"Don’t give me grief….I’m grieving!"

?A few things happened in the last week or so that have been tumbling around in my head, and are now tumbling out into this article.

Firstly, I mowed the grass for the first time this year, and I cried. No, it wasn’t the realization that I was condemning myself to a weekly cycle of garden grind for the next six months or so, and I don’t suffer from hayfever, but I cried nonetheless. Let me explain why.

May 1st 2020, just as the real implications of the pandemic started to become apparent, I said goodbye to my dog. She was sixteen years old, we’d had her since she was a pup, she went everywhere with me. I was undoubtedly her hero, she loved me unconditionally and I loved her back. She was a blue roan cocker spaniel; the most beautiful dog, with the most beautiful nature, but she developed a problem which was clearly causing her distress, and on the advice of the vet we ended her suffering.

I brought her home, and I buried her in the garden, just about the spot where she’d often lie, soaking up the sun, and about five or six yards from where I’d buried my last dog, about twenty years previously. I remember crying on the way home in the car, telling her how sorry I was that I couldn’t save her. I remember crying as I dug the hole, crying as I put her in and covered her up. My youngest daughter came round to say one last goodbye, but pandemic rules were in place and we couldn’t have the hug we both needed.

I know exactly where she lies, and every time I mow the grass over that exact spot it gets me. I fill up, and I say sorry. Sorry for disturbing her sleep, sorry I couldn’t do more to save her, sorry for my angry words when she’d done something wrong…sorry for myself.

I also know exactly where my previous dog lies. I loved him too, but there’s no reaction when I run the mower over his final resting place. It’s been twenty four years since we lost Bob. It’s been two years since we lost Molly.

Fast forward to last week-end and the Spring Conference of the Professional Speaking Association. First up with a fantastic speech was this year’s President, Dr. Lynda Shaw. Lynda talks about neuroscience, neurotransmitters, emotion and mood, and how it all affects your ability to function.

One thing jumped right out at me, and it’s a response that I’ve heard so often -?“I know exactly how you feel”. It’s a well intentioned response, designed to show sympathy, empathy and support. I’ve used it myself, many times. But it’s just not true. We are all different. We might be wired differently, levels of neurotransmitter secretions may be different in our brains, those same chemicals may combine in different ways in different people, the possible combinations of different variables are infinite – “I know exactly how you feel” – no you don’t, you haven’t got a clue.

As I sat there listening to Lynda speak so eloquently, I made a note to myself to write something about ‘grief’. Yes, I’ve studied it, but It’s not my area of expertise. But I’ve dealt with so much of it in my professional life and in my personal life, that I felt I had the experience. I’ve lost count of the number of ‘death messages’ I’ve delivered as a police officer, the number of times I’ve tried to explain an ‘unexplained death’ to someone’s nearest and dearest, the number of colleagues I’ve lost and the number of colleagues under my leadership who have suffered loss.

And then I saw a post on LinkedIn from someone who had said their last goodbye to their own dog of nearly sixteen years. They couldn’t face work the next day. I felt I had to comment on the post, not out of sympathy or empathy, even though I personally felt both, but out of a need to say something that to me seemed obvious, but which experience tells me is far from that.

Grief is grief, whatever the loss. There’s no sliding scale of entitlement or deservedness to the person grieving. I know that grief for my dog affected me in different ways, maybe even more profoundly, than the grief I felt for some of the people closest to me who have died. And it doesn’t go away. If we’re lucky it shrinks and gets easier to bear, but not always, not for everyone and not for ever.

There’s no ‘one size fits all’ grief, so no ‘one size fits all’ response is going to cover every grief event. And yet organisations will have policies about the maximum period of ‘compassionate leave’ an employee can be granted. Leaders will make arbitrary judgements about employees’ grief based on the closeness of their reported relationship with the deceased. Assumptions will be made about a person’s ‘recovery’ from grief based on time elapsed. I know because I’ve been that person, that leader, and I’m ashamed of it.

There’s no simple solution to grief. No-one knows “exactly how you feel”. No-one knows how that grief is going to affect you in a month, a year, a decade’s time. No-one knows how you’re going to react to that poem, that smell, that song, that simple act of mowing the grass. There may never be a way of knowing, but that doesn’t mean that as a ‘leader’ you shouldn’t try.

In a previous article, ‘Lazy Leaders don’t Listen’, I describe how leaders should listen with ALL of their senses, how they should listen proactively if they’re ever going to stand a chance of knowing what makes their people tick. Nowhere is that suggestion more poignant than in trying to understand someone’s response to grief. Work hard to understand them. Don’t give them grief for grieving.

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