Stop telling folks to be strong in grief

One thing that I can’t quite shake is our need to tell someone who is bereaved to be strong. 

The inability to allow people to feel safe when feeling a raw and honest emotion towards the loss of a loved one concerns me. 

Sure, it will make you uncomfortable, but this moment and this experience aren’t about you. I’m still mad at hearing that so much in the first 48 hours without my mom. 

I was so mad I brought it up during her funeral when I shared my remarks. Honestly, I’m still mad about it. 

I’m still mad at the elders.

A few moments after I heard the machine flat-lined, I fell to my knees. I just spent the last 16 hours watching her pulse get weaker and weaker, her skin turns darker and swell, and her body gets colder. She fought all day to stay with me.

A voice on the left side of me said, “Get up. You got to be strong. She would not want you to cry,” It was the voice of a 64-year-old retired Army first sergeant trying to pull me off the ground. I pushed his hand and I yelled, “My mother has just died. I can feel how I feel.”   

I’m not a soldier. 

But every day, he told me to be strong, and I would respond the same every time. Whenever I was told to be strong by various family members, I felt less and less safe. It wasn’t comforting. Instead, I realized how alone I would be on this journey. How could so many people want and expect me to wear this mask, knowing how much my mother meant to me? Why did my sorrow make them uncomfortable? Shouldn’t it be expected that I would crumble?

My world, as I knew it, had just crumbled. My feet aren’t on solid ground because she kept me grounded. I don’t know how I’m supposed to live without her.

I’m mad at everyone 50 years and older, which simplified my feelings this way. 

So now I have this thick layered mask that I wear. I continue to lie about how I am doing, and I grin and bear it in public because society can’t take a grieving person.

So I crumble in a puddle in the dark by myself because it’s the only place I feel safe to feel.