We are all going to lose the people we love. While this inevitability is easy enough to understand on a logical level, it is something much different when one is forced to go through it. The pain, confusion, and loss we feel cannot be measured.
It is impossible to articulate what the surviving members of a family feel after the loss of someone they love, but we’re here to try and give just a hint of that experience in the hopes of eliciting compassion from the jurors in court, and to help give you a sense that you’re not alone, and that in some very small way we understand your grief.
Grief’s Winding Road
- There is no road map. Often times, people look to formulas or guidelines (like Kübler-Ross’s steps) to help them deal with their grief, but the fact remains that whatever you feel at any given moment is exactly what you should be feeling. There is nothing that will stop the pain, no formula or quick trick. There is no timeline for one’s grief, only the ebb and flow of emotions as they come and go, and they are all okay.
- You may keep looking for them. One author used the word ‘lost’ to emphasize how he continued to look for his loved one, as though they would turn up like a set of keys. When someone disappears from your life in an instant, someone who before was a constant presence, it is normal to have such a feeling.
- Grief is resistant to reason. No matter how old the loved one was, or how natural the death, reason cannot calm one’s grief. We have lost someone we love, and that is all that matters.
- Grief is unsteady. Grief, like a person in a maze, moves back and forth from progress to regression. Progress thought to be made one day is wiped out the next, and we regress to feelings we’ve already had and thought we had dealt with. Remember, there is no road map and all is okay.
- Grief only changes, but never goes away. As time and love help us to heal, the grief we feel changes and becomes something we can carry with us, and call upon in times of need. Grief never disappears, and it is something we will learn to live with and draw strength from.
- Loved ones will keep you whole, but the journey is yours alone. Surrounding yourself with the ones you love may ease the pain for moments, but it is your grief and your journey that you must undertake on your own.
The Parrish Law Firm strives for compassion and understanding in your time of grief. We hope this serves as a small, imperfect window into your suffering so that others too can feel compassion for your loss.
This piece was inspired by an article called “Nobody’s Son,” written by Mark Slouka and published in The New Yorker in January 2014.
A representative of the Parrish Law Firm, PLLC researched and wrote this article with Mr. Parrish’s consent. If you have any questions regarding the legal implications of what you have just read, please send us your question so we can have our attorney review it.
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