All posts by Heather

Heather McLeod is a writer, editor, widow and solo parent who loves adventures. She writes traditional literary mysteries and creative non-fiction / personal essays. Heather and her son live in British Columbia, Canada.
Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

The Circle of Grief

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My homework for meeting #2 of my bereavement support group is to read the first 19 pages of Alan D. Wolfelt’s Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart.

Page 18 says this:

… if you avoid your pain, the people around you will not have to “be with” you in your pain or experience their own pain. While this may be more comfortable for them, it would prove to be unhealthy for you.

Dr. Wolfelt’s point is that grieving people often repress their grief due to peer pressure from folks saying “buck up! Get over it.”

But my experience has been the opposite. If anything, reading this makes me see that my own numbness after Brock’s death made it harder (maybe impossible) for our friends and family to mourn, at least when they were with me.

Because: the circle of grief.

What is the circle of grief?

I (think I) first read about the circle of grief in a blog post by my amazing writer friend Cindy, who has chronicled her and her husband’s difficult experience with infertility. The circle of grief (or “ring theory”) model looks like this:

circle of grief model
I did not draw this graphic. I borrowed it from the Interwebs. Thanks, Interwebs!

The idea is that the person most affected by a horrible event (say, Brock when he was diagnosed with cancer, or me and Isaac when Brock died) is at the centre of this model. The next ring out would be our family, then our closest friends, then more friends, then colleagues and farm customers, etc.

Wherever you are in the model, you are allowed to “dump” on the people in rings outside of your own: you can lean on them for support, cry and rage. But you can’t “dump” on someone in a ring closer to the centre than your own. Your job is to support those people. So if the person at the centre is, say, at a 0 emotionally (on a scale of 0-10), then you have to be at least a 1. If they’re having a good day and are at a 6, you have to be 7+ when you’re around them.

I’ve found the circle of grief model very helpful in understanding how to behave in emotionally difficult situations (e.g. funerals) and also when comforting friends when they’re going through hard times, but it was a tricky rule to follow when Brock was dying. He was the centre of that event, and my job was to support him, not to “dump” on him, but he had been my best friend, confidante and life partner for 11 years and it was very hard to break that habit. I had to separate myself from that 50-50 partnership in order to be his caregiver and support person. The loss of that partnership was yet another loss to grieve.

So! Back to my point: when I was the centre, after Brock died, our family and friends were standing by, ready to support me. And they did this in many ways, through the memorial service and helping us move to the East Kootenays. But because I was numb and not grieving in an expected way, that left my rings of supporters a bit stuck. I was (usually) functioning at an 8, so that forced them to be a 9 or 10 around me.

As Patti said one evening, when a group of my lady friends gathered, and I cried briefly, my crying “gave them permission” to cry themselves. (On our 0-10 scale, I dipped to a 1, but only for a few minutes.)

But by not crying most of the time, my friends and family didn’t have that permission most of the time.

Which is not to say that they didn’t grieve when they were apart from me. I sure hope they did, and are working through their own grief at losing Brock.

As you know, I felt self-conscious and awkward about my unexpected, numb response for months. I wanted to set the tone for how Brock’s loss impacted our community/world (it was such a loss!), but I wasn’t able to do that, because my brain and heart didn’t know how to handle that huge magnitude of loss.

So if I’m the centre of this particular catastrophe, the catastrophe of losing Brock at age 38 to cancer, then I want you “ringers” to know that my numbness is thawing. I’m trying really hard to figure out how to let myself feel the sadness (despite my default perky nature) and make a future where Brock can still be part of my and Isaac’s lives, in a good way.

I think of Brock every single day. And lately I’ve been able to cry every single day too, because everything reminds me of him, even though we’re now living in a different town surrounded by different people.

So, if you haven’t already, you can turn around now, and lean on the people in the next ring.

Brock & Heather get hitched (April 9, 2012).

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Terminal Cancer, Day by Day

Bereavement Support Group – Day 1

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I’ve signed up for a 12-part bereavement support group through my local hospice society. I was all cool with it until they said to bring a photo of Brock to the first meeting: for some reason, that was the saddest part.

I looked through the photo album I gave Isaac this Christmas and chose this picture:

It’s from September 2014. Isaac had just turned one year old, and Brock hadn’t yet been diagnosed with cancer. We’d gone to Vancouver for a weekend to check out the farmers’ markets, expecting to expand our farm operation in the coming years. On the way back to the ferry we’d side-tripped to Whistler for the afternoon. Brock starting feeling sick a month later, and by December we knew he had kidney cancer. I love this picture because it captures our “Before” life.

As part of our first support group meeting, we each introduced ourselves and our lost loved ones, handing around the photographs we’d brought.

The big difference I’ve noticed so far between my “spouses of those with life-shortening cancer” support group and this new bereavement support group (which isn’t limited to only spouses) is that this group is much more structured. There are 12 weekly meetings, with assigned (“suggested”) readings and journal pages to write for each meeting. The reading book is Alan D. Wolfelt’s Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart. The journal is also by Dr. Wolfelt. (I’m going to plug the Columbia Valley Basin Trust here, because they donate the money to hospice that pays for these journals. Thank you, CVBT!)

I don’t have much to say about the book yet because I’ve only skimmed the first bit. There’s a lot of “soft” language, like “journey,” “companion,” “presence” and “honouring.” Brock would probably roll his eyes. I’m trying to keep an open mind.

I like the structure of these meetings. I was wondering why it felt appropriate, even though it was different from my cancer-spouses’ support group, where we just took turns talking. I think it’s because there has to be an END to support groups. My spouses’ support group membership ended when Brock died. Some people are members for years, but eventually their spouse does (or will) die. There’s a natural end. For those of us who grieve a loved one’s death, that grief will never end. So there’s an artificial end imposed: the end of the book we’re reading together.

While I can’t yet comment on the support group experience itself, since I’m only one meeting in, I would like to say how much I LOVE hospice societies.

Hospice Societies Are Great

I have experienced two hospice societies now, one in the Cowichan (Duncan) and one here in the Columbia Valley (Invermere). In Duncan, I would walk into this calm, quiet space and be offered tea. The volunteer/receptionist would bring me a pot of whatever I wanted, on a little tray with a mug. I could browse the books, read and cry. Whatever I needed.

In Invermere, there is a basket of cozy slippers by the boot rack. I self-served from a fabulous selection of tea, and chose from many large mugs. On the table in the meeting room were two gigantic tins of chocolate-covered cookies (and boxes of Kleenex).

Whenever I’ve visited a hospice office, there’s this feeling of being taken care of. For people who are taking care of others (sick or dying loved ones, children), being offered a hot cup of tea, cookies and hand-knitted slippers is decadent. Often, the kindness and relief is enough to make me cry.

Confidentiality

Obviously there’s a code of confidentiality with support groups. I have no intention of writing anything about the other members of my group(s). But I look foward to sharing my own experiences with you. I’m very aware that death is something unfamiliar and scary to many of us, and I like having you along with me for the journey. It’s comforting if we do it together.