Surviving Anticipatory Grief

If you were a caregiver for your wife for an extended time, there is a good chance that you experienced anticipatory grief. Expectation of imminent death can be both a blessing and a curse. Our aversion to admitting that she will die may cause us to avoid contemplating what the future might bring. And yet, many symptoms of grief may emerge during this pre-death period.

Anticipatory grief can be an unwanted blessing in that you will likely have some time to prepare for her departure, and you will be less likely to go into shock when she does pass. Often widowers who have experienced this may feel a sense of relief because their suffering is over. It may also be a relief that medical expenses stop piling up and that you are no longer in a constant state of worry as to when and how she might die.

However, it can be a curse in that you may enter a state of denial during your caregiving and refuse to confront your impending new reality as a widower. It is also not unusual to feel regrets and be angry with yourself because of the relief you felt after her passing.

During caregiving, it is not uncommon to fall into a sort of sleepwalking routine of caring for her, while ignoring your own needs. Your physical and emotional health may well deteriorate. Once she does pass, you may find this hole that you dug is difficult to climb out of. Before and after, you may beat yourself up with thoughts such as:

· I could have taken better care of her, or

· I was too impatient during care-giving for her, or

· I resented how her illness was affecting my life.

During her illness, you may have been hyper-vigilant as you watched for every sign from your wife about her health and state of well-being. You might have experienced anger about what she was going through and its unfairness. While you may be resigned to her eventually passing, you may have found yourself ruminating over it and undergoing great stress due to your inability to help or control the situation. This often leads to increased self-isolation which can lead to feelings of depression and anxiety.

If you were fortunate, you may have conducted research before her death and found websites, books, blogs, and counseling groups that helped you to prepare for the inevitable. However, in my experience this seems to be the exception, not the rule. I am often surprised when I meet widowers who had years of caregiving for their wives, knowing that they were going to die, who not only did not prepare for it but also had a terrible time pulling out of the grief after their deaths.

Once she has passed, all the emotions may come gushing out and seem totally out of your control. This may further aggravate normal grieving symptoms and present an even larger challenge for you to overcome. Anticipatory grief and the aftermath of it can lead to “complicated grief” that extends the grief journey much longer than is the norm.

So, if you see some of yourself in all of this, it is all the more important that you reach out for help, and the sooner the better. Besides reading articles, joining grief groups, engaging in new activities, and becoming physically active, you may need to find a good grief therapist for one-on-one sessions to help you climb out of the pit you find yourself in.

There are more online resources than ever now. You can find some of these resources listed on my website: https://www.fredcolby.com/resourceslinks

Good luck my friends.

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Fred Colby is the author of:

Widower to Widower - available through most booksellers and libraries.

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