Coming to Grips with Grief

After cremations as part of the cremation services offered in Greenbelt, MD, you will begin the journey through the grieving process. You may find that for the first few days after your loved one dies, you feel emotionally numb, and as if you’re in shock. That’s common, and it is one of the ways that your body and mind help you navigate through all that you need to do during that time without completely falling apart.

Once the flurry of activity that initially surrounds death is over, though, the numbness and the shock wear off, and you’re left with a raw and intense sense of loss and sadness. Grief is hard to describe when you’re in the middle of its most intense moments.

You may be unable to identify all the feelings that you are having, but you know that they all make you feel sad. Many of these feelings end up being anger, fear, regrets, guilt, loneliness, and pain. They may incapacitate you sometime and make you edgy and restless at other times.

It may be impossible to make sense of them, but reading words others have written about grief in the face of death can sometimes give you some clarity and insight, as well as some much-needed assurance that you are not losing your mind.

Here are some very helpful examples.

“The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief–but the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.”

Hilary Stanton Zunin

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly–that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

Anne Lamott

“I should know enough about a loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone–you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.”

Alyson Noel, Evermore

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

Washington Irving

“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion to death.”

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.”

Patti Smith

“There are no happy endings.

Endings are the saddest part,

So just give me a happy middle

And a very happy start.”

Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

“Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.”

Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“Grief does not change you. It reveals you.”

John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

If you want information about cremation services offered in Greenbelt, MD, you can talk with our expert staff at Donald V. Borgwardt Funeral Home, P.A.