January 27 2020 0Comment
Cremation services that serve the area of Bellingham, WA

The Phases of Grief after Cremation

Cremation services in Bellingham, WA include access to grief resources within the community that can help you through the grieving process. However, sometimes the first place to start to understand – and make your way through – the grieving process is to recognize that grief isn’t one long and continuous road, but instead a serious of steps that may flow into each other seamlessly or may have wide gaps between them.

One phase of grief after you lose someone you love is the act of putting on your emotional armor to absorb the loss. This translates into shock, numbness, denial and protest, and even hysteria immediately following the death. This emotional armor protects us from the full force of the blow of the loss we have just suffered and gives us the ability we need to get through the funeral process in, more or less, one piece.

The next phase of grief consists of being easily distracted (unable to focus and concentrate), experiencing depression, and feeling emotionally detached from life and others. This is the heart on death. It can be impossible to stay on track with anything when your emotions are all over the place and you may find yourself constantly getting lost in memories of your loved one.

Even though some of this distraction may be comforting as you recall the good times with your loved one, it can also create depression because you realize those memories are a past you can’t go back to and there will be no new memories with your loved one going forward.

Emotional detachment from others falls into this phase because as you remember the past and realize that it’s over, your heart, in response, essentially says, “I’m never going to let myself get that close to anyone again because this hurts so much, and I don’t ever want to hurt like this again.”

You may not be consciously aware of this phase – or even these kinds of thoughts and analysis – but it and they happen during the grieving process.

Fear and anxiety follow in the third phase of grief as you accept your loved one’s death and you have the reality of facing life without them. Many things can drive fear and anxiety. For example, if your loved one was the primary provider for you and your family, losing their financial support can be scary as you wonder how you will manage and provide.

Similarly, suppose your loved one was the hub of the family, handling everyone’s hectic lives and schedules without blinking. In that case, you may be afraid that you will fail miserably and be worried that everyone in the family will be upset with you.

The next two phases – despair, anger, and rage and regret, shame, and guilt – often comingle with each other because each feeds on and produces the other. You may find that you are furious with your loved one for dying because you’re alone and because they left you with everything. Then, you may find shame and guilt because you’re angry at them for dying, when you know that they didn’t intend to leave you alone and leave you with everything.

The final phases mark the turning point toward healing in the grieving process: forgiveness (of yourself and your loved one), recalibration of life forward, resolution of the past, and favor moving forward.

If you’d like to learn more about cremation services, including grief resources within the area of Bellingham, WA, our empathetic and knowledgeable staff at Moles Farewell Tributes & Crematory – Bayview Chapel can help. You can come to our funeral home at 2465 Lakeway Dr., Bellingham, WA 98229 or you can contact us today at (360) 733-0510.