I want to preface this article by stating that this is simply based on my own experience and some advice a friend gave me. Every grief experience is different, so this may not help everyone, but at that time, it helped me, and maybe it can help a few others dealing with a completely unexpected death.
It was the middle of my junior year of college. It was Saturday morning and my friend was on her way to pick me up from campus because we had plans to hang out. While I was getting ready, I decided to open Facebook on my phone. One of the first posts I saw on my feed was not what I was prepared for. It was a news report that a good friend of mine from back home, Andy, had been killed in a tragic accident.
When I first saw the news, I didn’t know what to do. I texted my friend and she offered to take a rain check on our plans to give me space to deal with it. At the moment, I wasn’t ready to deal with it, so we still went out. This friend in particular doesn’t always do well with a lot of emotions, but she is great when I need comfort food, a fun distraction, and someone to just make me feel like everything is okay. That day, she took me out for lunch and even bought me a bottle of lemonade because she knows it’s one of my favorite beverages. It helped me get my mind off things, but I still hadn’t truly dealt with all that I was feeling.
A day or two after receiving the news, a date was set for the funeral. I made plans to return home for a day to attend. That is when it hit me like a ton of bricks that this was really happening and my friend was really gone. I met up with another close friend on campus who was a fellow psychology major and was an aspiring therapist. We went for a walk around campus and he let me talk about all that I was feeling surrounding Andy’s passing. Then, despite having not been through something like this himself, he gave me some of the best advice. He told me that, since Andy’s death was so tragic and unexpected, it would be best to give myself some time to let the shock wear off before I really start dealing with the grief. Even though it had been a couple of days since Andy passed, my brain was still in shock, so it was hard for me to properly grieve.
Prior to Andy’s death, I had dealt with several other unexpected deaths and always had such a hard time handling them. After hearing my friend’s advice, I knew why. I wasn’t giving myself enough grace to understand that the unexpectedness of these deaths was what made them so unbearably hard to handle, even when I wasn’t super close to the person who had passed (i.e. classmates and co-workers).
Ever since that conversation with my friend, I passed that advice along to anyone I know dealing with a shocking and unexpected loss, and now I am passing it along to you. Anytime you’re trying to cope with some sort of loss, even if it isn’t totally unexpected, give yourself all the time you need to fully process it. Let the initial shock of news wear off, regardless of how long that takes, and then you can work on processing your emotions and grief. If you need help processing it all, don’t be afraid to reach out to a friend, family member, or even a therapist.
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