How helpful are pithy statements addressing grief?
When you lose your spouse, you will be showered with all sorts of advice and supposedly comforting words. Some statements will profoundly resonate, others will feel irrelevant or dismissive, and there will occasionally be a time when you want to say to someone, “Please just shut up. You’re not helpful. At all.” All of those feelings are valid! I learned early on in my grief that I had to speak up and tell people when they said something unhelpful or even hurtful. It was important for me to honestly express my emotions, and it is also a learning experience for those who want to be helpful, but don’t always choose the right words.
There are a few very common phrases that you will surely hear at a least a few times (if not dozens of times) in your grief. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on them, and here is my honest evaluation on their accuracy and general level of helpfulness.
Time heals all wounds.
Sorta kinda true, with caveats. The main caveat that needs to be applied to this statement is that time alone does not heal all wounds. Time can be a powerful healer if you harness it. Things do not get easier because of time alone, but because you use the time to grow. Life does not get easier, but you become smarter.
I’d bet we all know someone who experienced a trauma many years ago, and they still seem to live in that trauma as if it had happened yesterday. Time has not healed them, and it won’t until they use the time to start their healing work.
He would want you to be happy.
True, but not helpful. While I know this to be true, it is really not a helpful thing to say to someone in the depths of grief. It makes the person feel like they shouldn’t be sad, and that is absolutely absurd. I would be alarmed if I met a recent widow who wasn’t swept up in waves of yearning for her husband. I would probably think that she didn’t really love the guy!
You cannot force happiness. The only way you can eventually feel happy again is by letting the waves of despair, anger, fear, and yearning flow through you. People who try to stuff down negative emotions are only asking for trouble down the road. Moving through grief is like learning to surf; you start to notice patterns in the waves of negative emotions, and you eventually figure out how to stand up and ride them. But it takes months of patience and practice. And you cannot deny that they exist!
You’ll find someone new.
Most likely technically true, but not helpful. This might be comforting to the people out there who mainly seek out romantic relationships because they are uncomfortable being alone, but I am not one of those people. Finding a new romantic partner in no way replaces what Stephen meant to me. I married Stephen because he was my best friend and I wanted to build a life and grow old with him, and not anyone else.
While I do believe that someday I will find someone with the romantic dance skills required to be with me, I also know that there are moments I shared with Stephen that I will never be able to replicate with anyone else. I was chatting with my grandma a couple weeks ago, and she said, “You know, you’re never going to find someone quite like him again.” And I chuckled, and said, “Trust me. I know!” Stephen Kirk Wagner was an exceptionally unique human being, and no future romantic dance partner is going to dance in quite his style. And I’ve accepted that.
Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.
100% true, but it probably won’t feel that way for awhile. This is a hard one to hear at first, because when you are in the early stages of grief, it does not feel true. My pain was so incredibly intense that I couldn’t feel grateful for all the beautiful, joyful moments we shared together. All I could focus on was the gaping hole in my life and in my heart. I was crippled by regrets, immense sadness, and yearning. And I even told myself (very unhelpfully) that if I hadn’t married Stephen, I could have avoided all this pain.
But two years out, I can now say that this old adage by Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of the most accurate quotes you’ll find about life and love. As I meet people who have never experienced a great love, I feel sad for them. My ten years with Stephen were transformative. His love changed me in profound ways that I will hold onto for the rest of my life. Stephen liked to say that when he met me, I was a caterpillar. And with him, I became a butterfly. And I will be forever grateful to him for the numerous ways, big and small, our love story changed me for the better.
One of my all-time favorite songs is For Good from the musical Wicked. In it, they sing:
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You’ll be with me
Like a handprint on my heartAnd now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend
I couldn’t say it better myself. Because I knew Stephen, I have been changed For Good.