A turning point in my grieving process was when I read Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, six months or so after my husband died, during a phase of reading books exclusively written by widows. In the chapter on how to build resilience, Sandberg wrote the following about a conversation with her co-author, psychologist Adam Grant:
“During the early days of despair, my instinct was to try to find positive thoughts. Adam told me the opposite: that it was a good idea to think about how much worse things could be. ‘Worse?’ I asked him. ‘Are you kidding? How could this be worse?’ His answer cut through me: ‘Dave could have had that same cardiac arrhythmia driving your own children.’ Wow. The thought that I could have lost all three of them had never occurred to me. I instantly felt overwhelmingly grateful that my children were alive and healthy—and that gratitude overtook some of the grief.”
The example she gave really resonated with me. My husband had died of a heart attack in his sleep. In terms of timing, it was really the best one could ask for. My hope is that he didn’t even realize what was happening and didn’t suffer. What if, as in Sheryl’s example, he had had the heart attack while driving my daughter or he had crashed into another car of people, killing them all? Or what if it had happened in front of her and all her friends at her birthday party, traumatizing them all?
In my grief support group I heard countless stories that were objectively worse than mine: drug overdose, suicide, murder, or the child witnessing the death… And of course news headlines tell horrible stories of violent death from mass shootings, war, etc. every day. Hearing all of these stories made me feel grateful that we didn’t have it worse. The death itself is traumatic enough. But many people also suffer additional trauma from the manner or circumstances surrounding the death. I felt fortunate that we didn’t have this additional trauma too.
I also heard on a podcast that children are more traumatized by a parent’s death from a long illness because of having to watch their parent decline. And apparently for adults it’s the opposite: They are more traumatized by a sudden death because of not being able to say goodbye. While I don’t know if this is true (and couldn’t find any evidence to support this when writing this blog post), I found solace in this at the time. While I didn’t get to say goodbye to my husband, I was grateful that my daughter was spared having to watch her dad weaken and fade.
My thoughts changed from “Why did this happen to us?” to “I’m glad it happened the way it happened and that it wasn’t worse.” This shift in perspective enabled me to start finding gratitude for a number of things:
- I was employed, so we didn’t struggle financially. So many widows, after the death of their spouse, suffer from financial hardship.
- My family lives nearby and, with our friends, formed a great support system, helping with things from giving my daughter a ride to an activity to teaching me how to use a generator.
- A friend had introduced me to a fantastic therapist. Between sessions with her and my bi-weekly grief support group, I felt like I was getting the grief support I needed.
It was an important lesson for me that even in the worst of times, I was able to find something to be grateful for, and it changed my outlook. It opened up my mind to being able to see things positively again and to experience hope for the future. At some point, I shared this focus on gratitude with my daughter, and it’s now an important part of her bedtime routine for us to list at least three things each for which we are grateful.
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