you lost and incorporate the necessary change you have made to adjust to the loss.

            -Take the freed-up emotional energy that used to be invested in your loved one or whatever was lost and reinvest it in other relationships, activities, objects, roles, and hopes that can give emotional satisfaction back to you.

-Expect to be ambushed by your grief. The most unexpected things will bring you to tears even years later. That’s all right. You’re normal.

One of the most important steps in recovering from loss is saying good-by to whatever was lost. To do this helps you move toward closure and bring back control over your life and the circumstances that were diminished by the loss. When you say good-bye you are acknowledging you are no longer going to share your life with whatever you lost, whether it be a person, job, place, or even a part of your body. What remains is the memory and in time it dims. Visiting a significant place that is no longer a part of your life and actually proclaiming a “good-bye” can bring closure. Or you can write letters to friends, places of employment, portions of your body that have been lost, to children leaving home or about to be married, or to a deceased loved one. Addicts and alcoholics have written good-bye letters to abusive substances.

Being able to say good-bye by prior to the loss will help in the grieving process. Right after the doctor told us our son Matthew would probably die within an hour, we stood at his bedside and said good-bye to him. And even after ten years we still do this. Saying good-bye is not morbid, pathological, or a sign of hysteria or being out of control. It is a healthy way to transition into the next phase of life.

What can you do to prepare for the losses of life? Realize they will invade your life. Read books about loss and grief in order to handle it better as well as minister to others. Encourage your church to teach on this subject and to have a Grief Recovery program in place. And remember—don’t try to handle your grief by yourself. The weight is lighter when it’s shared.

Read Part 1

Read Part 2

Recommended Books

Recovering From the Losses of Life, H. Norman Wright, Spire, Baker Book House

Recovering From the Losses of Life- curriculum, Christian Marriage Enrichment

My Companion Through Grief, Gary Kinnaman, Servant Publications

Grieving the Loss of Someone You Love, Raymond R. Mitsch and Lynn Brookside, Servant Publications

Notes
 1 R. Scott Sullender, Losses in Later Life (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 3.

2 Nina Hermann Donnelly, I Never Know What to Say (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987), 123.

H. Norman Wright is a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist. He was formerly Director of the Graduate Department of Marriage, Family and Child Counseling at Biola University as well as an Associate Professor of Psychology. He has taught graduate school for over twenty-five years at Talbot School of Theology and the Graduate Department of Marriage and Family Counseling at Biola University  Dr. Wright is the founder and director of Christian Marriage Enrichment, a national organization designed to train ministers and lay leaders in counseling and enrichment.