The Truth You Have to Face (2)
“Grieving is a natural process that people will experience at one point. There is no right or wrong way to grieve”
The most breaking part of grieving is seeing all the family members devastatingly affected by the loss. It violently sweeps everything out of the house: the joy can’t find its space to enter and the separation evokes pangs of remorse amongst those left behind. The timeless departure creates gap by the absence and leaves a void in our heart forever, especially for my uncle.
This is not just the loss of someone he loved, but also the loss of someone who’s likely to be the most familiar with his needs, and with whom he shared a trusting relationship.
When someone with an intellectual disability loses a parent through death, unexplained and unexpected changes like this can lead to a loss of individuality, whilst the negotiation of upcoming unfamiliar environments can have the effect of making their disability appear worse.
That’s why my uncle kept asking me about what has happened to his deceased father. He was wondering with no explanation as to where he has gone or why he’s missing from his life.
“Is he asleep?”
“Is he no longer sick, Mia?” he asked confusingly
He looked to his dad, while greeting him as he was just asleep peacefully.
The funeral song started to play as the coffin arrived at funeral house where it was met by our family. And that was the time he couldn’t hold his emotion and began to shed tears and cry bitterly.
“Is he really died? Why did he leave us…. and where did he go?”
“He’s already happy now, Uncle”, I tried to hug and reassured him,
“Happy? But where is he now?”
“He must be in heaven”
“Where’s heaven?”
I was lost for words and I started crying.
People with learning disabilities may be excluded from conversations about death and grief, and may have limited experience of the event and processes that follow a death, but he experiences grief in a similar way to us. Anger, denial, sadness, guilt, and all the jumbled emotions are still there. In that forced smile which turned into tears, I saw all the resilience of him that is fighting for solace and reposeful contemplation.
