Grief of Anticipation

What is Anticipatory Grief? Anticipatory Grief the emotions of grief that come before a person dies. For today’s article we will use terminal illness as the example, even though there are many situations that can bring these feelings. When a loved one endures through a terminal illness we watch as who they were deteriorates over time – we grieve the loss of a person’s independence and/or cognition, future dreams, former health, who they were as a person in the vibrancy of life as we knew and loved them, the loss of our own identity as caretakers, and countless other ‘smaller’ losses. Often, anticipatory grief can begin the moment we accept that death is a realistic likelihood. We expect to be losing our loved one soon, and that stress can really take an emotional toll.

Then the moment arrives, and all the complicated emotions of grief roll back to the surface again with renewed sorrow. Often that sorrow is mixed with a sense of relief that the person is no longer suffering, and/or thankfulness for having the extra time to say goodbye. These emotions seem to conflict with one another on the surface and the resulting combination can lead to a sense of guilt and uncertainty about our own emotions. We often try to cope with that uncertainty by minimizing our feelings with phrases like “We knew this was coming, I shouldn’t feel this sad” but all that does is deny ourselves permission to grieve this new and final loss of our loved one’s physical presence in our lives.

Allow yourself the time and space to grieve without guilt or fear of judgement. Feel all the feelings and allow each their time. Death can’t be minimized, and anticipating its presence can never take the pain of loss away, no matter how long the ‘autumn’ is that we have to say goodbye.

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