Dear Grief Guide, I Don't Know Who To Grieve First

After the sudden, back-to-back deaths of her mother and brother, a listener wonders how to grieve both of them at once. I read her anonymous letter and then offered her practical tools and compassionate wisdom for growing through grief.

Dear Grief Guide is a weekly advice podcast where I answer anonymous letters from people feeling lost, stuck, or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

Music © Adi Goldstein, Used with Permission

Trigger Warning: This practice may include references to death, dying, and the departed.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Dear Grief Guide,

A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost,

Stuck,

Heartbroken,

Or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

My name is Shelby Forsythia.

I'm a grief coach and author,

And I'm here to help you create a life you love from the life loss forced you to live.

Let's get to today's letter.

Dear Grief Guide,

I lost my mother and brother within a mere three months of each other.

The circumstances were as sudden as they were disparate.

My mother in a workplace accident,

And my brother from a genetic heart condition that no one knew ran in our family.

Shock is my dominant emotion right now,

And I feel absolutely disoriented and lost.

Needless to say,

It's been a lot.

I'm not only stuck in the depths of grief,

But also in the uncertainty of how to begin mourning them.

In the past,

I feel like I got the luxury of grieving people or pets one at a time as the losses occurred.

Now the order of grief feels like an impossible,

Knotted tangle,

A puzzle that mirrors the magnitude of the losses themselves.

Both losses are huge and complicated and multilayered.

Grieving one of their deaths alone would ordinarily bring me to my knees.

But two?

It's dizzying to comprehend,

And I just don't know who to grieve first.

As I attempt to regain footing in the midst of grief's earthquake,

I know I need guidance.

How do I mourn two irreplaceable pillars of my life?

My relationships with my mom and brother were largely loving,

But they were also very different.

I'm not concerned about grieving correctly.

As much as I'm worried I won't give my mother and brother the proper time,

Focus,

Honoring,

And individual processing they deserve,

I don't want their losses to overshadow each other.

But I also don't want to burn myself out trying to double the grieving,

Even though I've lost two people.

I am already so overwhelmed.

Seeking clarity in the confusion,

Grieving for two.

Hello there grieving for two,

And thank you so much for writing this in.

I'm glad to have received this message because you are brave enough or willing enough to speak to something that so many people experience,

Which is grieving cumulative losses.

You are so correct that in society often,

In the media often,

Sometimes even in our individual lives we have this assumption that we get to grieve people just one at a time as the losses occur,

And that there's going to be a lot of space in between losses and a lot of room to process what just happened,

But oftentimes losses appears in twos or threes or even more,

And we are forced to grieve multiple people or things all at once.

And from the way you write,

I want to point out if you haven't named this yet,

And sometimes it can be helpful just to put a name to it,

That you are grieving three things here.

You are grieving the death of your mom.

You are also grieving the death of your brother.

But you are also grieving the fact that they both died so close together.

You're grieving this weird third thing is the grief of the expectation that you would get that luxury of time between their losses,

That you would get to grieve them one at a time.

You are grieving this expectation that they were supposed to die so far away from each other that I would not have to carry all this pain.

So the third thing that you're grieving is this puzzle,

What you call the tangle or the awful reality that you're living is that it has become a puzzle.

That was not something that was in the cards for you or something that you predicted would ever happen or ever wanted to happen.

It was not an expectation you had,

And now it is a reality.

And that is something worth naming and worth grieving.

Not only am I grieving one person,

Not only am I grieving two people,

I am now grieving the fact that their deaths happened so close together and I never imagined that would be my reality.

So in terms of practical advice for you,

I would say,

Let each day,

Let each moment be exactly what it is.

Some days your grief for your mom will be greater for your brother.

Sometimes they'll be inversed.

Sometimes you'll feel like you're coping great.

You're like,

Wow,

I've lost two people and I'm really doing well.

And the next day it's all going to come crashing down and you will be taken over by how overwhelming it all is.

I was speaking with a client once in a similar circumstance where she lost a sibling and a parent around the same time as each other.

And she's like,

I have these days where I'm really productive and I feel like I'm on top of my game.

And then the next day,

All I do is sit on the couch and watch reality television.

Is that okay?

Is that normal?

And I'm like,

Yeah,

That is enormously normal because your body,

Your brain,

Your mind,

Your heart,

All of it are doing the best that they can to continue living and continue functioning and potentially continue working or studying if you're at work or school or continue caretaking while also recovering from the fact that you have to do any of that at all while grieving.

So you,

If it feels like you're on a roller coaster,

You are not wrong.

You are not incorrect.

You are not lazy or weak or incapable or unpredictable.

You are working out what it means and what it looks like to live a life where both of these pillars of your life are not here physically present in it anymore.

And so if it feels like these days of whiplash are your normal,

That is very,

Very normal.

In terms of a practical step forward,

The thing I want to offer you may,

May sound a little unconventional.

I'm going to tell you to not,

Not look to me,

Don't look at me or,

Or my life.

I have had instances where losses have occurred back to back after my mother's death.

My partner and I also broke up and then I became very ill.

So I was grieving a person,

A relationship and my health all at the same time within about four months of each other.

And then I had a similar situation happen after my best friend died in 2022.

I was also grieving my health.

So there were things I was grieving simultaneously,

But I personally,

Shelby Forsythia,

Have never grieved two people back to back.

So what I want you to do and to take away from,

From this podcast today is to look to stories of others who have grieved multiple things simultaneously.

You might find examples on the news or on social media,

Or even within your own family.

I wonder if taking a look at your ancestry or,

Or people that you know or are related to have also had instances of like,

I had to grieve this person and then that person I grieved an uncle and then a child,

I was grieving my husband and then a sibling.

What is it?

It has to be somewhere in your lineage,

Somewhere in your circle of friends,

Somewhere in the media you consume every day,

Examples and stories of people who are doing the same thing that you are right now.

And ask them if you have access to them,

And if the conversation feels comfortable enough,

Ask them what that looked like,

How they carried on,

How they got through,

How they made sense of it,

Or if they're still making sense of it,

Because they may very well be depending on how long it's been.

Perhaps somebody like a celebrity or public figure or an author or filmmaker has endured a similar hardship to what you're facing right now.

And the question that you might ask yourself is,

How can they and their life be a sort of guiding light for you?

How can what they experienced inform or assist you in what you're experiencing right now?

In a manner of speaking,

You are on your own sort of hero's or heroine's journey.

And what you're looking for is a guide,

Somebody who's been in the exact same spot as you have been right now or close enough,

And I know that's why you reached out to me.

And also in terms of my own personal grief experiences,

I can take you so far.

But in terms of experiencing two deaths of very significant people very close together,

That is not a loss I have grieved.

And so I can take you with all of my wisdom and all of my resources as far as I can take you.

And then I challenge you,

I invite you,

Whichever of those words resonates best,

To look for others in your life who have experienced the loss of two very significant people back-to-back and see how that informs your grief.

And I don't encourage you to seek them out to necessarily share in sorrows or feed into this sense of it's all such a tragedy and the world is a heartless place and bad things happen to good people for no reason.

And all of those can be true stories in their own elements and in their own seasons.

What I want you to look for,

Again,

This question,

How can they be a guiding light for you?

Is what they did in the aftermath to cope,

To deal,

To grieve,

To process?

Did they also have these days where they were on top of the world and everything was productive and then the next day they're lying on the couch horizontal watching Schitt's Creek for eight hours?

Is that also true?

What I want you to look for is guidance,

Is similarity,

Is companionship,

Is validation.

I want all of these things for you in what you're looking for.

And when you find them,

Please hold onto them,

Follow them on social media,

Watch their films,

Read their books,

Listen to their podcasts.

I know they're out there.

They must be.

The world is such a big place and full of so many grievers because inevitably we will all grieve that I hope and I know you will be pointed towards,

You will be drawn to people who have these stories that they can share with you.

I trust that you will find them.

I know that they are out there because you are out there.

Thank you so much for writing to me today and good luck.