Coping with change and loss

Finding a way to cope with knowing you are dying can depend on many factors, including your age, whether or not you have children, your relationships with a partner or family members, and your cultural or spiritual beliefs. It may also depend on how your family and friends cope with the news.

Learn more about:

• Overview
• Finding hope
• Maintaining a sense of control
• Loss and grief

Overview

Everyone will find their own way to deal with the knowledge that they are dying, and at their own pace. There is no right or wrong way to deal with knowing that you are dying.

For some people, learning more about the physical process of dying can make it easier to cope. Others find it helps not to think too far ahead, but to focus on a month, a week or even a day at a time.

Finding hope

When you’ve been told that you’re dying with cancer, you may find it hard to feel hopeful. While it may no longer be realistic to hope for a cure, you can find hope in other things, such as sharing some special times with those you love.

Studies of people dying with cancer show that good palliative care can help maintain people’s hope, especially when they:

• are involved in decisions about their care
• feel reassured that any pain and other symptoms will be well controlled.

Finding a balance between knowing that you are dying and still trying to live as fully as possible is sometimes called “living with dying”. This may mean focusing more on the present. You may find that some days it’s easier to do this than others.

Maintaining a sense of control

When you’re approaching the end of life, you may feel like you’ve lost control. One way to feel more in control is to make decisions about your current and future health care and medical treatment, and to record your preferences in advance care paperwork.

Loss and grief

There are losses and changes that happen throughout a terminal illness – loss of work, loss of social roles, loss of friendships, loss of connection to community and loss of independence. You will probably find it helpful to spend time grieving for these losses.

You might have preparatory grief, which means feeling sad because you know loss is coming. You may grieve for events that you won’t be around for, such as holidays, marriages, graduations and new babies.

If you don’t have a partner or children, you may mourn the lost opportunity to have these relationships or experiences. You can also grieve for small pleasures such as not being able to have a coffee or go for a walk.

Gradually, you may feel less able to do things or you may lose interest in activities you used to enjoy. For many people, this is a natural part of coming to terms with death. It may make you feel sad and very low, but you may also move towards a sense of peace.

Living with uncertainty is the hardest thing. All our friends think ‘We might do this, we might do that in a few years’ and we don’t have that any more.

Susan

→ READ MORE: Spirituality at the end of life

Podcast: Living with Dying

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