Stergeron

Can a person have a healthy relationship with grief? Can you have function within your grief? I think what might precede functional grief is what your relationship with that individual looked like prior to the end.

I’m a firm believer that you can navigate life and relationships with minimal amounts of regret. If you say what you mean and mean what you say and don’t leave things undone, forgive the wrongs quickly, have open communication with those you love most, then when unplanned events happen in life, you won’t be plagued with guilt on top of the grief while dealing with the loss. Living life without regrets is a skillset, it’s a mindset, you must be intentional in your relationships.

I feel we can manage those situations in a comparison to an elite athlete, for instance a boxer. This boxer has been training for the biggest fight of their career, they can go 12 rounds and not have the actual knock out but can have the winning scorecard from the judges by unanimous decision that they won the fight. They put it all out there, in the ring, knowing that no matter if this goes to a judge’s decision, they’ve done the work and won’t leave the ring wondering, ‘did I do enough?’. They pulled out the win because they were committed to the sport. They sacrificed, years of training, being disciplined, by nourishing their body, by surrounding themselves with a team that is supportive of them, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, pushing themselves so they have no excuses. That’s relationships, we need to sacrifice, be disciplined, nourish our relationships, take the time for those we love, surround ourselves with quality people and invest our presence, our emotions, our thoughts and pray for those we love. When we’re intentional in our relationships it opens the door nice and wide to NO REGRETS.

I understand and am fully aware that not all relationships can operate under the confines of no regrets. Relationships are reciprocal, it takes 2 people to make any relationship successful, whether platonic or romantic, but if YOU take responsibility for how YOU maneuver around your relationships, then this is one less thing for you to have your mind consumed with in the event of a loss of the other person in the relationship. Whether that loss is permanent (death) or due to seasons in life, I can assert that how you recover from that loss is predicated by how well you invested in that relationship.

I remember back several years when my dad suffered a massive stroke. The result of the stroke took his speech and caused paralysis in his legs and the complete right side of his body. He was out of the country when he had the stroke and all I could think of was I need to get to him and my mom. Once united with them a day after his stroke we (my mom, sister, and myself) had another blow to deal with. It was recommended by several doctors that my dad required open heart surgery as he had a hole in his heart and that was in part responsible for the severity of his stroke, and if the hole wasn’t repaired it would result in many more catastrophic strokes that in all possibility would render my dad in a vegetative state. So of course, the 3 of us decided YES to the surgery. While my mom was filling out paperwork, the medical team is, of course, laying out the severity of the surgery, the possibility of complications, filling out DNR’s and that he may not survive the surgery; these were chaotic moments in the emergency ward that were all around my dad, the doctors, nurses, noises - it was sensory overload. Even though my dad suffered this massive stroke he could understand everything being said but couldn’t communicate with us through speech. He could however make known with his eyes, and when our eyes met it was like there was a spotlight on both our faces and thought bubbles above our heads that read in all caps, “IT WILL BE OK.” There were no words exchanged, just eyes full of tears, but full of love and knowing that no matter what happened on that table that I knew we had left nothing undone in our relationship as father and daughter.

What a gift my dad and I gave each other throughout the years without ever really knowing the magnitude of the intention until it was needed most. That intention resulted in functional grief for me. Even though my dad lived for another 13 months and 15 days after his stroke, little did I know that my grief journey started when he had his stroke, because he wasn’t quite the same man after that. The prologue to my relationship with grief or the prequel. Prequels are often slated as better than the sequel, however the real magnitude of my grief began when my dad died. My dad’s death was the start of my grief journey, it’s functional grief (sometimes messy and a rollercoaster ride) because of our life of no regrets. I’m so thankful for that 🤎

ster·ger·on

to live your life to the fullest, as in go big or go home. as in living life with no regrets. the word backwards spells out "no regrets"