ANTICIPATORY GRIEF

WHEN LOSS BEGINS BEFORE GOODBYE

​Anticipatory grief doesn’t only happen when someone is dying. It can begin with an illness, a diagnosis, a traumatic injury, a disability, or the slow changes that sometimes come with age. We may find ourselves grieving someone who is still sitting right beside us, while also loving them, caring for them, advocating for them, and trying to make the most of the time we still have.

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We can grieve the parent who can no longer drive. The spouse whose illness has changed the life you once shared. The person whose memory is beginning to fade. The friend whose disability has altered the future they imagined. The loved one whose trauma changed who they are or how they move through the world.

And sometimes, we grieve what has changed for us, too.

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THE GRIEF OF CAREGIVING

 

Caregiving can carry its own kind of grief. When you become responsible for medications, appointments, meals, transportation, finances, safety, mobility, or simply making sure someone you love is okay, your relationship can begin to change. A parent becomes the caregiver for an ill child. A friend cares for a friend in need. A spouse becomes a nurse to the one they chose to love.  A child begins making decisions for the parent who once made every decision for them.

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You may grieve their independence while they are grieving it themselves. You may grieve the conversations you used to have, the things you used to do together, the plans that have changed, and even the freedom you once had in your own life. And then comes the guilt.​ Guilt because you are exhausted and probably frustrated. Guilt because sometimes you want one day when nobody needs anything from you. You pray you could go back in time and slip right back into the normalcy you once had. Guilt because you are already grieving someone who is still here.

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But love and grief can exist in the same room. It's normal to feel many things at once:

• Gratitude and exhaustion.

• Hope and fear.

• Devotion and frustration.

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None of those feelings cancels out the others.

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FROM GET REAL ABOUT™ GRIEF

[EXCERPT on ANTICIPATORY GRIEF COMING SOON]

Excerpted from GET REAL ABOUT™ GRIEF by Jennifer Barrette

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ONE BOOK LED ME TO ANOTHER

While writing GET REAL ABOUT™ GRIEF, I interviewed so many people who were living this kind of loss, particularly people caring for aging parents. And while writing this book, I found myself slowly falling into this caregiving role myself, as my parents had ailment after ailment, and became more and more reliant on me for their everyday needs.

 

I had heard about the strange role reversal that happens when the people who once took care of us begin needing us to take care of them, and poof, before I knew it here I was right in the middle of exactly what I had been writing about. So many people I interviewed talked about doctors and medications, falls and hospital stays, memory loss and difficult decisions, siblings who help and siblings who don’t, exhaustion, guilt, fear, frustration, love, and the anticipatory grief that can weave itself through all of it. And I realized there was another conversation we needed to have.

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A much bigger one than the book I had just spent five years writing. So, I decided to write an entire book about it.

Soon GET REAL ABOUT™ AGING PARENTS grew, in part, from the stories I heard while researching grief and from one realization I kept coming back to:

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• Sometimes we begin grieving our parents long before we have to say goodbye.

• Somewhere in the middle of loving them, helping them, worrying about them, and trying to hold on to who they have always been, we are also learning how to become their caregivers.

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That journey deserves an honest conversation of its own, one I am right in the midst of writing. If you have a story to share, I would love to hear from you. 

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HAVE A STORY TO SHARE?  CLICK HERE

I’d love to hear yours.

If you have a story about caring for, loving, or navigating life with your aging parents, I invite you to share it with us. Your experience may become part of a larger conversation and may help someone else going through the same thing feel a little less alone.

[ SHARE YOUR AGIG PARENTS STRY ]