By GREG THOMPSON

For The Beachcomber

We have experienced deep loss and tragedy in the past year on Vashon, with those we loved so much. Some we lost too soon, so young and without warning and in ways we can scarcely comprehend; others we knew were dying, and we surrounded them with compassion and care, and yet their loss left a place in our hearts and in our memory. We seek to fill these places with meaning, as we find our own path and journey on and into life.

Grief at the death of someone we love can invoke a variety of responses, and those responses can depend on how prepared we are for the death, our past experiences with loss and our personal patterns when facing profound emotions.

In cases when we know that death is imminent — where a loved one is diagnosed with a disease and a poor prognosis — we can prepare in many ways. We can tune in with our loved one, stretch our capacity for care and rebuild broken-down bridges in the relationship. Often, just spending time in conversation with the dying one can connect us to meaning that lives beyond the short span of our lives.

After a death, feelings come and go and range from apathy and emptiness to inspiration for going on — and back and forth along that spectrum. It is important to explore these feelings as far and as deep as they go and understand that these responses are all valid.

The way we respond to grief can be particularly complex when the loved one is taken from us abruptly. Often we are left feeling lost ourselves and ask many questions, starting with “why.” We feel acutely that life is unfair and terribly unpredictable — a magnificent person taken too soon.

There can be guilt as well. Could I have done anything to prevent this? Did I do something that contributed to this? Why wasn’t I taken instead?

And when a person close to us is taken by his or her own hand, guilt is a strong, strong reaction, often joined by its close cousin, shame: Am I a bad person because I could not stop this? Could I have talked her out of her confusion, her sense of hopelessness? Could I have been kinder to him? These and many more questions can trouble us.

You want to find meaning where they could not. You might fail and feel emptiness for a while, then glimpses of something that is meaning. These are all normal feelings.

In the clinical world, there are frameworks for working with grief. Perhaps the best known is the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross approach, focusing on what she called the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The stages are not in order and any stage can come at any time. Some people, though not everyone, might experience their grief in something like these stages. Denial might look like shutting down, running away, not facing the death, not showing emotion or maybe accepting it too soon.

It is important to remember, though, that the death of a loved one is a kind of trauma and responses can include showing intense emotions, anger, crying, going numb, showing no emotion or moving into depression. Others may be outwardly very resilient and adaptive to the changed reality.

When experiencing your own grief or being present for others who are grieving, it is important to remember one response is not healthier or better than any other. Our journey is not to get over it but to make peace and find meaning in the death of our loved one, to find a place where we can reflect on the preciousness and essence of life and to acknowledge that while we grieve their loss, we can remember how they gave joy while they were here.

— Greg Thompson is a licensed mental health counselor at Vashon Youth & Family Services.

What might help

Everyone’s experience of grief is individual. If you are on a path with loss or helping a grieving one, useful practices might include  seeking places to share grief and validate the complex range of emotions such as:

• Close contact with other bereaved family and friends

• Sharing stories of the dying one

• Finding opportunities for peace and time alone if desired

• Joining with a community to participate in rituals that might help you find meaning in the loss and joy in remembrance of the life that was lived.

Counseling is also an option. To find out about individual or group counseling at Vashon Youth & Family Services, call 463-5511. To learn about other therapists, see The Beachcomber’s Health & Wellness guide, which will be published next week.

To read Father Tryphon’s words from Ryan Krug’s memorial service, visit the newspaper’s website, www.vashonbeachcomber.com.