Few pains are deeper than the pain of losing a child. Yet, the pain can be made all the worse when the loss of a child leads to the loss of a marriage. While there appears to be no factual basis for the common statistic that 75–90% of marriages fail after the death of a child, it is obvious that a great loss can still put enormous strain on a relationship. It is likely that most of us have seen a marriage falter or even fail under the weight of such a heavy blow.
In the early days of my family’s grief, Aileen and I were gently cautioned that if we did not faithfully tend to our marriage, we might learn too late that grief had driven us far apart. We were told that we would almost certainly experience grief in different ways, and that much of the challenge to our relationship would arise from these differences.
While I’m grateful that our marriage survived intact and was even strengthened, we found that these cautions proved true: we grieved in different ways and, even more challengingly, according to different timelines. Since that time, I have heard many others express the same fact: Spouses often grieve differently, and these differences add to the already-grueling challenge of losing a child.
Spouses often grieve differently, and these differences add to the already-grueling challenge of losing a child.
Looking back, I think there were three big questions that lurked behind our grief: Why did this happen? What do I do with it? And when will things be normal again? Two of these questions exposed the differences between us and offered the opportunity to either grow closer or to pull apart.
Why Did This Happen?
After Nick’s sudden, unexpected, and unexplained death, we couldn’t help but wonder the big “why” questions. Why did this happen? Why did God let this happen? Why did God decree that this would happen at this time and in this way? Though we couldn’t help but ask such questions, we knew we would never be able to answer them with confidence or authority. We were convinced that speculation would only be unhelpful. The question of purpose is one that belongs to God, the one to whom all the secret things belong (Deuteronomy 29:29). God withheld the “why” and called us to simply trust him. We were content to do this, though we hope that in eternity he will make it plain so that we may praise him all the more for what we are certain was an act of great wisdom and love.
What Do I Do With It?
This is the question of how we would respond to our grief, how we would process it, and what form it would take. It was the question of what the early months or years would be like and how we would respond to our sorrow in what we hoped would be a distinctly Christian manner.
There is a universal challenge when it comes to grief, and it’s that each of us believes the way we grieve is the right way or the best way. This being the case, we are all prone to believe that another person’s grief is normal or healthy only to the degree that it is similar to our own. The one whose grief involves engaging a counselor may be tempted to think the one who feels no need for counseling is living in denial. The one whose grief involves scouring books may be concerned that the one who cannot bring herself to read may be thinking poorly or not thinking at all. The one who runs straight to Scripture may look down on the one who has trouble relating to God for a time.
Although Aileen and I are complementary, we are very different people, and not surprisingly, we grieved in different ways. While I wrote, she could not bear to express herself so thoroughly. While I chose to stare our loss straight in the face for a time, she could bear only fleeting glances. We thought in different ways, prayed in different ways, and leaned on others in different ways.
We came to see that the way we grieved was related to our personalities, and that we could not judge one another for grieving in a way that, to us, seemed strange or unhelpful. We had to grant one another the grace to grieve in different ways, neither forcing the other to conform to our manner, nor conforming ourselves to the other’s. Though there may be many wrong ways to grieve, there is no single correct way. Just as there may be a variety of love languages that are shaped by personality, there also seems to be a variety of grief languages.
When Will Things Be Normal Again?
The grief of losing a child can be so overwhelming that it can be difficult to believe life will ever go back to any semblance of normalcy. Yet eventually, there arises a growing sense of frustration that sorrow is still so present, that it is still impacting every moment and every decision, and that it continues to cloud every joy. The life of grief is not enjoyable, so we begin to ask: Though I know things won’t ever go back to normal, when will I find a new normal?
If the manner of grieving seems to depend in large part on personality, the timeline of grieving often seems to have a deeper dependence on gender. The same friend who cautioned about the challenge to our marriage told me that, in all likelihood, I, as a man and a father, would find my new normal in roughly six months. That is when I would begin to feel like I could press on in life again, like I had accepted my loss and could once again have hopes, dreams, and plans for the future. It is when my mind would begin to feel clear and when the darkest cloud of grief would have lifted. But then he said that for Aileen, as a woman and a mother, the timeline might be closer to two years. God has made men and women, fathers and mothers, different in this way, he told me.
And here’s the most important thing: the deepest relational struggles would probably come during that time in which I had come to a new kind of normal, but Aileen hadn’t. It would be that stretch—that period between roughly six months and two years—when we would both need to be especially patient, loving, and understanding, for she might think I had moved on too fast, and I might conclude she was wallowing in her grief.
Though I know things won’t ever go back to normal, when will I find a new normal?
Time proved him prescient. It was, indeed, after about six months that I felt like I had passed through the deepest depths and begun to see the light beyond. That’s not to say that I was no longer grieving or that I had become ambivalent about my loss—far from it! I still grieved deeply and wept often. But I had found my bearings, received my purpose, and was pressing on. If you were to ask Aileen, she would agree that her timeline was more like two years, and possibly slightly longer. It was only after a couple of years that she was feeling more like her old self or, perhaps better said, like her new self.
As we have spoken to other mothers and fathers in the aftermath of their own losses, we have found this to be a common, though not universal, pattern. We attribute it to the God-designed differences between men as fathers and women as mothers, not only in their emotional makeup but also in the roles they have in the lives of their children—if nothing else, that the mother was the one who carried that child in her body, nursed him at her breast, and was the first to nurture and comfort him in his needs. At the risk of speaking too broadly, perhaps many women simply have a greater capacity to feel and, therefore, a greater capacity to hurt.
Grieving Differently
We learned in our sorrow, as every couple must, that spouses will often grieve in very different ways. We learned that these differences are better accepted than rejected, and better appreciated than resented. We learned that God, in his wisdom, has made us different. And we learned that he provides the grace and wisdom to endure the greatest hardships.
To protect our marriages and to foster strength in even the darkest of valleys, we need to grant one another the right to grieve in different ways and according to longer or shorter timelines. We need to bear with one another in love, trusting that the God who led us into this valley will lead us both out, even if he does so along slightly different paths and according to slightly different schedules.
