Bereavement support workers dealing with grieving people have called for a wider education in Ireland about the complex issue, insisting that modern culture allows less space for grief.
Issue
Sr Helen Culhane of the Children’s Grief Centre in Co. Limerick said she believes that previous generations handled the issue in a more supportive way.
In Ireland “we were much better” at supporting people through grief she said, and that “we have changed”.
“You see, after about three weeks, we expect them to be smiling. We don’t want to see them crying, and even with children we want to fix them. When a family is grieving, whether an adult has lost a partner, grief is normal,” Sr Helen said, adding, “We want to fix it now, we want a quick fix…we don’t want to see people sad.”
Sr Helen said she’s heard people say “I must pull myself together”, but that “her husband could be dead in six weeks”.
Empathy
Sharon Dagg, CEO of Anam Cara bereavement support services, said that people are “great at showing a bit of empathy at the start”, but then they feel “you need to nearly snap out of it now”.
“The situation about grief is that there’s no time limit on it whatsoever,” Ms Dagg said.
“I suppose it’s a case of you might see somebody walking along the street and know that they’ve just buried a child, and they almost avoid them because they don’t know what to say. They might walk across the street,” she said.
There’s an “educational” job to be done by way of helping people to learn how to support people through grief and bereavement, Ms Dagg said, adding that “it’s learning to listen, really, really listen, and not say ‘I understand’ – if you haven’t lost a child, you don’t really understand”.
“It’s educating the communities and employees to support people when they are going back to work and knowing what’s right and what’s wrong to say,” Ms Dagg said.
Read Jason Osborne’s full article examining how to help support your community through grief here.