To think (actually believe) that there is a hierachy of grief when someone dies?

[Fatmomma99]

Just that really, because of a text conversation I've had with a distant by blood, but close by friendship cousin tonight.

Sorry if this is long.
My cousin had a properly crap mother (as in, my cousin would go to bed being unsure about whether or not her mother would murder her and her brother while they slept. Let's say emotionally unstable!). And so my cousin was mostly brought up by her grandmother. Her grandmother was one of those amazing women we meet sometimes. She was "all things to all people", meaning she understood what people wanted and gave it to them. She never criticized, she made you feel special. She was flawed in lots of human ways, but she was amazing.

She died 11 months ago, and my cousin was devastated, as was everyone who ever knew her. It would have been her birthday next week, so I sent my cousin a text (because she's had a really tough year with grieving and other stuff) saying "it would have been her birthday, thinking of you" and then the text conversation went on, and as part of that conversation I said "I miss her, but not as much as you do" (i.e. the point of this post - I was recognizing my loss was not as great as my cousin's) and she (she is VERY sorted) texted back "not necessarily".

But I think, actually, however much I mourn my great aunt, it's nothing compared to what my cousin is missing.

When my dad died, in my head the hierarchy was: My mum, me/my sister, his sister, grandchildren, cousins/nieces and nephews, the rest of the world. (my dad owned his own business, so had a LOT of employees who'd worked for him longer than I've been alive, and was a BIG pub go-er, so lots of pub people who were really fond of him. I didn't find their grief or sadness to be more or bigger than mine, although I appreciated that they missed him).

Possibly, this stems from when my dad's dad died; my maternal uncle (i.e. my mum's brother in law) told me at the funeral that he was sadder than me because he'd known him longer. And I remember looking at him and thinking (but not saying) "fuck off... you may have known him longer, but you saw him rarely (at big family gatherings) and he was my grandpa".

To be really, really, really clear (and not expecting anyone to read all this), I'm not negating that people feel loss or sadness at a death, I just think people should be aware however sad they are, their sadness/loss doesn't "trump" a close family member, although most family members (including me) like to know how someone they loved touched another person's life.

This is a no-brainer, isn't it?

Have skim-read the thread.

Recently my dad claimed that it was worse for him when our mum died than it was for us, because we'd lost our mother (who we didn't live with, as we were adults) but he'd lost his wife. I asked him how he had felt about losing his own mother and if it hadn't been that bad really. He shut up then. It was mean of me but FFS.

I think there is a sort of hierarchy, yes. I was a bit at all the messages I got from people saying they were distraught at my mother's death. It felt rather hyperbolic, particularly as most of them hadn't seen her in years. I suppose they might have been trying to be nice and show how much they cared. It would have been less jarring from family though.

I like that 'spiral' link Hamish.

oh yes it was hard to deal with some over emotional acquaintance of my mother sobbing his eyes out while we had to deal with her loss and funeral. Idiot. He had only known her about 2 years.

There sort of is a hierarchy but all these stories of people being stupendously insensitive come from people expressing their view of the hierarchy to someone they perceive as lower down.

So I don't generally observe the hierarchy because who knows whether somebody recently deceased's wife or mother is suffering more? their brother or grown up child? grief is complicated and so are family relationships.

When my grandfather died in his 90s after a good life we were all really sad, but the person who was most upset at the funeral was his best friend at his old people's home. She'd only met him a couple of years earlier but getting to know him had made so much difference to her lonely life there that she was absolutely devastated. I felt really sympathetic to her - it was obvious to me that in many ways her loss was greater than mine.

I think I agree with you here Irene.

I like the spiral idea however I see an issue because it is all about perception, where you perceive yourself to be.

What if you are minimising your grief to help another you think needs it more?

You do yourself an injustice.

And if you see yourself higher up you may well hurt people who were closer by expecting help from them.

So if your perception is incorrect or skewed by grief itself then the spiral idea does not work.

It's difficult really because grief is so complex, and nobody experiences it in the same way.

I think most people can empathise and there is usually some kind of understanding about your relationship to the person.

That said, some people can be utterly self-absorbed about grief and can only see it in their own terms.

I lost two babies, one was stillborn, one died shortly after she was born. Obviously we were devastated and even now I can't really find the words to describe how we felt, how we still feel, and how our grief affected us. You could see it on our faces though, for weeks, perhaps months we looked like we were wearing masks where everything was shown on our faces. Someone described us as looking stricken.

Most people were very understanding. My parents grieved for their grandchildren and for us, for their feelings of helplessness because they couldn't fix things for us.

My MIL was awful. She had lost her mother a couple of years before, which I haven't experienced so I don't want to comment on that compared to us losing a child. I'm not saying that losing a parent is not a terrible thing. The reason I mention it is because MIL reacted as though we had stolen something from her, some sort of status as the most grieving person in the family or something.

People had been very sympathetic and supportive of MIL and her loss, and I don't think that changed. Those same people were also commiserating with her about our children, her grandchildren, and offering support to her.

But they were doing it in part by asking how we were, saying how sorry for us they felt, and she reacted as though we'd lost our children just to upstage her somehow.

She was awful, she said terrible things to us about our babies, asked awful questions, threw a photograph away, told us they didn't count as proper grandchildren, finally conceded that "they are family…I suppose" and was just vile for months and years. I cut off all contact with her in the end, meaning she hasn't seen our third child since he was about 20 months old.

She certainly seems to believe in some kind of hierarchy, and she felt that we'd climbed ahead of her in it.

I suppose most other people we thinking the same thing. Some of them grieved with us, but without even mentioning it I'm sure that they also accepted that we were grieving more because they were our children, not theirs. MIL couldn't accept that, because in her eyes it meant she had lost something.

She compared her loss to ours and decided that we'd 'won' some kind of weird grief competition.

So I think there are at least two ways to describe a hierarchy of grief. The first is your way, where you have acknowledged that your cousin was closer to her grandmother than you were, so the loss is worse for her and you have shown support accordingly.

And then there's MIL's way, which is to see it as some sort of competition which she has won or lost.

I wouldn't want to be the one to decide where in any hierarchy any losses might come, because it's too general to make a neat little list, and relationships are complicated and feelings are unique. I'm still sorry for MIL that she lost her mother. I just wish she didn't see the losses and the grief as a competition which we 'won' by losing children.

I do think most people have enough empathy and self-awareness to know where they themselves might come in a hierarchy without feeling the need to mention it in an "I feel worse than you" way. You telling your cousin that you feel her loss is greater is different, it's showing support not demanding attention. I am sorry for the loss you have all experienced

My husband is terminally ill. We have only been married 3 months although we have been in a relationship for 10 years and best friends for 21 years. Im sure when he passes, his sister and extended family will grieve too. I wont care if people think they are grieving more than me. I wont care where in the "hierachy" i come, or my children come, or where anybody comes...
He has lifelong friends whose grief will be huge and i just hope that we will all find comfort in each other.

Ludoole

you kind of think that losing someone is the worst bit....

but NO!!!! there is the huge shit and aftermath of dealing with everyone's different grief, as classically illustrated by Hygge

ah humans... you wouldn't design us would you

My dad died 4 years ago. My sister felt that her loss was greater than mine because she lived closer to him so saw him more often. At his funeral she even asked why I was crying, after all it's not like him dying affected my life at all. I've never wanted to slap someone so much in my life and have spoken to her since.

NumbBlase I agree. I like the spiral idea, but I guess it's not always clear to some where they feature in it, nor how it relates to others.

When my Dad died my oldest sister went into full-on grief mode, as did we all I suppose. But as the eldest she thought she had it worst as she had known him longest. She also lived furtherest away and had least to do with our parents. She felt that her having seen someone who looked like him when she was out shopping was worthy of full on wailing down the phone, but refused to consider that mum, who lived with him (they were a week short of their 60th wedding anniversary when he died) didn't really need that. And that I, who used to see them most days, (I'm the one who does the hands on caring) could be as upset as her, as I was younger and well, I'm not really sure where her logic went after that, only that it was a tad wearing. She peaked about a year later at the funeral of an old friend of our parents - rushing forth to one of the daughters wailing "I know exactly how you feel". The friend had suffered a long slow illness and had been nursed by her daughter for several years, I was so embarrassed by her and have no idea how the daughter refrained from knocking her out. Obviously my sister puts herself at the centre of that (and any other) spiral. Some people just totally lack empathy.

Mind you, dh's uncle also warrants special mention. After fil's funeral he approached dh and told him, in all seriousness not to 'forget his father'. Never forgotten that bit either mind.

Hedgehog you're not my sister are you??

Just to be clear, I never challenged 'levels of grief', just pointed out that when someone leaves a physical hole in your day to day life it is hard to deal with some of the ludicrous things she was throwing at us.

Oh gosh! Just read hedgehogs post - my sister did this twice once with mum once with dad. First time she actually said ( moments after mum died) ' you don't understand, she was my mum not yours' to the other 3 sisters and my dad and then when my dad died earlier this year she said 'he was my dad much more than he was yours' to us - our kind if rational argument was that as youngest sister she had actually had him less so he was ours not hers, not!! Bloody stupid and cue all kinds of stupidity around his will and house contents etc. She's gone NC with me sadly as a result. At least she can't ask for my sympathy any more for how badly she feels about her niece being very very ill and how much it's affected her - that is: my dd. I clearly aren't upset in the slightest.

I don't know how to respond to feebeecat's post which seems to be implying that I'm some sort of selfish drama llama for being hurt at being told my dad's death was insignificant to me.

YANBU. We had a strange one recently. DF died after a short period of terminal cancer. He and DM had been divorced for years and DM is remarried. I arranged the funeral, along with my siblings, as DM and DF didn't really have much to do with each other anymore.

BUT - it was DM who people tended to defer to time and again - even the bloody funeral director. I'm mid-30s, with my own small children, it's not like I'm a young teen trying to cope with everything alone. It's never been spoken about, but it really, really pissed me off. Yes, DM and DF had been in love forty years ago, but pretty much hated each other for the last 25, and so I'd have definitely said that me and my siblings were first in line in the grief stakes (so to speak).

No!!!! Hedgehog Not implying that about you at all.
Just my ridiculous sister - that really was only one of the many, many things she's done. She tried to imply same to me and I stupidly tried to talk to her about it and, well, that went well. She couldn't accept that anyone could feel worse than she did, so I have just left it there. I shouldn't have tried to apply any logic to it as, in her case (and believe me that was just the tip of the iceberg) there just isn't any. That's why I was quite taken with the notion of the spiral - we should've been on the same level, but she clearly didn't see it that way e
People deal with grief in different ways I guess, I'm sorry for what happened between you and your sister and please believe, I never meant to cause you any offence,

Regardless of any "hierarchy".

You basically told your cousin how she was feeling, that she misses her grandma more than you. You told her she should feel worse than you do. She might not be one of those people that likes to focus on grief, and you may actually have made her feel bad for not spending the day weeping and missing her grandma.

You can't know how she feels, and she can't know how you feel.

Don't tell her how to grieve, or how she should be feeling.

Sometimes grief can be displaced.

DF died (some years ago now). At the time I was very stoic. In many ways his actual passing was a relief. He had been very ill and as a family we had all help to nurse him through his final days. We were all exhausted after sitting up with him night after night.

Shortly after his death a character in a soap opera died and I was ridiculously and embarrassingly upset by this.

Afterwards I realised that I had transferred a lot of my grief onto this character. Grieving for a fictional character was easier if that makes sense? It was tidier, there was no complication of relief. No having to rake up memories from childhood.

Sorry, I meant to say that as a result of my own experience I am now more sympathetic when people seem excessively upset by a seemingly distant death.

I personally think when one person leaves this earth there is always one person left on earth who feels the loss more/worse than everyone else.

But that's just my experience.

Displaced grief makes a lot of sense to me. My experience with really big losses is that after the initial shock it's almost as if a fuse blows in my brain and I go numb for a week or so,then grief comes back at a manageable level. I think I actually found it easier to cry over the death of my cat - simply because it didn't matter so much and wasn't so enormous my brain doesn't need the same sort of defence mechanisms. For a cat, a good cry gets it out of your system - for a person close to you, start crying and you might never stop.

I know when my dad died (I was a teenager), I definately felt there was a hierarchy. My mum's feelings were most important, then my younger sisters.

I remember I wanted something in the house. My mum said I couldn't because it would remind her of dad and she would be upset.

My sister was allowed to weep and cry because she was only little. I had to put her feelings first too.

Well bollocks. What about me and my feelings? Why don't I have equal rights to grieve? What about my dads sister, his friends, workmates?

If a "hierarchy" means allowing one person to overrule another's feelings because theirs are more important then that's wrong.

Everyone feels a loss. Everyone should help each other and grieve together, not tell people they can or can't behave or feel a certain way because they say so, being higher in The hierarchy.

This thread is interesting to me as I'm currently struggling to make sense of my relationship with DM after df died a few months ago. She has been very clear that only one person's grief matters and that's hers. It means I'm not entitled to even hint at my sadness and has forced our relationship to become very one sided as I'm there to listen to and support her but am not allowed anything back.

Thing is, I do understand she's lost her life partner and her whole world's changed but her determination to force me to ignore my grief means I find being with her so hard.It makes me miss my Dad even more.