This popped up in my Facebook feed [ellipses and caps as quoted]:
I understand the sentiment. I miss my dad terribly. I miss our cat Creamsicle, who died in June. To me ‘grieving’ is more than simply feeling a loss. ‘Grieving’ is actively missing someone. While everyone gets over loss differently, it seems to me that there is a time to just get over it. To dwell on a loss is unhealthy and counterproductive. Feel the loss. Mourn the loss. But remember that your life continues.
While I agree that choosing not to (or not being able to) eventually move on after a loss isn’t healthy, I suspect the point of that post is that different people take different periods of time for grieving, and could well be borne from a reaction to having someone comment, “why aren’t you over that yet?”
I’d say grieving or mourning is more than just feeling the loss. If it goes on too long it’s obsessive.
‘Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be, And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing to love.
For your life has lived in me, your laugh once lifted me, your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love, a holy thing, to love what death has touched.
I think a person can grieve over something or someone with it being a debilitating condition. If someone has been curled up in bed for the past decade, then no, they are not healthy and they need help getting over their loss. But if a person still gets hit by a wave of sadness when their memories go in a certain direction, then big whoop. Feelings are just feelings.
But I also don’t agree with that Facebook post. While it’s rude to tell someone there’s a time limit on grief, it’s also nervy to assume a person with this belief must not have ever experienced loss.
I understand grieving comes in stages. I can’t seem to get out of the regret phase of my Daddy’s death. My sibs all keep telling me so. Now I just don’t speak to them about it. My kids and husband say I am obsessing, so now I don’t bring it up anymore. But, guess what? I still feel the loss acutely. I still have regrets. I still cry. I will go through this at my own pace. I don’t care what they say.
I still live, I still do the stuff I would do, anyway. Nobody has the right to tell me how to process this great loss in my life.
It’s all different for everybody . . . and the quote in the OP refuses to acknowledge this. The person is normalizing their experience by saying, basically, that people who don’t grieve in a particular way just haven’t truly lost.
I do think that while it’s important to respect that different people deal with loss in different ways, it can also be true that some people let their loss interfere with other relationships and experiences in unhealthy ways. It’s reasonable for the friends and family who bear the brunt of this to raise the issue.