Grief...

 Sometimes people mean to comfort you, but their words miss the point. Grief needs listening, not fixing.

I was talking to a colleague over the weekend. She sadly lost her mother earlier this year. They were very close, leaning on each other for support, love, and friendship. Her mum was 77, fit and healthy with it. There was no reason for her to die.

She had gone into hospital fit and well for a routine procedure. Unfortunately, the surgeon made a mistake. It wasn’t recognised at the time of surgery, and she died the following morning due to complications caused by human error.

The hospital Trust are still going through litigation with my colleague. She was devastated, utterly shocked that her mum had been alive, healthy, and cheery the day before, and now was gone.

My colleague is still grieving. It will take a long time for her to process what has happened and to begin to accept it. I asked if she had been to any grief counselling, because she was really struggling , very low, spending most of her days alone, asleep, or watching TV. She was losing her sense of purpose in life, and I felt so sad for her.

She told me she’d seen a counsellor who said:

“You must start to move on. Your mum was 77 years old - she had a good life.”

This angered my friend, and it angered me too. The counsellor just wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t understanding what my friend had lost. It was as if she were saying: don’t worry about it ..... she was old.

But my friend’s pain isn’t about age or years lived. It’s about losing her best friend in the world , the person who knew her better than anyone else. The loss has left a space in her life that feels impossible to fill.

That kind of remark “she had a good life” ...... might sound comforting, but when said at the wrong time, it can feel impersonal and invalidating. Sometimes, people don’t need reminding of logic or longevity; they need someone to simply sit with them in the pain.

My colleague is going to try again, hoping to find another grief counsellor she can connect with. I truly hope she finds one.

Because good grief counselling doesn’t hurry you along, it helps you find meaning in the chaos of loss, at your own pace.