After Stephanie's 13-year-old son Eric died of Ewing’s sarcoma in 2004, she was lost in a sea of grief. Her days were long, unstructured, monotonous. She barely left her home. When she did leave, she planned her routes carefully to avoid driving past the hospital, just a few miles away, where Eric had been treated during the 16 months of his illness, or the fields where he had played baseball. Grocery shopping was a minefield, because it was painful to contemplate buying Eric’s favourite foods without him. To enjoy anything when he could not feltwrong. AndStephanienever thought she would be able to return to the church where they had worshiped together – and where his funeral was held.
Looking back, she describes herself as not knowing how to grieve after Eric died. “I didn’t know what to do, how to act in front of people – what I needed to do privately, who I could reach out to. I was fearful of making people more emotional, too emotional, and having to comfort them,” she tells shared. “I didn’t know how to talk about what I was thinking.”
Stephanie's long dark hair is pulled back and she’s wearing a white T-shirt. One of the things she says is that she thought if she stopped grieving, her memories of Eric would fade, and she’d lose her connection to her son for ever.
The passage of time often seems the only remedy for grief, but time didn’t help her. In the years following Eric’s death, she says, she felt consumed by grief. Then a family physician heard a talk by a University psychiatrist about treating chronic and unremitting grief and the doctor thought this lady might be able to help Stephanie.
Four years after Eric died, Stephanie arrived at the Psychiatric Institute, for her first meeting with this psychiatrist. She, Stephanie, answered her counselor's questions with as few words as possible. It was as if she were barely present in the small, windowless room. Her face was drawn and clouded; she sat crumpled in her chair, arms crossed tightly around her, as if the weight of her loss made it impossible to sit up straight. It felt to her as if Eric had died just the day before. Her psychiatrist diagnosed Stephanie with complicated grief, the unusually intense and persistent form, which her therapist had been researching and treating for almost 20 years.
Grief, by definition, is the deep, wrenching sorrow of loss. The initial intense anguish, what the psychiatrist calls acute grief, usually abates with time. Stephanie's psychologist says that complicated grief is more chronic and more emotionally intense than more typical courses through grief, and it stays at acute levels for longer. Women are more vulnerable to complicated grief than men. It often follows particularly difficult losses that test a person’s emotional and social resources, and where the mourner was deeply attached to the person they aregrieving. Researchersestimate complicated grief affects approximately 2 to 3 per cent of the population worldwide. It affects 10 to 20 per cent of people after the death of a spouse or romantic partner, or when the death of a loved one is sudden or violent, and it is even more common among parents who have lost a child. Clinicians are just beginning to acknowledge how debilitating this form of grief can be. But it can be treated, and overcome!
John T. Catrett, III Refuge Care Hospice Chaplain