Chapter 21: Grief Circles

September 19, 2025

I didn’t like the way today started.  I woke up in the middle of a dream…in which mom was dead. 

I’m not sure exactly sure where I was (it definitely wasn’t my house), but I can still see the image in my mind very clearly.  There is a very tall photo stand in front of a window – during a bright and sunny day.  I realize that a plant is blocking the view of a photo at the top of the photo stand.  So I grab a ladder and start rearranging things – because I don’t want mom’s face to be blocked by anything since she’s gone and I want to make sure everyone can see her face.  Good God. Mom is even dead in my dreams – I thought dreams were supposed to be a person’s happy place.  Shouldn’t mom be alive and doing things with me and the kids and letting me be happy in my sleep?

I hate going to bed now.  It’s the absolute worst part of the day.  When apparently I can’t even get a break from reality in my bloody dreams! 

At least the day wasn’t a total write-off.  A friend of mine came over for a visit on her way home from work.  She also experienced the sudden and totally unexpected loss of her dad a few years ago.  I still remember the text message I woke up to that morning.  It was awful.  But my conversation with her today was one of the best discussions I’ve had with anyone since the day mom died.  I am so grateful to her for putting her own “lived experience” to the benefit of helping me. 

At first, we talked a lot about how unfair life is and how miserable it is carrying on knowing that you’ll never have that chance to say a proper goodbye.

But the real breakthrough was when she was kind enough to share with me the concept of “Grief Circles.”  She said that when she was attending a grief support group, this was one of the most helpful discussions they had.

Essentially – Grief Circles is a construct that illustrates grief as a series of concentric circles.  The innermost circle contains the deceased person’s spouse, kids, parents, and/or siblings.  The next circle is the deceased person’s grandkids, uncles, aunts, sons/daughters-in-law, and other extended family.  From there you continue to draw more circles to represent each “next degree” of connection or closeness until you finally get to acquaintances, friends with whom the deceased person had long lost touch, and other – well, “onlookers” to the loss.

For people who are grieving any loss, the idea is that they should honestly assess the ring in which they exist.  (Unfortunately, there’s something about tragedy that makes everyone want to be at the centre of it all.)  Then – once people recognize where they exist for the purpose of grieving this particular loss, they should be conscious of not asking for support from a person who is closer to the centre than they are.  So basically, you can push your needs on to people who are in Grief Circles farther out than yours, but never in towards the centre – otherwise, you are essentially asking for support from a person who is very likely in more pain than you, and that’s not going to be helpful to anyone.

Boy, did that start to make a whole lot of things make sense – and gave me a framework and some vocabulary to understand the rather frustrating words and actions I’ve experienced over the past few weeks.  (And then anxiety about how I may have been unhelpful to people experiencing grief more deeply than me in the past!)  The problem is, I’m only learning this now – how much more helpful could I have been to so many people for decades before this if I had understood before?

Honestly, this is the kind of thing we need to teach people on a broader scale!  This is the kind of thing that helps relationships and makes the world a more supportive place.

Before I get on my soapbox though, I remember that we live in a western culture that denies aging so hard it’s done a good job of making most of us forget that death is a mandatory part of life. We really don’t know how to deal with death. Or grieving. Or people being sad. We are sure in a hurry to try and “fix” people and get them back to “normal” (whatever that means) as quickly as possible, aren’t we? Sigh. Well, I have the knowledge of Grief Circles now. Hopefully I can figure out how to pay that forward to others.

Questions or comments? Contact me!