When my father died, I was devastated. When my mother died, I cried. When my stepfather died? Not so much. It’s not that he was horrible, or abusive, or mean to my mom – at all – but he was a bit hard to take. On a good day. A doctor with a healthy dose of narcissism who would start talking about all the lives he had saved the second you walked through the door and not stop until…. well, until he died. My sister and I used to have a signal we gave each other if we were stuck listening to yet another one of his glory stories and we needed rescuing. We would put one hand on the back of our necks and give ourselves a mini-massage, indicating that this was a massive pain in the neck. And in fact, that’s a bit how we saw him.
What I loved about him was how he tended to our mother, with care and devotion. What drove me bananas was – well, that’s a lot to go into, but let’s just say, he drove me there. He drove my siblings there, too, and it was generally a pretty quick trip for all of us. After 25 years of marriage to our mom, my stepfather developed cancer and from diagnosis to his death it was a short 3 weeks during which we were involved in his care. Because it was such a short illness, I can’t even say that our relief was due to getting to the end of prolonged suffering – his or ours – it was solely that the relationship had been such a challenge that not having to struggle with that was a welcome change in our lives. At the same time, though, it was hard to see our mother endure the death of another husband, one who did clearly love her.
If all relationships were loving and simple I wouldn’t have stayed so busy as a family therapist for years, but they aren’t. Even in the closest families, there are often dynamics that cause pain, tension, competition, distrust, conflict, or flat out estrangement. These dynamics can go on for years unchanged, that is until one of the family members faces a terminal illness or dies. Families are complex, and grief can be too. And complicated families often mean complicated grief.
In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy tells us that “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Whether or not that is true, he’s on to something with all of the many ways we as family members can experience misery.
On the extreme end, abuse of any kind is harmful, destructive, and can create lifelong wounding not only in those to whom it is directed, but anyone who is exposed to it in any way. The pain of addiction can rupture even the closest relationships with dishonesty, betrayal, and repeated unkept promises. Garden variety conflicts between family members that go unresolved can lead to long periods of no contact, or even permanent estrangement, and can divide other family members who feel loyalty to one or the other warring party. Often the difficulties in family relationships stem from less obvious or overt issues that are no less hurtful – such as parents who are emotionally absent or neglectful, or families with boundaries that are either too diffuse and intrusive, or too rigid and rejecting.
One question that often arises when we are grieving the loss of a difficult relationship is, “If this person was so hurtful to me, why do I feel so devastated?” Conversely, one can question themselves or their own capacity to love if they attend the funeral of a close family member and feel relief that they are gone, or simply feel nothing. Grief can also show up as anger – either at the person who died, or at ourselves for still caring. All of these confusing emotions, while completely normal, can elicit shame if our expectation is that our grief will look like everyone else’s and it doesn’t. Even grief around a more straightforward loss can feel messy at times, but around these more complicated relationships it can feel baffling and unmanageable.
Why? What makes this grief different? Imagine losing one’s mother – if the surviving adult child has a multitude of loving and happy memories to hold onto after their mom’s death, while sad, they have the comfort of knowing they were loved and cherished. What they are missing is the presence of a loving parent. Sad, but relatively straightforward.
Now imagine another adult who has lost a mother who was cold, rejecting, or critical – a mother they never felt they could please no matter how hard they tried. After decades of effort, they never seemed to be able to do the right thing. What they have lost is not only the mother they had, but the mother they always wanted and never got to have. Not only has their mother died, but so has any hope they had of ever earning her love or approval.
When family members become estranged, no matter how long this lasts, there is often a deep seated hope that at some point there might be an apology, an admission of wrongdoing, and an awareness of how deeply one had hurt the other. It is easy to hope that there may even be a deathbed confession and a request for forgiveness that we wait years and years for, and then don’t get. As humans, we have an innate need for being understood and seen, and the death of an estranged family member can leave us feeling robbed of a hope-for reconciliation.
What can also make this kind of grieving process harder is a host of other factors. If we have been estranged, we may feel we don’t have the right to grieve, and may even hear from well meaning others that “You shouldn’t be sad, you weren’t even close!” The confusion of emotions we feel may make it harder to talk about our grief, even if we have other family members to share our grief with, but often difficult family dynamics can be exacerbated around sick beds, deaths, and funerals.
If you find yourself in these words, it is important to know that first of all, you aren’t alone – many of us have experienced difficult relationships and struggled with how to work through complicated grief. It takes time, and it may even take a lifetime. I’m not a personal believer in “getting over” grief anyway – I think we learn ways to live with our grief, but that is harder when the relationships were harder.
For me, it has helped to know that it is okay to hold contradictions in how I grieve – I can feel sadness, anger, and regret. I can be devastated at the loss of someone I at times wished were already dead when they were still alive and well. My tears can at times be because I miss certain happy moments of a relationship, and in the next moment can reflect anger at the many more hours I spent feeling hurt or betrayed by that person.
Talking about our grief is important, but give yourself permission to be selective about who gets the privilege of listening to you and supporting you. Not everyone understands what this is like, so if someone gives you responses that sound judgmental, corrective, or just reflect a lack of understanding, that’s not your person. Move on and find another one. There are grief counselors, bereavement support groups, and other resources for getting the support you need. An end of-life doula can help you access these resources, and most of all, can provide validation and assurance that you are not alone.
