Are you grieving the right way?

In March of 2020, the world as we knew it stopped in its tracks and changed.  Many experiences, traditions, and events could no longer go on.  We adjusted to working from home while teaching from home while searching for toilet paper during the early days of the pandemic.  Several things continued to tick along despite the pandemic….no, I am not about to talk about Amazon sales; the thing that stayed along with COVID-19 was death, and along with death comes grief.

Pre-COVID, there were gatherings, funerals, celebrations of life, private moments, lasagna drop-offs, and as time went on…. the grieving process.  Post-COVID, functions may look different depending on the Province, Jurisdiction, or Stage you are in, but one thing that is still happening is the grieving process, even if it looks different right now.

Disclaimer-I am not a grief expert, nor should this blog be taken as advice on how to grieve; I recommend reaching out to a Professional Therapist for any needs you may have.  I am writing this blog based on what I see happen within a family after death and how it impacts the administration of the estate for the Executor.  My thoughts are based on my interactions with hundreds of families each year.

Ok, back to my findings.  When we at ETP Canada work with Executors, there are times where there are already tensions within the family when we come on board.  Our job is to organize the estate into a paper form and tell the story of how the estate’s assets got from Point A to Point B.  As you can imagine, we become detectives, and at times, we have many follow-up questions for the clients, their lawyers, or other parties, and in this process, we end up finding out some of the backstories.

It is not uncommon for some of the discord to have stemmed from how each person perceived the other to be grieving.  Everyone grieves differently from my experience, and there is no standard one size fits all way to grieve.  I do not believe the “stages” of grief apply exactly as people may think; some may hit all stages, some skip them, and some stay in one stage for a much longer time.

I’ve noticed that we as humans tend to project what we are feeling onto others, and then cannot understand why a sibling is not “as upset” or “too upset” or “crying too much” or “not crying enough” and from there, emotions start to brew.  Estate Administration is a pot of soup filled with strange ingredients; we have the loss of a loved one, sadness, anger, surprise, money, legal matters, and sometimes all of these ingredients bubble over.

Emotions can feed into how we make our decisions, including our motive to sue or not sue someone.  For example, I once was hired for an estate in which the siblings were challenging the Executor, and when we boiled down some of the issues, one of them was the fact that the Executor did not cry when the teacups were being divided up.  The siblings then believed that the Executor “was in it for the money” (and for other reasons as well), began to accuse the Executor of negligence.

Another example was an estate where siblings were in a battle immediately following the death of their father.  In the hospital, one sibling was there every day, sat by the bedside, and did not miss a single moment of the health care decisions.  The other sibling lived in a different province and could not be there regularly but handled the logistics of finances and operations in a very precise business manner.  I am sure you can picture how this plays out….neither sibling liked how the other processed their own emotions.

I encourage all of us to practice empathy, remember that the way you may process the emotions of grief may not be the same as your sibling, cousin, parent, friend, etc.  And if you do not like how someone else may be processing their grief, perhaps you should stop and look within yourself to determine why it bothers you.  If you have done some reflection, and it still bothers you, then maybe it is wise to have a conversation with that person to understand better what their grieving process looks like to them.

Much like a fingerprint is unique to all of us, so are our emotions and grieving processes.  There is no right or wrong way to travel the path.  Choose to have empathy and compassion for those traveling along the path with you.