The Art of Grieving Gracefully

Robbie Davis-Floyd’s Suggestions for Coping with Loss and Pain
Begun in January 2002, completed for the moment June 2005

My daughter Peyton Elizabeth Floyd died as the result of a car accident in September 2000, four days before her 21st birthday. These are some of the things I learned from the experience of coping with this devastating loss. They begin with suggestions for the immediate period after a loved one’s death, and move on to the different coping methods I found useful over the long-term. At the end I include suggestions for what to say (and not to say) to those who are bereaved.

Drink LOTS of water. If you get dehydrated, you won’t be able to cope with anything.

Even if you can hardly swallow, eat a little bit of healthy food at mealtimes. Junk food and soft drinks will only weaken you and compromise your ability to function.

Cry a LOT. Every tear carries stress hormones out of your body. The more you cry, the more capable you will be of standing up to life in the midst of your grief.

Take every opportunity to laugh that comes your way. Laughter stimulates your immune system, which helps to keep you healthy. And every moment of joy and laughter you experience will remind you for a little while that life can still be worth living.

Read about grief and shock. Learning about the symptoms that others have experienced helps you know you are normal and not going crazy when your grief is so deep and your pain so intense that you can hardly see two feet in front of you because of the fog of agony that surrounds you.

The physical components of grief can be stunning in the first months or year—like a butcher knife in the heart, daggers in your back, a hole blown in your stomach. Know that that level of intensity will pass. You may always feel pain, but it won’t be as horrible and over time, amazingly enough, you can learn to live with it. While it lasts, let your friends cocoon you as often as you can. Sometimes, when you are with people who surround you with love, the butcher knife will come out of your heart for a little while. It will go back in, but less and less deeply over time.

Don’t hesitate to name the person you lost and talk about him or her when appropriate in conversation. If it makes others uncomfortable, simply state that you need to talk about your loved one in a normal way and that you will deeply appreciate their understanding. They will rise to it, and find that they are relieved as well. Nothing is more awkward than skirting around the issue that is on everyone’s mind—best to just put it right out there.

Tell your story as often as you can in appropriate times and places. Narrating a tragic event helps you to get that it happened, to give it form and focus in your mind, and eventually may help you find some meaning in it all. To people who want to “do something for you,” explain that the most loving thing they can do is listen to your story.

When you are telling your story or talking about your tragedy, do so appropriately. Don’t take more than your fair share of others’ time and attention. I call this “the art of grieving gracefully.” If you talk or cry for too long, everyone else gets very uncomfortable. You will feel their tension and you will become uncomfortable too. There is no healing in talking when others don’t want to hear it any more—it will just make you feel worse in the end.

Experience and process grief whenever it bubbles up inside you. Grief is hard work that must be done for your own mental health. You can only do the work of grief healthily if you go through it, leaning into the pain. Your grief may accompany you through the rest of your life, causing you enormous pain but also making you far stronger than you could ever imagine. As long as you grieve, you will still be able to experience joy and happiness—they are opposite sides of the same coin, powerful emotions that require you to feel in order to experience them. Refusing to grieve will diminish your ability to feel other emotions and to show up to life.

Metaphorically speaking, grief is like a river—it has to flow. Sometimes it will rise up like a tidal wave and take you down—at those times, just let it—sob all you need to wherever you are—go away from the group if necessary. When you are in a private place or with someone who can support you, sob, scream, yell, pound pillows—just surrender to the grief. It can be terrifying to feel that depth of emotion, but the more you let it flow, the faster the tidal wave will pass through you. You will be amazed at how much better you will feel when it has passed.

At other times, grief is like a waterfall that suddenly and quickly cascades over you. This often happens when you get unexpectedly blindsided by, for example, seeing a person that looks just like your loved one, or coming up out of a subway and finding yourself near the street where they lived, or seeing a book they loved or hearing an expression they often used. If you know such things are coming, you can psychologically prepare for them and avoid the sudden cascade of pain, but often things just happen and suddenly you are overwhelmed. Just go with it and cry for a while—it will pass.

Sometimes the river of grief flows still and deep—you know grief is happening inside you but you are granted space to live your life and get on with your work. Such times are gifts—use them well without any guilt that you are not honoring your loved one enough by staying miserable. And when the tidal wave or the waterfall takes you down again, flow with it and gradually you will come back up and have room to breathe again for a while.