Interview with Christy Lowry

Hope Renewed: Picking up the Pieces After Loss
Christy Lowry
Publication Consultants (2005)
ISBN 1594330255
Reviewed by Linda Benninghoff for Reader Views (2/06)

Christy Lowry, from Anchorage, Alaska has written two books – both after the accidental death of her daughter Pam. Today we will be talking about her book “Hope Renewed.” Welcome to Reader Views Christy.

Irene: You have written a sequel to “PAM” which we had the pleasure to talk about several weeks ago. The book that you wrote, “Hope Renewed: Picking up the Pieces After Loss”, tells of the “unsaid” aspects of “PAM”. Give us a gist of the book.

Christy: Whereas PAM shares our family’s spiritual journey to wholeness and healing, Hope Renewed addresses the equally important, practical nuts-and-bolts issues and solutions grievers and their comforters face and need every step of the way. In the process, it addresses in detail issues PAM couldn’t easily include within its narrower scope.

Just a sampling of its broader coverage: Hope Renewed, recognizing the high divorce rate after losing a child, spends two entire chapters on post-loss marital issues, with another two chapters on grief (Etiquette 101A and 101B), geared to helping would-be comforters learn what to say and what not to say to grievers. Individual chapters offer a working definition of, and application plan for achieving forgiveness, reveal how to befriend initially painful memories, and describe how to value elders’ gate keeping roles while easing their unique loss-induced transitions. Yet another connects the dots between youngsters’ age-related dissimilar ways of grieving.

Specifically, each chapter opens with a little vignette setting the tone and topic of that chapter. It then goes right into the issues within that topic. For example, right after Pam’s passing, people surprised me by asking which loss I thought was the hardest to bear: losing a child, parent, friend, or? Pondering this (to me) unusual question led me to my own questions: What sets technological 21st century loss apart from prior eras? Or makes a child’s death traumatically overshadow other devastating losses: grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles? How do parents survive losing more than one child? Finally, what internal twists turn violent deaths—abduction, murder, suicide—into incomprehensible ordeals almost impossible to heal from? And so on. Each chapter’s concluding Question and Answer segment fills in any loose ends that would otherwise fall through the cracks.

Additionally, extra features in the back of Hope Renewed include: a chapter recap section, briefly stating each chapter’s main points; glossary of terms and biblical endnotes; grief, death and dying resource list; plus actual forms and price lists the already shocked griever encounters on his first visit to the funeral home.

In sum, sharing others’ and my experiences in Hope Renewed, plus its extensive resource material, equips the reader to ‘pick up the pieces’ of life’s other challenges and losses, thereby conveying a better understanding of others and their struggle with loss.

Linda Benninghoff, Reader Views’ reviewer, accurately sums it up: “Hope Renewed [is] an excellent companion—the sort of book readers [will] refer to again and again [as it] explains the seemingly inexplicable reactions to loss, and discusses the time when hope breaks through.”

Irene: What inspired you to write another book around the same topic?

Christy: Originally, I wanted to write one book that included everything from both PAM and Hope Renewed. Attempting that idea quickly showed me how unwieldy it was—the emphases were different, as was my approach to their contents (family biography versus resource information). So instead I wrote these two books in such a way that they can either stand alone or serve as companion volumes to each other.

In short, it took two books to say all that I had to say, maybe partly because I began a 1,000 page journal within days of Pammy’s passing. Time spent with fellow grievers showed me that many of them yearn for true hope-building stories at some point in their grief journey. Others further along the grief trail need and want practical down-to-earth mentoring and healing helps. I wanted to address both of these needs, thereby be available to people through my writing. Everything considered, stopping at one book felt incomplete.

Will I write more books on grief? At this point, I feel that these two have said what was within me, bursting to pop out. But I’ll use any spin-off opportunities they bring me to help others, ranging from seminars and other speaking engagements to being a grief facilitator to individuals seeking encouragement and comfort after reading my books.

Meanwhile, one of my other writing interests now includes pursuing my newfound love of writing poetry, currently being collected in a notebook titled Twigs Off the Family Tree, a four-generation collection of poems written by my grandmother, daughter, grand-daughter, and me. I may also submit written mini-snapshots of other peoples’ (and my) inspirational short stories to magazines, since others’ books are already ably covering the inspirational short story scene :--)

Irene: One of the worst things after a death is having to tell the family—parent, sibling, child. What is the best way to break the news?

Christy: Very slowly, and piecemeal, giving the recipient of bad news time to digest each part. For example, if I were informing someone of a death in his or her family, I’d first say something like this, “There was an accident, and your___(fill in the blank) was involved.” That approach puts the ball in the recipient’s court. Chances are, they’d typically respond to the jist of, “What happened?” Replying as the informant, “___was hurt.” (stop) Recipient: “How badly?” Informant: “Very badly.” (stop) Recipient: “Will___be okay?” Informant: “No,__will not be okay. (stop) Recipient, visibly upset beyond mere concern at this point, demands, “Why not?? What happened?!” Informant, gently completing the information ‘transfer,’ responds with the cause of death, “A car hit her as she crossed the street; and she didn’t make it. I’m so sorry!” At that point, if you know the person well enough, offering a hug might be appropriate; but I always ask first.

The main thing is not rushing ahead of the recipient’s ability to take in the information by offering too much too fast. Watch their body and verbal language to see where they are emotionally. Very quickly, they’ll go into that initial first and one-time shock; the situation in and of itself is so horrendously unbelievable that even as the recipient’s taking in the words on one level, his mind is spacing the words out on another level; while on still another level the emotionally protective mechanisms of denial, disbelief, and incredulousness, rush to his defense. The pauses between statements give the recipient a little time to take in enough of their content so they can, in some measure, take in what comes next.

Finally, be sure the griever isn’t left alone as initial efforts begin to find other family members who, unaware of what’s awaiting them at home, haven’t yet arrived. In my case, although my husband Paul was on his way home with out-of-town houseguests, no one could find and identify his car in order to pull him over and inform him. In a fleeting moment of crumbling lucidity, I had asked the police to find him, even remembered and gave the police officer at our house a description of Paul’s car and license plate number.

Again, go slowly. Observe the recipient for body and verbal clues on when and how much to continue; then be available with whatever comfort their personality type craves. Introverts (and those who don’t know you well) may turn down a proffered hug, instead flee to a different part of the house in order to be alone—while extroverts often reach out to everyone around them, unable to handle what for them would be a vacuum of too-painful emptiness without others’ emotional support.

One more thing to cover before leaving this question: I suggest the griever wait until he/she is composed enough to call long-distance family and friends. Or let someone else do it if he or she is composed enough to break the news gently, asking the recipient first if they’re sitting down to hear what they have to tell them. Then slowly and gently lead into the news as in the above example, “This is___calling. I’m ___mother, and I have some sad news. Are you sitting down so that I can tell you?”

If the news recipient is a child, I advise finding an older person in the house who can first take the call, then share the news with him or her and, by their presence, comfortingly cushion the shock that also comes with being the only one hearing the news.

Irene: Quite often, people go into shock after hearing the tragic news. Are there certain steps that one could take to help the griever deal with the shock?

Christy: From my experience, we first have to let the griever receive, and go through, their shock. Shock is God’s way of cushioning the bereft mentally, physically, and emotionally against an unbearably painful loss—until one’s shattered self can regroup.

But the griever doesn’t have to face the shock alone, nor should they. Not only is loneliness cold comfort, but accidents can happen—or the bereft becomes suicidal. Comforters can, in the coming days, unobtrusively and tactfully make sure the bereft remembers to eat, provide a companionable buffer against loneliness, help with laundry and other housework, letting the griever incrementally take over as he/she becomes ready.

I feel counseling at this early stage is unnecessary; grievers need to give themselves a reasonable time frame to digest what’s happened, then allow themselves to go through it.

Irene: In your book, you relate to the 5 stages of grief that Elizabeth Kubler Ross is known for. Please tell our audience what those stages are and what one goes through during each stage.

Christy: The five basic grief stages so ably described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross are: denial, anger, bargaining, resignation, and finally—acceptance. However, other grief authors expand upon these (and I agree), using names of their own to delineate their differences—and to expand upon this basic, yet very complex, process. Otherwise, very significant information gets lost in the shuffle; and grievers, desperately yearning for comfort never hear about, nor benefit from it.

For example, in Hope Renewed, I don’t just discuss denial; I amplify and expand upon it by comparing and contrasting it with its first cousins, shock and disbelief. Chronologically, immediate denial is the first stage that happens—especially when the loss is sudden and unexpected (Of course, a long-awaited death usually produces denial, mixed with shock and disbelief when it finally happens.).

The subheads of denial, shock and disbelief, reinforce denial, yet are not synonymous with it. Shock happens once, in direct response to an immediate and sudden tragedy; disbelief lingers over time as the griever walks the minefield of his/her new life stretching out ahead without their loved one. Denial, as Hope Renewed states, also happens repeatedly when the bereft, motivated by shock, initially denies the magnitude of what happened—or deliberately denies the event to avoid or bypass their pain.

Anger, the next phase, has many faces. We refuel it each time we marinate in blaming the circumstances and other people for what happened (including ourselves). Yet we need time for what I call an anger allowance, an opportunity to vent our frustration and pain. Taking time for this critical form of release frees us up to move on to, and through, the other grief phases without getting stuck in anger. Conversely, denying ourselves this important time leads to congealed anger, bitterness, which then eventually (or not so eventually) expresses itself either as angry acting out—or anger turned inward, depression.

Fear is a legitimate subset of anger, arising from our feeling nakedly exposed to life’s howling winds of the unexpected—life’s imponderables, which I lump together under the term ambiguity. Once the unexpected has torn asunder our assumed safety net, leaving us feeling vulnerably exposed and betrayed, we hesitate to trust life again, indeed fear doing so lest we set ourselves up for repeated hurt (see further ahead in the interview).

Some authors lump blame, regret, and guilt together. I find them significant enough to give each their due in separate chapters. I experienced blame as condemnation turned inward, realizing that more conscientious temperaments at first look for ways to self blame instead of compensating for the unchangeable by doing acts of kindness for those loved ones they have left. Closely aligned with blame is regret, that compulsive habit of looking to the past for more ways of achieving self-blame. How to defuse their sting? An ‘aha moment’ occurs when these issues begin losing their sting—and grievers recognize it.

I found guilt no less complex than these other stages, and identified at least four kinds as I went through them: inappropriate (scapegoating ourselves); survivor’s (blaming ourselves for outliving them); reliever’s (guilt for feeling relieved that the exhausting caregiving’s over); and finally, redemptive guilt. Here we admit wrongdoing, followed by redemptive acts of restitution. This last one is the only healthy one in the lot and helps us stop prolonging guilt beyond its usefulness—for extending it doesn’t show how much we care. Instead, it reveals how much we haven’t healed.

Exhausted by these foregoing grief characteristics, we reluctantly arrive at the next stage: bargaining. Here we plead for clemency, “If only I do ___, will you heal her? Heal her and I’ll do whatever you want.”

When bargaining doesn’t work, especially with an ongoing situation (i.e. long-term illness), we reach the end of ourselves and, admitting we’re not the ones in control, settle for acceptance. We don’t like it, but realize the end is inevitable and we must accept it. At this point, if we allow it and cut ourselves some slack, we may feel varying degrees of peace: the long struggle over our loved one— and just as importantly with ourselves—is over.

Seeing it on paper shows us how complex the grief process is. Each of the (at least) five stages has specific issues to face and resolve. This visual evidence, combined with my personal experience, convinces me that the grief process may have five main areas (like rooms in a house) to go through. But each room has its own leading characteristics important enough to deal with as relevant issues of their own.

Irene: Is there a defined period of time each stage takes?

Christy: Overall, the sum total of my grief took me five years to stop feeling as though my soul had gone through a shredder. My initial one-time shock lasted about a week, which is average. But muddying my waters of grief was my repeatedly re-experiencing various grief phases when I expected them to be over. Disbelief, fear and anger immediately come to mind.

And timelines? Neither conversations I’ve had with people nor reading about others’ experiences have exactly coincided with my own. Early on, I realized that Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s straightforwardly linear descriptions of the grief process, while helpfully replacing our grief ignorance by filling in our grief gaps, initially gives the impression (at least to me) that we grieve in a straight line, tidily finishing up one stage before going on to the next. Instead, it’s a crazy and messy patchwork process, filled with repetition, and stopping midstream in one phase while simultaneously darting or sinking into another. Reeling like drunken sailors, we unpredictably stagger and stumble into various grief terrains whose landmarks gradually appear only as we become ‘experienced grievers,’ people who recognize grief patterns because they’ve been there—far more than once. So attempting to identify or put specific timelines to each grief phase becomes very tricky. Underscoring that challenge is the fact that each person’s grief process (and its subsets) is individual as to timing and scope.

Bearing all this in mind, it was easier and more meaningful for me to identify the healing markers in my grief process, versus timelines of each stage. But I can appreciate wanting and needing some definitive timelines to go by. No one wants to stay stuck or feel trapped in any one (or more than one) phase. It becomes necessary to move on.

How can we identify our grief’s healing markers? Years later, this example still stands out to me. Events and issues that knocked me for a loop early on began, with repetition, to soften up, giving me clues that taught me to recognize when it’s time—indeed okay and necessary to move on. In my case, I sensed a certain staleness gradually creeping into certain repetitive situations and emotions, a kind of ‘been there done that’ awareness slipping in which helped defuse (by balancing out) my earliest grief’s intensity. Out of that emotional repetition emerged a growing trust in my grief process; I could let it wash over me at its own time and pace instead of fearing that those stages’ intensity alone could or would destroy me.

Do I today repeat any grief phases? Sometimes. Just yesterday, I paused at our family wall gallery, visually drinking in our Pam, remembering how energetically alive she had been. Faintly compared to earlier years, disbelief that death had cut short her vital aliveness tip toed in. I found myself whispering in the still family room air, “I can’t believe it!” and momentarily relived the unrelievable discrepancy between our time with, and without, her. Softly, my disbelief replayed itself within my psyche even as I clearly knew that I had moved on from that place. Yet I know and accept its future and inevitable reappearance around other bends in my life’s journey.

Do any of these grief phases simply wind down and head off into the sunset? Thankfully, fear has, for me. Right after Pam died, I felt nakedly exposed against the winds of fate, chance, you name it. Although I spiritually relied on my faith, for some years I was humanly and starkly aware that if our daughter could die in an accident, what would protect our sons (and us) from the same fate? Entertaining these fears caused me to compulsively hover over our boys, allowing them fewer freedoms than before.

To illustrate the dynamic, my ‘russian roulette’ mentality went into hyper mode exactly a year later, when the sirens blew near our house just before our older son John walked safely through the door on another first day of school. Before that moment, I stood frozen at the kitchen sink, deathly fearing a repeat of last year’s loss. Such turbulent emotional experiences put me into overprotective mode, which fortunately for all of us, gradually softened and erased themselves from my everyday awareness when nothing else tragic happened. First my fears took a nap; then they felt secure enough to phase on out, closing the door behind them. Restated, the soothing hand of time first calmed, then dimmed, my fears; and I could let our sons be themselves again.

Blame, regret, and guilt each took their turn patrolling at the door of my heart. I didn’t always turn them away, especially at first. Their timeframes were equally contingent on what happened in and outside of our lives—and how willingly I let them go. ‘Aha moments’ helped, as when I realized that understanding plus time, not time alone, heals wounds.

Summing it up, I’d have to say that what happened on all fronts of my grief (shock excepted) within that first five years was more influential than perceived timelines, themselves as variable as there are people and circumstances. In other words, content over time.

Irene: Thank you so much Christy. I so appreciate you talking to us today. Is there anything you would like to say to our readers?

Christy: Thank you for allowing me to share my two books with you. I invite readers to visit my website: http://www.love-4-books.com. And feel free to email me with questions, comments, and sharings, at: love4books@cableone.net, as well as through Reader Views’ weblog.

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