YOU DON'T KNOW THE WHOLE STORY

People have a lot of opinions about grief. When someone should start dating again. How long they should keep their wedding ring on. Whether they should sell the house. How soon is too soon to get rid of someone's belongings. Whether they should go back to work, take time off, talk about their loss, or keep certain things private.

And apparently, we're all supposed to have an opinion about those decisions.

Here's mine. We probably don't know nearly as much as we think we do.

I can tell you what it was like to lose my dad and sister within days of each other. I can tell you what I've struggled with, what I've learned, what still makes me angry, and what life has looked like in the four years since they died. But I can't tell you what it feels like to lose your husband after fifty years of marriage. Or your child. Or a parent you had a complicated relationship with. Or someone you loved but hadn't spoken to in years.

I can imagine certain parts of those experiences. I can listen to someone tell me about them. I might even recognize some of the feelings they're describing. But I haven't lived their life. And that matters.

We don't all have the same relationships

Two people can lose their mothers and have completely different experiences. One might have lost her best friend. Someone she talked to every day, shared everything with, and couldn't imagine living without. The other might have spent her entire life trying to have a relationship with a mother who wasn't particularly interested in having one.

Both women lost their mothers. But what they've lost, what they're grieving, and what comes next might look nothing alike. And neither experience is necessarily more legitimate than the other.

We tend to look at relationships through the labels we give them. Mother. Father. Sister. Brother. Husband. Wife. Friend. But those labels don't tell us what happened inside those relationships. They don't tell us whether there was love, resentment, distance, forgiveness, regret, or some incredibly complicated combination of all of it. They certainly don't tell us how someone is supposed to feel when that person dies.

And we don't know what happened before the loss, either.

Think about how often we see someone make a decision after losing a loved one and immediately have an opinion about it. Someone starts dating again. Someone sells the family home. Someone goes on vacation. Someone seems to be doing remarkably well. And somebody, somewhere, decides it's too soon.

Too soon according to whom?

Maybe the person who started dating again spent years caring for a spouse through a terrible illness. Maybe they had conversations about what life would look like afterward. Maybe they were encouraged to find happiness again. Maybe the person who sold the house couldn't afford to keep it. Maybe being there was painful. Maybe they simply didn't want the responsibility anymore.

Maybe the person who went on vacation needed a break from everything they'd been dealing with. Or maybe they just wanted to go on vacation. That's allowed, too.

We see one decision, one picture, one moment in someone's life, and sometimes we act like we know the entire story. We don't. And even if we did, I'm not sure that would give us the right to decide what they should do.

I've had my own opinions, too

I'm not going to sit here and pretend I've never looked at someone else's situation and thought, Well, that's an interesting choice. Of course I have. I'm human. I have opinions. Sometimes pretty strong ones.

And I'm not suggesting that every decision someone makes after a loss is automatically a good one. People are still people. We can make questionable decisions whether we're grieving or not. But I've become much more aware of the difference between having an opinion and believing I'm entitled to an explanation.

Because I know how much of my own experience other people haven't seen.

They know my dad and sister died. They might know a little about what happened. They might read something I've written and feel like they understand what my life has been like since. And maybe they understand parts of it. But there's an awful lot they don't know.

There are conversations they'll never hear about. Decisions they weren't part of. Relationships they didn't experience the way I did. And that's perfectly fine. They don't need to know everything. But it also means they probably shouldn't assume they do.

Grief isn't a personality test

Something else that bothers me is how quickly we use someone's response to loss to make judgments about their character.

If someone cries constantly, maybe they're not coping well. If they don't cry, maybe they're cold. If they talk about the person all the time, maybe they're dwelling on it. If they don't talk about them, maybe they're avoiding their feelings. If they start doing things they enjoy, maybe they've moved on too quickly. If they don't, maybe they're letting grief consume their life.

Good Lord.

What exactly are we expecting people to do?

There seems to be this imaginary version of grieving that we're all supposed to follow. Be sad, but not too sad. Remember the person, but don't talk about them too much. Eventually start enjoying life again, but make sure you wait an appropriate amount of time. And whatever you do, don't make anybody uncomfortable.

That's a pretty ridiculous set of expectations to put on someone who's already dealing with losing a person they love.

I don't know about you, but I have enough trouble figuring out what I want for dinner some nights. I certainly don't need to spend the rest of my life making sure I'm grieving in a way that meets everybody else's expectations.

Sometimes we could just let people live

Four years after losing my dad and sister, I still have plenty of feelings about what happened. Some of those feelings are easy to explain. Others aren't. I've made decisions that probably wouldn't make sense to someone else. I've changed my mind about things. I've handled some situations well and others not particularly well. And I'm sure I'll continue doing all of those things.

Because I'm still living my life.

When someone dies, the people who loved them still have an entire life to figure out. There are families to raise, relationships to navigate, jobs to do, decisions to make, and all the ordinary responsibilities that don't disappear just because something terrible happened.

And every person is going to figure out that life a little differently. Some people will make changes quickly. Others will take years. Some will do things we understand completely. Others will make decisions we wouldn't make ourselves.

Maybe that's where we could all stand to be a little more understanding. We don't have to agree with every decision. We don't have to pretend we understand every relationship. We don't even have to stop having opinions. But we could probably get a little better at recognizing that our opinions aren't always necessary.

Because there is an entire story behind every loss.

And most of the time, we only know a few pages of it.