Hope: what an amazing word. What does it mean? Type hope into Google and you get 562 million hits. Merriam-Webster.com tells us that it is “to want something to happen or be true and think that it could happen or be true.”
Hope Has Gone
You are reading this because someone you love died—your child, your sibling, or your grandchild and the word hope has gone out of your life. In fact, hope may have become lost in another word that has taken over your life: hopelessness. Does this sound familiar? Your loved one is permanently gone from your life and you are hurting so much you wonder how you can go on. Your life has been changed forever. You see the world differently. Hopelessness has taken over your life. You are a different person living in a different world. Where is the hope?
Getting Hope
So, how do we get hope? ere are only two ways to get something: wait for it to happen or go out and get it yourself. In this article we are going to explore how we wait for hope. In the next issue we’ll look at ways to actively find hope.
Waiting
Why would we wait for something when everyone around us tells us to go and get it? We’ve all heard the well-meaning phrases that are uttered in an absurd attempt to instill hope into us: “It’s time to move on,” “He would want you to be happy,” “At least you have other things to be thankful for” and so on. Why don’t these phrases give us hope? Two reasons: first, in our initial shock and emotional pain we are not ready to look at life with hope when hopelessness is all we feel. Second, hope often comes from the inside. No one can hand it to us, force us, nor entice us to get it. When hope does begin to enter our life, it may begin with a flicker, with a quiet awareness that something has shi ed, that somehow the world has again changed, when in fact it is we that have begun to change. How does this happen? Here comes a word that you may not like. A word that I’ve heard again and again over the years when I have spoken with parents, grandparents and siblings who thought they would never laugh again, that they would always carry the denial, the bitterness, the anger, the guilt, the sadness deep within them. What is the word? Time.
It’s What You Do
Of course time by itself may not change things. It’s what you do with the time while you’re waiting for it to pass. And, what do you do with all these crazy thoughts and feelings? You think about them and feel them over and over and over and over again. When a terrible thing happens in our life, our brain must review it, ponder it, analyze it, assess it, feel it, and do it again and again until it doesn’t need to anymore. Until then, hope waits patiently, looking at its watch wondering, “Hmm, I wonder how long the intense emotions of grief are going to last until I get my turn?”
Someday
So, if waiting is one way for hope to arrive, you may be saying, “I’m not ‘waiting’ for anything, let alone hoping, because I will always feel this way.” What I’m going to say next is something I’ve said to hundreds and hundreds of bereaved people over the years:
Even though you may not believe it right now, at some point in the future you will not feel this bad. You won’t.
This may be hard for you to believe right now. Brain research has revealed that our brain is wired in such a way that, during times in our lives when we experience a highly negative (or even positive) event, we have a difficult time believing that we will ever feel much different. However, somewhere in the months and years following a death, was your hope that the nightmare wasn’t true replaced with the hope that your own life would end and you would join your loved one? If so, you are not alone in this feeling. In the depths of their grief many people feel this way. Eventually this hope may transform into hoping that somehow you would stop hurting this bad, and stop feeling so alone, so empty, so lost. However, even during these confusing times you may have had brief glimpses of hope. See if any look familiar:
In all your weeks and months of unrelenting grief have you
ever gotten to a point where you felt the pain let up just a little? at is, were there moments in your day where things “weren’t so bad?” In looking back on their early grief, many people report that these moments were the beginning of hope.
Have you found yourself looking forward to a graduation, a wedding, a vacation, a holiday, a sports event, a movie, a play, or a family get-together? In the past you may have found yourself dreading these upcoming events because your loved one would not be there. Now, intermixed with those feelings is the hope that you can still enjoy the moment.
As time has gone by, your feelings of concern that memories of your loved will fade into nothingness have been replaced with the realization that, despite the fact that time continues to move forward, your child, sibling or grandchild will always be a part of you and that you have found ways to carry their memory with you.
Do you remember the first time you laughed a er your loved one died? For many people, such a moment elicits pangs of shock and guilt. How could a mother or father ever laugh again? How could a brother or sister find themselves enjoying a moment of time when their sibling is dead?
How could a grandparent be enjoying one grandchild when another is missing? When you begin to realize that it is okay to laugh and love again, hope has begun to return.
If I Could Just See Hope
Hope is an amazing word, but sometimes it seems so far away. These four examples of hope tell us that, even though you don’t believe it or feel it at this moment, hope will come.
You may have heard the amazing Darcie Sims speak at a conference or perhaps read one of her books. Dear Darcie died on February 27, 2014. Fortunately her words of wisdom live on. One of Darcie’s books is entitled If I Could Just See Hope. In it she speaks of hope in her own eloquent way:
We are always in search of hope, in search of that magical moment when we remember rst that our loved one lived. Hope isn’t a place or a thing. Hope is not the absence of pain or fear or sadness. Hope is the possibility of renewed joy…it’s the memory of love given and received. Hope is here, within the magic and the memories of your heart.
Thank you, Darcie. I couldn’t have said it better.
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I am still trying to find Hope. My Eric passed on Sept. 27, 2016. Everyday I still think it is a nightmare, and I wait for him to come home. So I think I have no Hope because Eric isn’t here , and I cannot bring myself to believe he never will be again. So the on;y Hope I see is that I will wake up and Eric will be by my side again.