Bereavement

When I was a supervisor, I always thought it was strange that we give you three days to grieve and then it’s back to normal. I thought it was odd then and even more so after I’m almost two years on my journey of grief. How anyone could expect someone else to just bounce back after such a loss boggles my mind.

Today, when I was on LinkedIn, posting the latest episode of the podcast. Interestingly enough, it is with a terminally ill guest. Anyway, I saw an article that caught my eye. Once again, it made me think about the expectations we have about death and loss. You can read the article here. It was talking about companies rethinking bereavement. All I can say is it’s about time.

Grief isn’t liner and to expect someone to be okay days after a loss, isn’t rational. I’m almost two years out and I still have my days where the grief and missing him hit me hard.

When you make someone come back quickly to work, while it’s been done for decades, it’s not healthy. What is happening is they’re putting on a mask, sometimes, a stiff upper lip, some would say. However, it’s just a facade. About a month after my husband died, I started distracting myself. Keeping myself busy, so I didn’t deal with my feelings. I kept telling myself that I was okay, when the truth was I had just buried everything. When it finally hit me, it hit hard.

However, besides the physical loss, there is a whole other situation that comes up. Suddenly, you are now facing the loss of income if you’re married. Besides the loss of your spouse, you’re now faced with what does my life look like? Can I afford to keep my home? Can I survive being alone? If you have kids, it’s a whole other thing, as you have to help them manage their grief while you're managing your own.

So when I saw in the article, that Google pays half of the salary of an employee who passed away to their partner for a decade. I thought this was amazing. Sure, there may be some life insurance and that might help some, but a significant loss of income only adds so much more stress to the grief process.

Speaking from experience, when hubby passed, it left me to wonder how I could make it. Sure, there was money to tide me over, but a year and a half later, I now have to face hard choices. As most spouses do when they are older or disabled, they reach out to see if they can’t get at least part of their spouse’s Social Security. Like most spouses, I was told no. In fact, the only benefit you get is $255.00 to help pay for burial cost. Going through the Cremation Society, it was a minimum of $600 and that was without death certificates or a wake. Because my husband was taller and larger, it was $1100. Before you think it must be the urn I placed him in, well, that’s not the case. He is in a cardboard box. If I would’ve gone the route of the funeral home without a wake, it would’ve been between $2500 to $3700.

So condensing this down about bereavement. Place yourself in the situation where you’ve suddenly lost your spouse. We’ll say they were the love of your life. Now you have three days to make arrangements, go to the wake, go to the funeral, and deal with the new reality of having no partner. While also trying to figure out your next move, for not only you, but in some cases, your kids. The stress and depression can be crushing, but hey three days later you better be at work and please don’t have a meltdown.

We really need to stop and look at people as humans with genuine emotions and feelings. We can’t keep looking at people as a number or a hamster on the wheel. Money is important, sure, but so is life, and if you are so stressed or depressed, well, it will take you down physically in the long run. Then all the things you feared are even more magnified. So maybe instead of forcing people to rush back in. Maybe we need to give people the proper time to grieve and heal.