Dear Grief Guide, I Still Think My Loved One Is Coming Back

Hello and welcome to Dear Grief Guide,

A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost,

Stuck,

Heartbroken,

Or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.

My name is Shelby Forsythia.

I'm a grief coach and author,

And I'm here to help you create a life you love from the life loss forced you to live.

Let's get to today's letter.

Dear Grief Guide,

I need to know if you or others share this particular grief experience.

I feel like my mind is playing tricks on me,

Perpetuating the illusion that my father will come back soon.

Despite the undeniable reality of his absence,

I was with him when he died,

I saw his body at the funeral,

I watched his coffin get lowered into the grave.

I keep anticipating his return,

As if he's just away on a trip or running an errand.

Some days I feel like I've regressed to my childhood self.

When I was a little girl,

I would eagerly stand by the front door waiting for my dad to come home from work.

There's a small corner of my mind that replays the relief and joy that will flood over me when he walks through the door.

I don't live there permanently,

But the daydream surfaces in my mind more than I'd like to admit.

I grapple with this phenomenon,

Questioning if there's a scientific or psychological explanation for such an intricate dance between reality and perception.

It's not denial per se,

But perhaps a form of wishful thinking that creates a comforting illusion in the face of the loss of my father.

His death is my first big loss,

And I'm being completely honest when I say I have never felt this way before.

Have you encountered stories like mine where the mind crafts scenarios that defy the harsh truth of a person's death?

Some part of me still thinks my dad is coming back,

And this internal tug-of-war between knowing what's real and hoping for something magical leaves me in a state of emotional ambiguity.

I'm not exactly suffering,

But I'm not exactly comfortable either.

It's all so weird,

And it's all so confusing.

Thanks for any thoughts you have.

Waiting by a closed door.

Hi there,

Waiting.

Thank you so much for this specific letter,

Because what you're touching on is something that I think all of us in the grief community don't talk about enough,

And that is the physical,

Emotional,

Spiritual,

And even mental sense of longing that we have after a person dies.

The emotion of longing.

Sometimes people will call it yearning as well,

But literally this mental,

Psychological,

Even physical,

Spiritual,

Emotional ache of they should be coming back,

I want them to come back,

They are coming back.

Different iterations of that same sentence of there is this belief that I saw them yesterday and they're gone today,

Why wouldn't they come back?

They've always come back.

This showed up in my own life,

After my mother's death,

For quite a long time and sometimes still,

More than 10 years later now,

I still get the sense that maybe,

Maybe she's just off somewhere on a cruise with no cell reception.

Maybe she's just on a retreat with a friend without cell service,

And that she's coming back really soon.

The sense that I had,

Especially in those first years after she died,

That she was just about ready to walk through the door,

Like she did when she was alive.

That was very,

Very strong.

I will tell you,

I'm not a brain expert person by any stretch of the imagination.

There are people who are.

You might be interested if you have the ability to read,

Because I know that grief impacts the ability to focus and comprehend language.

A wonderful book by Mary Frances O'Connor called The Grieving Brain,

And also the work of Megan Riordan Jarvis,

Who is a therapist who specializes in the brain's interactions with life after loss.

Both of them are phenomenal resources and have a lot available for free and in the form of their books online.

And I think you might find some solace or some validation in that,

No,

You're not crazy.

This is a very common grief experience.

And I can also hear in the way that you write that this is distressing.

It's not,

You're not suffering.

You're not in acute pain,

But there's the sense that he's coming back and it's kind of weird and it's weighing on your mind and it takes up some corner of your brain that maybe you'd like to use for other things,

Or maybe that you'd like to turn the volume down on a little bit.

And I will say,

I think a lot of people in the aftermath of loss say,

Yes,

We're resilient.

Yes,

We can almost immediately cope in a world where they're not present.

We're able to feed ourselves.

We're able to shower.

We're able to stand upright and not collapse at a funeral or memorial,

Which was personally a wonder to me.

Yes,

We are resilient creatures,

But we are also creatures of habit and routine,

Especially if you lived with your father,

If you saw him often,

If you called him often,

If you hugged him often.

It was the sense that he was always close by,

Just a nearby,

Ever-present presence in your life,

Like a tree that has grown and matured with age in your yard.

And suddenly it's like some force from outside of you that you don't understand and you didn't request and you didn't ask for has come and cut down this tree and it's jarring and distressing and upsetting to swing open that door every morning and be greeted not with a full blooming tree going through its life cycle and just being a tree,

But a stump,

A memory of what used to be and to only be able to hold on to your father through photos,

Through possessions that you have of his,

If you have any at all.

If you have things like voicemails or video saved,

Like that is all that's left.

It's distressing for the brain and it takes time for the brain to comprehend and adapt to this new reality.

So yes,

We are capable of doing things after loss and yes,

We have the ability to become resilient.

A lot of grief professionals talk about post-traumatic growth,

But also like it takes a hot second to figure out how to live in a world where that thing,

That person that was so present,

That was so essential to your life,

That was a cornerstone of how you operated in the world is gone.

So the thing I want to offer you waiting by a closed door,

And I love this symbolism that you used,

Is to keep waiting by that door.

I won't say keep waiting there to make yourself suffer or to torture yourself,

But in grief,

You may be surprised by what and who else comes in the door.

It is heartbreaking to know and to acknowledge that it will not ever be your father ever again.

And there may be people who walk through that door who carry stories of him.

Maybe relatives who look like him.

Maybe people who went to school with him or were neighbors with him or worked with him.

People who carry pieces of him inside of their bodies.

There may be other things that come through this door.

In Life After Loss Academy we talk about learning to see our loved ones through signs and symbols.

There may be animals that remind you of your father,

A gust of wind that carries a smell that reminds you of him,

A song that plays.

I wonder what would happen if instead of yearning and longing and waiting with that sort of energy by your metaphorical door,

If you waited instead with a curiosity of what or who else that carries something of my father with them will come through this doorway.

What else can I be open to in this moment?

And it doesn't change the fact that he's gone and it doesn't erase the yearning,

But what it does is adds to,

Alongside the yearning,

A sense of curiosity,

An acknowledgement that maybe there are different ways to grow here.

Maybe some sort of creature,

Going back to the metaphorical tree that was cut down,

Will build a nest here.

Maybe there is new life here.

Maybe somebody wants to help you plant flowers around the base of this tree so that something else grows up against it.

Maybe somebody wants to erect a bench.

Maybe you put a trampoline over top of it,

You never look at the tree stump again.

There are so many possibilities.

When you can open yourself and open your door to other ways that your father might come for a visit.

And also,

And I'll say this,

Before wrapping up my response to you for today,

Is I encourage you to ask to see your father in whatever way he would like to appear to you.

Part of feeling connected to our loved ones in life after loss is something called continuing bonds theory,

Which is a cornerstone of a lot of grief work these days.

And something I do when I work with clients both one-on-one and in Life After Loss Academy is tell them to ask for these signs,

For these symbols,

For these letters from people who knew your person,

For these random photos that people post on social media.

Ask to see them more often.

And one way you can ask to see them more often is through dreams.

And I think a lot of times in grief,

We wait and we suffer and we expect these signs and symbols to come to us as if it is their responsibility to arrive.

But sometimes too,

We forget that we have the power to ask for them to appear.

And so before you go to sleep to write out or even say out loud,

This is a dream I'd like to have about my father tonight.

This is what I would like to see walk through the door.

That is a beautiful way to summon more of him into your life.

More memories of him,

More connections to him,

More ways of seeing him into your life.

And that's something that you have the power to do.

I have so much faith in you and know that you are not alone in waiting by that door.

There are so many of us who are grieving,

Who are waiting by doors of our own and softly opening them and getting curious about what else comes over that threshold.

Good luck.