How long does grief last?

Nobody can tell you how long your grief will last, and the people who try, with a number of months or a set of stages, are describing an average that fits no one. What can be described is a shape, because most people who have been through it recognise the same points along the way once they are named. This is that shape, from the first weeks to the years after, with the caution that yours will differ from it somewhere.

The first weeks

Numbness, shock and the strange energy of the paperwork and the funeral, when there is so much to do that the loss is held at arm’s length. Many people say they did not really cry until after the funeral. Sleep and appetite go. This part is covered in coping with grief in the first weeks, and it usually lasts until the practical work runs out and the house goes quiet.

The first months

Often the hardest, and the point at which people are least supported, because everyone else has gone back to their lives. The numbness lifts and what is under it arrives: the sadness, the anger, the guilt, the missing. Days are unpredictable. A good day is followed by a bad one for no reason, and the waves come without warning, set off by a song, a smell, a form with their name on it. People describe exhaustion, forgetfulness, and a sense of being slightly outside their own life. All of that is grief doing what grief does.

The six-month question

Around six months, people start to ask whether they should be better by now. The answer is that six months is not a deadline and was never meant as one. What tends to have changed by then is that the waves are less frequent, if not less deep, and that there are stretches of ordinary life between them. What tends not to have changed is the ache, and a bad week at six months is not a relapse. If, on the other hand, six months in you are still not able to function, not eating, not working, not leaving the house, that is not a matter of time and it is worth speaking to your GP or one of the bereavement charities.

The first year, and the anniversaries

The first year is hard because every date in it is a first: the first birthday, the first Christmas, the first holiday, the first anniversary of the death itself. People often find the days before an anniversary worse than the day, and the day itself quieter than they feared. Planning something for each, however small, tends to help more than pretending the date is ordinary; grief at Christmas and on the first anniversaries is about that.

After the first year

The first anniversary is not a finish line either, and people who expect to feel better the day after it are often disappointed; Cruse says plainly that some people find the second year harder than the first, because everyone else has stopped asking. What most people describe is that somewhere in the second year the grief changes shape: it becomes something they carry rather than something that carries them, and the person is present in their life as a memory and an absence rather than as a wound. The waves still come, years later, at a wedding or a birth or for no reason, and that is not a sign of anything except that you loved them.

What makes it longer or harder

Some griefs are harder than others, and it is worth knowing if yours is one. A sudden or violent death; the death of a child; a death where there was no goodbye, abroad or in a hospital during a pandemic; a death that is being investigated; a relationship that was difficult; a grief that no one around you recognises. Any of these can make the shape above stretch, and any of them is a good reason to reach for support earlier rather than later.

Do the stages apply?

Not as a timetable. The five stages were written about dying, not bereavement, and the idea that you pass through them in order and come out the other side is the single most unhelpful thing most people have been told about grief; the stages of grief, and why yours will not follow the list explains where they came from.

When to ask for help

Not because of the calendar, but because of what you can do. If you cannot get up, eat, work or see people for weeks at a stretch, at any point, that is the sign. Your GP can refer you for bereavement counselling and talking therapy, both free, and Cruse and Sue Ryder are there for anyone, not only people in crisis. When to get bereavement counselling, and where to find it in the UK lists every route. And how grief affects your body is worth reading if the physical side is what worries you most.