On the Duration of Grief: When Does It Get Better?
How long lasts grief? When does it get better? And when can a bereaved person return to being happy?
- Rites and world religions offer a period of 30 days to 6 weeks for acute mourning
- After 6 months, persistent grief becomes an adjustment disorder, suggests ICD-10.
- Grief never ends, say some mourners. And they don't look sad anymore.
- My answer: It is not the right question to ask: When is grief over? A better question is: When does it become easier to bear?
To be honest, I often get a question like “When will this pass?”. Sometimes the questions comes from the bereaved person themselves, sometimes from someone outside the first circle of bereavement.
(This is NOT the place to ask why we can't actually deal with a normal state like grief, or other phases of “not well”. That deserves its own blog post, someday. Until then, I'll just quote Megan Devine here: It's okay that you're not okay!)
Grief is a very individual state, and yet there are a few periods of time after which something changes for some bereaved persons. And sometimes things even change a bit to make things easier.
Note: for some of them. And: change. This does not mean that “all is well again” or that the grief is over.
When will it get better? Answers about Grief from Religion and Science
Transitional period until the funeral
Many bereaved persons report a change in their coping after the funeral. Ruthmarijke Smeding calls the period between death and burial the lock time. The old life is irretrievably gone and the new one cannot really begin yet. This only becomes possible after the funeral.
40-day mourning period and six-week remembrance service
After the funeral often begins a phase in which the bereaved have to learn to live in this unwanted newness. Yes, they have to, because it is a forced adjustment.
For many bereaved persons, these are the first weeks and months after the loss.
Many cultural practices and religious rites confirm this period.:
From the Catholic Church, we know the Six Weeks' Rembrance Service, a special mass after 6 weeks that is dedicated to the purification of the deceased's soul. For bereaved families, this was or is or an important day of remembrance, and at the same time a turning point that led to the next phase in their mourning. I remember from growing up in a Catholic village that, depending on how you were related to the deceased, you were allowed to take off your mourning clothes, and you were allowed to take part in celebrations again (without being looked at askew).
The Jewish rite offers something similar; here the mourning obligation for family members ends 30 days after the burial (37 days after death). Except for the death of parents, for whom a year of mourning applies.
A mourning period of 40 days also applies to Muslims.
This fits in with brain research findings that says we habe to practice new habits for 40 to 70 days so that they become ingrained. After that, they become less strenuous, more on this below.
And what comes next?
In Catholic areas, a year of mourning was mandatory for first-degree relatives, i.e. for the death of parents or spouses. During this time, the closest relatives wore black and avoided festivities. For example, my grandmother is wearing black in the pictures of my first communion party in May, because she was in mourning for my grandfathter who had died in January.
The year of mourning ended with the first annual commemoration, and I can confirm from bereavement counseling that the first complete year closes a circle for some bereaved individuals: having experienced all the seasons without the deceased person, having celebrated a whole year's festivities and having survived a longer period of adjustment often makes a difference towards the more bearable.
Many People around a bereaved person might think: And by then, at the latest, it will surely be over. Kudos to them for being patient for so long.
Regaining Happiness after a Loss
They might hope that a bereaved person will be “back” at some point, back to everyday life, in their normal state, with their old selves and that everything will be good again, or something like that.
Well....
- Grief IS the normal state after a loss. Not a deviation, not an illness, not a problem. It is a normal himan reaction. As a society, we may have forgotten this, even though historically speaking we might have been better at some point (article in German only)
- In life, there is no going back, ever. Time and our personal development always go forwards. In an exceptional situation such as grieving for a loved one, it may be necessary to regain routines for everyday life, security, hope, ... And that is not going back, but a mighty step forward.
- Im Alltag – ja, möglicherweise. Schließlilch gibt es für Trauer nur eine Lösung: dass uns ein Verlust weniger einschränkt. Muss das heißen, dass der Verlust keine Rolle mehr spielt? Nein!
- Happiness is a gift. It is part of life, like anger, sadness, fear. But if happiness is seen as our normal state of mind, anything “not happy” quickly seems like an aberration... And that disregards some of the most profound experiences that people have to go through in their lives. It makes me wonder: what are we afraid of when we shut that out?
Grief: Why does It Take so Long?
Grief is a lot of things. And the closer the deceased was to us, the more true it is that grief is more than just being sad for a few days or weeks. Two statements in this sentence are important to me:
Grief is more than sadness. Sadness is ONE emotion in grief, alongside many others, e.g. anger, despair, gratitude and many others. Grief means adjusting, it is a process.
This adjustment has many components:
- Adjusting to everyday life without the deceased person: Who will make coffee in the morning?
- Adapting to a new role: who will do the taxes?
- Forming new habits or finding new hobbies: Who am I going hiking with now or to a concert?
- Learning to cope with the unimaginable or almost unbearable pain.
- Adjusting to a new self-image: Who am I now?
The adjustments are often painful and exhausting, because each of them is a confrontation with the infinity and irreversibility of death. Every morning when I wake up; every time I prepare a meal for one; every day when I come home to an apartment that I live in alone, every beautiful moment that I can no longer talk about.
Incidentally, these adjustments can also not be “worked through systematically”, as with a checklist. It takes time and patience for us to learn to cope and for habits to develop.
And that's crazy and exhausting. That's why grief takes longer than you sometimes think.
→ You can read more about this in the book The Grieving Brain. This also deserves its blog post. Until I have finished it, I recommend the interview with the author Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor in the PsychCrunch podcast of the British Psychological Society.
And that brings us back to the question: How long does grief take? The nice thing is: At some point, the question is no longer relevant for many bereaved people.
Learning to Cope with Loss
For many bereaved individuals, the question “How long does it take” changes over time. It becomes their individual answer to the question: “How can I continue to live well despite or with my grief?”
They find ways to cope with loss and to live with their grief.
I use the image of grief as a backpack in my counseling sessions. This backpack is handed to us and we can barely shoulder it at first because it is too heavy. Over time, we become stronger, we find people to help us carry it and we repack the rucksack so that we can carry it better.
If someone succeeds in this, a new facet can suddenly emerge in the grief: connection to the deceased person.
When Grief Becomes Connection
Grief doesn't just end. It goes up and down like waves (rather than phases), and over time the waves become gentler for many bereaved persons on most days.
The issues that a bereaved person is concerned with also change, and with them the form in which grief manifests itself. Instead of being overwhelmed by feelings, it is suddenly possible to consciously take time to think about a deceased loved one. And yes, most bereaved individuals find a form of happiness.
Is grief over then? Perhaps.
Above all, there is a new connection, to the deceased and often also to life.
EN 
DE