Let’s Talk About Grief, Part 3: Conflicted Grief - 11/30/21

I’m continuing this blog series on grief, and today I want to focus on a grief that is commonly experienced but hardly ever mentioned, and that is conflicted grief. 

Like its close cousin disenfranchised grief, conflicted grief is unacknowledged and unsupported. The difference is for conflicted grief, one experiences atypical feelings or struggles with the bereavement process because of the nature of the relationship the griever had with the deceased. Often, that relationship was problematic, abusive or just plain absent. The griever goes back and forth with their feelings and in some cases, the lost person or situation may not be missed at all. That lack of missing contradicts societal expectations and the griever is left to deal with additional feelings of guilt, inadequacy and isolation. The griever can also feel like they are not allowed to grieve because they didn’t have an optimal relationship with the deceased.

When someone dies, their life can be viewed with a hagiographic lens in which they are idealized or idolized. It is against societal bounds to “speak ill of the dead,” so anyone who does that is often met with disdain. This dynamic puts the griever in a precarious position of juggling between the reality of the person’s characteristics and their relationship and the throes of grief itself. Sentiments of condolence may ring hollow if they’re from people who were unaware of the true nature of the griever’s relationship with the deceased.

People in this position may also feel pressured to let bygones be bygones since the person with whom they had the issue is no longer alive. Such pressure serves to alleviate the discomfort from the consolers not the consoled who has every right to feel however they feel. Forcing someone to “just get over it” ignores and invalidates the very real and long-lasting impact of being connected to someone who was a negative influence. Trauma from physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse or neglect doesn’t go away just because the abuser is dead.

I had a conflicted grief process after my father died in 2013. Actually, this process started before his death but came to a head after he died. My father was severely abusive. If you recall reading my earlier posts, I grew up in a highly volatile household. As he entered the last stage of his life, Dad never apologized for what he did to me or my family. He didn’t express an ounce of remorse or desire for amends. I grappled with a messy ball of feelings as he neared death. I had to accept that I would probably never get such an apology, and as it turns out, I never did get one.

I also battled feelings of anger and resentment. I felt like I was trapped taking care of someone who showed only superficial consideration for me. Dad’s illness made him lash out and my mother and I bore the brunt of his anger. It was hard to feel empathy for someone who acted so cruelly, even in his last days.

This tightrope walk became harder in the days and weeks following his death. I had to grit my teeth when I heard amazing accolades for him – at the funeral, the burial, the cards, the home visits, the trips to the store, etc. The person they knew as my father was definitely not the person he was in real life. I had to fight the urge to scream, “You didn’t know him!!! Did you know that he was an asshole???” I had a lot to process.  

The only way to get through the messiness of grief, particularly conflicted grief, is to get all the feelings and thoughts out in whatever form that presents itself without hurting yourself or others. For me, writing was the way. I’ve learned keeping it inside complicates the grief process and in my case, it also led to depression.  

In the next post, I will offer some real and helpful suggestions to help someone who’s grieving that goes beyond sending a sympathy card.

Write & Rise, my friends.