Grieving More Than a Death

This episode comes from the thick  envelope from a lawyer that lands in my mailbox and flips my whole day upside down. Inside is news I never expected to learn this way: my aunt has died, and I don’t even know when it happened. 

Shock hits first, then my mind does what it has learned to do for a lifetime it reaches for connection. I want to call my dad. Then I remember I can’t, because he died too. That split second says so much about how grief lives in the body, not just in our thoughts.

I talk honestly about layered bereavement, the kind that shows up when a family member dies and it reopens old family pain. There’s the death itself, and then there’s the silence- why wasn’t I called?- and then there’s ache of realizing you were not included.

 When family estrangement, messy dynamics, or a controlling religious group has shaped who stays in touch, grief can carry bitterness and resentment right alongside love. If you’ve ever felt confused by your own reaction to a relative’s death, there is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You are human.

We also discuss what I do in the moment to steady myself: getting out of the house, taking a long walk, and trying to calm my nervous system when anger starts to surge. 

As The Caring Death Doula, I’m not here to polish grief into something pretty. I’m here to tell the truth and to hold space for yours too.

If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs gentle support, and leave a review so more grieving people can find this podcast.  

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Transcript

A Lawyer Packet Changes Friday

The Instinct To Call Dad

Walking To Settle The Nervous System

Experience As The Teacher In Grief

When Family Silence Deepens Loss

Holding Space For Your Grief

God Is Good And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hello and welcome. Thank you for joining me today. This is once again not the episode that I had planned for today. But I just wanted to share something with you. Friday I went and got the mail, and there was a big pack, big packet, thick packet, from a lawyer's office, though which was not my lawyer's office. And I kinda had a brain fart thinking that it was something from when my aunt died, which that was over two years ago. So it doesn't make sense that it would be anything related to that, but I just I had no idea why a lawyer would be sending me a packet. So I opened it and found out that my my aunt had died, another aunt. And you know, my first thought was, well, I didn't know that. When did she die? And I have to call my dad and find out, does he know what's and then of course I realized, oh no, I can't call my dad because he's he's uh he died in January of 24. So it's been over two years. And it's just so fascinating to me how our minds, how our minds go to things that we can't do. And I know I've done another episode previously about you know the call that you can't make. Your hand could even reach for the phone before your mind catches up and goes, oh, wait a minute. So I didn't get that far because my brain did stop me before I reached for the phone, but that was my first instinct was like, oh, Aunt Marie died. Well, I need to call dad. Does he know? How come he didn't call me? You know, and it's so it's so hard because Aunt Marie, I mean, she was my dad's sister, older sister. And so, of course, the connection is to my dad. And so I'm grieving my aunt. I'm grieving all that could have been. I'm grieving my dad again. I'm just I'm grieving the whole situation and and it's just I feel like it's so crazy. So obviously the rest of my Friday was not what I planned. I actually, after I'd cried a little bit, I I just knew I couldn't stay inside four walls. So I I went for a a walk, a pretty long walk, just around and around my town. I went. Not my whole town, but a section of my town. And I stopped at the park that had the little pond, and I sat there for a while, and because I thought, well, I should I keep walking? Should I sit? And I thought, well, you know, water is soothing. Water is soothing, so I'll sit here. Because normally it is when I sit there, and it really wasn't long before I started getting angry. I started getting angry, and the bitterness and the resentment started coming up again. And I thought, okay, I guess it's time to get up and walk. Help my nervous system and my mind and walk. So I walked around again the blocks that I like to walk. And it's just I don't know. I someone once told me that to do your life passion, to to help other people, to be of any. This is not what she said, but in a way, it's like to be of any use to others that are grieving, I would have to walk the grief path. You can't just go to school, you can't just take classes, you can't read books, and then think you can help people. I mean, yes, to some extent you would be able to help them if your heart's in the right place. But it also takes walking the path yourself. You know, I know a woman who lost her husband, and she now has started a uh a widow's grief group and a widow's grief coaching business, and just you know, a huge outreach in her community as well as online. And it came from her experience of losing her husband and her life falling apart and trying to figure out how does she do this. And she had children, older children, I believe, but still, you know, they had a family business, and how do you run that? Do you keep it? Do you, you know, just the all the stuff that she went through. And so now she has this program that she and support group that she does with other widows and just helps them to walk their path. Because it's been quite a year. I I lost my brother-in-law died on January 30th. And then Friday, I found out that my aunt died. I have no idea when she died, you know, and that just makes me angry. Because why didn't any of my cousins call me? Why didn't the cousin that is the executor make sure to either call me or my brother? Because this is not going to be a death, I believe, that's going to be posted in the newspaper. I don't. They don't they belong to a a church. I they call it a church. I would almost call it a cult, but they they belong to a group that does not, you know, draw attention to themselves. They don't put things in the paper. And so this aunt did not have any children. She'd never married. And so the executor was one of my dad's nephews from his oldest brother. Him and his brother, his oldest brother, were the only two that got married out of eight children. And so there's just my dad's line and then Herman's line. And I just cannot believe that they did not they did not reach out to me. Or my brother, so that we could know. Because this is the ant that lived in the home place. And so she is the aunt that I that I knew the the few times in my childhood and even adulthood that I went to see my gross mooter before she died. It was rare. It was rare. We didn't, I didn't grow up knowing my cousins or my aunts and uncles or my grandma. But this aunt was the one that lived at home, lived at home with her mom. And so when I would go to visit my growsmooter, I visited my aunt Marie. That was just, she was just there. And so she became special because she was there, because I had some time with her. You know, the other ants I did not see. Extremely rare, and you know, it's just it just makes me grieve not only just the situation, just the family dynamics, but just to realize there's so many of us out there that our families are really in bad shape. And then when you have a death, that just brings up all the emotions, all the pain, all the feelings, all the memories, the lack of memories, the growing up alone, not being good enough, not being wanted, all those things. And so in a death, it's not just the actual death of the person. And you're grieving that. You're grieving the connection to other family members, like I'm grieving my aunt's death, I'm grieving the fact that she was my dad's sister. So then I'm grieving my dad all over again because I don't have him to talk to about this aunt and about her death. But then there's the whole mess of all the dynamics and the relationships or the lack of relationships within a family, and then you look at your life and you just realize how sad that is. How sad that is that my dad's family let a cult to church dictate who they ate with, who they visited, who they didn't visit, who they didn't allow in their homes, who they didn't speak to. It's just it's so sad. It is so sad. And I want you to know if you're out there and you're grieving, a loved one has died, or just a distant family member that you only saw a few times in your life, if ever. If there's miscommunication, bad feelings within your family, and yet you're st you're grieving, I want you to know that I see you. I'm holding space for you, and I'm deeply sorry that you have to go through this, but it's it's part of life, and and life is hard. But God is good. God is good. And hopefully you have the support you need. If not, then I hope that this podcast can be a support to you. Because I'm holding space for you. Death is hard, and when you throw in all the dynamics, and like I said, the relationship or the lack of relationships can just complicate and add to your grief, be an extra burden, be an extra pain. And if you've lost a parent and then you lose an aunt or an uncle or maybe a grandparent, and you can't talk to your loved one. Just know that I understand. I'm holding space for you. This is the caring death, doula, and I am here for you.