Walking With the Bereaved:
How We Can Help by Just Being There

By Linda Ross Swanson

A few years after my friend Melly’s death, I went back to walking the Wildwood Trail with a new friend, Joanne.

When Joanne lost her beloved cat, Louise, her heart cracked open in sadness. Losing a pet can cause tremendous pain. Animal lovers invest nearly as much time, money, and emotion in them as they do in their children. Pets are part of our families or are our families. Only recently have bereavement counselors recognized pet loss along with other major grieving events.

Grief wafts over us at odd times. Sometimes, when walking and talking with Joanne, I’d turn around only to find her in tears. I held her and tried to comfort her. I encouraged her to tell me stories about Louise and their life together.
On one of our walks, Joanne decided to create a pet memorial ceremony. She didn’t want to forget the joy this animal had given her. She later created an altar in her home. She placed the cat’s ashes in an urn and decorated the space with photographs and fur clippings. By creating a memorial, Joanne psychologically relocated her beloved pet. This altar became a place she returned to from time to time, to revisit her cat’s life.

It’s the same when losing any loved one; we find ways to keep our memories of them alive. Books have been written, organizations founded, races and runs started: All are exercises in relocating the deceased, a necessary part of grief work. Creating a little sacred place, however, works just as well as anything else. Walking the Wildwood Trail or most of the trails in Forest Park, you may come across a bench that has been dedicated to someone. It’s another way to honor our beloved’s memory.

The phases people go through rarely happen at once or in order. There tends to be a flurry of emotions, back and forth and up and down, not in the Five-Step, chronological order previously believed by many. This flurry of emotions can make people think they’re losing their minds, when in fact they are experiencing a healthy, real, and human process. As we walk with the bereaved, we can encourage them to talk and assure them that one day they will get to the other side of their grief and find a new way to live.

If you’d like to help someone who is hurting this year, remember that the greatest gifts anyone can offer someone in pain are listening deeply and offering them the gift of our presence. In this way, the bereaved don’t feel so alone.
A major obstacle for helpers is making friends with silence. After achieving that monumental task, reach out a caring hand, and see who takes hold. Over time you can begin to introduce new activities, new people, and new interests in living to the bereaved.

In my previous article, “Walking Our Grief” (Walk About®, November/December 2006), I shared how walking is the process by which I heal. Anyone who is grieving will go through an experience similar to mine.

Knowing the process that grief follows can be educational and enlightening. According to J. William Worden, author of Grief Counseling and Therapy, “through shock and numbness, we begin to accept the reality of the loss; yearning and searching move us through pain and grief; disorganization and despair assist us in adjusting to a changed environment. And finally, emotional reorganization leads to psychologically relocating the deceased so we can move on.”

Those of us who walk can help those who grieve by asking them to walk with us. Encouraging the bereaved to walk gives them a chance to settle down and relax and gives us a chance for validating their feelings and providing new perspectives. Since the bereaved carry their grief wherever they go, be bold, take the leap, and ask them to walk with you.

Sharing an afternoon walking with a griever will ground them and reap benefits far beyond anyone’s expectations. If you are experiencing a loss and are in touch with a number of people who are also grieving, you might consider starting a grief walking group. This will provide an opportunity for sharing stories and for helping one another heal. Though we can’t compare or understand another person’s grief, we can share ours and discuss what we’ve found helpful. We can do so much more together than we can do alone.

Linda Ross Swanson, MA, CT, is a nationally certified grief and loss counselor and educator in Portland, OR. For more information, she can be reached at 503-267-7550 or visit www.wisdomwill.com.