Why People Grieve Differently After Losing Someone They Love

When someone we love dies, we naturally expect grief. What we don’t always expect is how differently people can experience that grief.

One person may cry for days. Another may hardly cry at all. Someone may want to talk about the person who died constantly, while someone else cannot bear to talk about the loss. One person may withdraw from everyone around them, while another seeks out family and friends.

None of these reactions necessarily tells us how deeply someone loved the person they lost.

Grief is personal. There is no single way to grieve, and there is no timetable that tells us when grief should begin to lessen.

Some people cry. Others don’t.

Crying is one of the most visible expressions of grief, but it is not a measure of how much someone is hurting.

Some people cry easily and often. Others may feel enormous sadness without shedding many tears. Some become emotionally numb, particularly immediately after a death. Others keep themselves busy because doing something feels easier than sitting with their emotions.

A person who appears calm may be experiencing profound grief that simply isn’t visible to other people.

The reverse is also true. Someone who cries frequently isn’t necessarily coping less successfully. Crying can simply be the way that person’s emotions are expressed.

Some people need to talk. Others need silence.

After a death, some people want to tell stories, look at photographs and talk about the person they have lost. Recalling memories can help them maintain a connection with someone who is no longer physically present.

Other people don’t want to talk much at all.

They may need time alone to think, or they may find that talking about the death makes the loss feel more painful. Neither response is automatically healthier than the other.

The important thing is that people have different ways of processing what has happened.

Some people go back to their normal routine quickly.

This can be particularly difficult for family members and friends to understand.

A grieving person may return to work, go shopping, work in the garden, meet friends or even laugh and enjoy themselves relatively soon after a death. Someone watching this might wonder, How can they be acting normally when someone they loved has just died?

But functioning does not mean that grief has disappeared.

People can experience intense sadness and still cook dinner. They can miss someone terribly and still enjoy a conversation with a friend. They can cry one evening and laugh the next morning.

In fact, psychologists emphasize that grief does not follow a simple progression in which a person moves through a series of stages and eventually leaves grief behind. People commonly move back and forth between painful emotions and ordinary moments of life.

Some people withdraw. Others seek company.

One grieving person may want family members nearby almost constantly.

Another may want to close the door, turn off the telephone and spend time alone.

Both responses can be understandable.

Social support can be very helpful following a loss, but that does not mean every grieving person wants the same amount of company. Some people need conversation and companionship. Others need quiet.

What matters is recognizing the person’s needs rather than assuming that everyone should grieve in the same way.

Grief can include emotions we don’t expect.

Sadness is the emotion most commonly associated with grief, but grief can include many other feelings.

A person may feel anger, anxiety, guilt, loneliness, confusion, exhaustion or even relief.

Relief can be particularly difficult for someone to admit.

When a loved one has endured a long illness, severe pain or years of declining health, the death may bring an end to suffering. A caregiver may feel relief that the struggle is over while simultaneously feeling devastated by the loss.

Those feelings can exist together.

Feeling relief does not automatically mean that someone loved the person less.

The circumstances of the death matter.

Grief is affected not only by who died but also by how the death occurred.

A sudden death can leave a person struggling with shock and disbelief. A death following a long illness may involve months or years of anticipatory grief before the actual death occurs.

The death of a spouse may also create an entirely different kind of adjustment from the death of a parent, sibling or close friend.

And the nature of the relationship matters.

A complicated relationship can produce complicated grief. Someone may mourn the person they lost while also mourning the relationship they wished they had.

There may be love, anger, regret, gratitude and unresolved questions all at the same time.

Two people can lose the same person and grieve differently.

This may be one of the hardest things for families to understand.

Imagine three adult children losing a parent.

One may be devastated and unable to talk about anything else. Another may immediately take charge of practical matters—arranging the funeral, dealing with paperwork and helping other family members. The third may return to work within a few days and appear relatively unaffected.

It would be a mistake to conclude that one loved the parent more than the others.

They may simply have different personalities, different relationships with their parent and different ways of dealing with painful experiences.

Grief is shaped by the individual as well as by the loss. The American Psychological Association notes that people’s grief reactions vary according to who they are, whom they lost, their relationship with that person, the circumstances of the death and how the loss affects their daily lives.

Grief doesn’t necessarily become steadily smaller.

We sometimes imagine grief as a wound that becomes progressively less painful every day.

Real life is rarely that predictable.

Someone may feel reasonably well for several days and then suddenly be overwhelmed by a memory. A birthday, anniversary, holiday, favorite song, familiar restaurant or even an ordinary household object can bring the loss back with surprising force.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the person has “gone backward.”

Grief can come in waves. Over time, the waves may become less frequent or less overwhelming, but they don’t necessarily disappear completely.

A person can learn to live with the loss without forgetting the person who died.

There is no prize for grieving “correctly.”

Perhaps the most important thing we can do for someone who is grieving is to stop judging the way they grieve.

Don’t assume that someone who isn’t crying isn’t suffering.

Don’t assume that someone who is functioning normally has “gotten over it.”

Don’t assume that someone who wants to be alone needs to be forced into company.

And don’t assume that someone who wants to talk about the person who died should be encouraged to stop talking about it and “move on.”

There is no competition in grief.

The goal isn’t to demonstrate that we have suffered enough. The goal is eventually to find a way to continue living while carrying the memory of someone who is no longer with us.

We don’t all grieve the same way—and that’s okay.

The death of someone we love changes us. But it does not change all of us in the same way.

Some people express their grief through tears. Some through silence. Some through memories. Some through work. Some through photographs, music, writing, prayer or simply keeping certain possessions close.

Some talk about their loved one every day. Others rarely speak about the death but carry the person with them privately.

None of these responses can tell us the size of someone’s love.

Perhaps that is the most important thing to remember when we encounter another person’s grief:

We cannot see everything that someone is carrying inside.

Grief is not a test of love, and it does not come with a set of instructions.

There is no single right way to mourn someone we love.

There is only the very personal process of learning how to live in a world that has changed because that person is no longer here.