Grieving There’s No Right Or Wrong

There is no right and wrong way to grieve, grieving is such a personal thing, only you yourself can know if you are grieving correctly for you at that time in your life.

But that doesn’t mean it is easy.

Especially when there are three of you all grieving for the same thing in one house and all grieving in different ways.

Baba grieves quickly, I envy him. We have five minutes sadness and 12 hours of play. There is nothing long-lasting with him in anything his concentration is a couple of minutes and that is moved to his grieving as well.

Mr L grieves quietly, oh so quietly it actually scares me how quiet he can be about Rhianna, he is usually so loud. Nothing is said about her, nothing is mentioned, he acknowledges what is said but he never voices an opinion, thoughts or feelings at all.

I grieve loudly, I want the world to know that I am grieving my daughter. I want to talk to anyone that will listen and to a few that probably don’t or wont listen, but I still talk anyway. I can’t help it I want to talk non stop about her.

Usually we are fine and we bumble along together doing our own thing and supporting each other when and however we need it.

However occasionally the different grieving processes cause major problems.

They can cause a serious divide.

I am not going to mess around with this it makes it really hard. You get so wrapped up in your grief that you don’t see how badly other’s are grieving as they are doing it so differently to you and it hurts. There are no right and wrong ways to grieve.

I can’t stress this enough there is no written handbook on this, there are lots of books to guide you but only you can do this at your own pace, and even though you are both feeling the same thing you can be at very different levels.

Mr L and I are at different levels and a few days ago I was so upset by it I couldn’t do anything. I felt like I was the only one still grieving. I felt that no one cared ( a really horrible thing to say to Mr L Rhianna Lily’s Daddy) but it is how I felt I do know that it is totally not true!

I felt that because he didn’t want to talk he didn’t want me to talk and I actually thought I was going to go mad not being able to discuss Rhianna Lily.

It was torturous. We had a meeting booked to see SANDS to discuss Rhianna Lily, it was a meeting that we had planned for a while it was one that I felt was going to be really important to both of us but Mr L was ill and it got cancelled. He was pleased that it was cancelled as he said he wasn’t ready to talk about her. It really upset me and it resulted in a heated discussion. He said that I was being selfish and pushing him into talking about her I said he was being selfish about stopping me from talking about her. We were at a standstill.

No one was right, no one was wrong. We were both just grieving in our own way.

And we will be for a long time, and I am sure this will come up time and time again in the future.

Luckily before it got too far we once again had the conversation about how we are both grieving. He explained that he can’t talk about Rhianna Lily to my face as he is so sad, that a part of him died with her and he is so upset. He doesn’t want to start crying as he wont stop.

I explained that I have to talk about her, because if I don’t talk endlessly I feel that she will be forgotten about and no one will remember her ( I know totally irrational, did I mention grief makes you do that too) that was the most truthful answer. I also explained that him not speaking about her made me think that he didn’t want me to talk about her and I felt bad mentioning her in everyday life.

He told me I was being stupid. That he always listened to what I said about Rhianna it was just that he couldn’t do the same and couldn’t yet talk about her.

It is really hard to sit down and have these conversations, I always cry and Mr L always looks close. But they are so important.

Everyone’s grief process changes so much one morning we could wake up and I could be sitting there and not be able to talk about Rhianna at all and Mr L could wake up and talk about her non stop. So it is vital that we keep talking about it to each other to ensure that we both have the understanding of the others grieving process. Otherwise it would totally tear us apart.

And that is one thing we are united on this will not tear us apart.

It will make us cry, scream and shout and we will be pushed to every limit we have but we will not be torn apart.

I have learnt a lot of things grieving and things that are really helping us;

Branch out to your family and friends, make sure you have that support network, whether it be real life, virtual or via support forums.

Ask for help if you need it ask for it don’t battle it alone

Grief is lonely but you don’t have to do it on your own always remember that

Talk to one another, you wont do this exactly the same way so make sure you are discussing with each other what you are feeling and why.

Make each other understand how you are coping

Don’t judge one another

No one grieves the same but that is ok because ultimately you are all grieving for the same. We both want to be holding Rhianna in our arms but we are dealing with it in our own ways and that is fine.

A little bit of both of died 5 months ago and we will never be totally the same that will always be missing but we will get to a different place and it will be ok!

Neither one of us are wrong, we are both right in our own ways and it is really hard to remember that but it is so important to remember it.

I have said it once and I will say it again there is no text-book for this, but one thing Mr L and I have learnt is that you have to communicate your feelings all the time so that we both know how the other is feeling. If we don’t know how each of us are feeling, how do we know how to support one another? Which is what we ultimately want to do.