After someone dies

The response you have when someone dies is called grief. Coping with grief doesn’t mean getting over the person’s death. It’s about finding ways to live with the loss. The sorrow may never go away completely, but most people gradually adapt.

Even when a death is expected, it may still feel like a great shock, and it doesn’t necessarily make the loss of the person easier to cope with once they have died. Sometimes the experience of anticipating the death and spending a lot of time caring for the person strengthens your relationship with the person, which can also increase your grief.

Common reactions

After the person dies, you may feel a range of emotions, including:

• numbness and shock, or a sense of disbelief, even if you thought you were prepared for the loss
• sadness
• anger towards the doctors or the hospital, your god or the person who died
• relief that the person is no longer in pain
• guilt that you feel relieved to be free of the burden of caring and can now make plans for your future
• pride in how you supported someone as they were dying
• questioning whether there were things that you or the treatment team could have done differently to prolong life or make things better for the person
• regret about things you did or didn’t do, about not being there at the time of death, or about how you are feeling
• anxiety about the future – what you will do or how you will manage.
• All these reactions are common. These emotions may come and go and change over time. Be kind to yourself. You do not need to rush to make decisions about your life.

For more on this, see Facing end of life and Understanding grief and listen to the podcast below.

At times the sadness and pain I feel is all consuming and hard to bear, while at other times these feelings are just in the background of my day-to-day activities.

Anne

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Podcast: Life After Loss

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