“There is always someone worse off than you,” says everyone who is going through something horrible. I say it, too. I have ‘suffered’ (is that the right word? It doesn’t feel like the right word) a shit load of bereavements in 2025 including five friends, some very close ones including my best friend, and various family members, as well as Reg the Cat. And people have been kind to me, sympathising with the losses I have been through. Incredibly, to me, some of those offering sympathy have included people who are far closer to the deceased than I was. I found, and still find, that to be incredible and not a little embarrassing because, I am pleased to say, I still have a sense of perspective. There really is someone worse off than you, but maybe that is not the way to deal with grief?
Someone who loses, say, their father, a very special person who was loved and admired by a wide variety of people, the family patriarch and leader, that’s a bigger loss to close family, isn’t it, than it is to ‘just’ a friend, like me? The loss has to be deeper than it is for me, but still the loss is there. When something happens and your immediate reaction is to want to call or text that old pal, until you remember they aren’t there anymore, well, that’s not as bad as no longer having the man who buys and decorates the Christmas tree, who carves the turkey, who spreads love and joy all year round, not just during the festive season. It just isn’t.
I kind of know the answer to the subject of – and I can’t think of a better term – relative grief. You lose your mum, I lose a friend; your loss is worse, but mine isn’t better: it’s less worse. And how I might feel loss, how I might grief could be on a different level for all sorts of reasons.
We all feel grief in our own way, or at least I think we do. We certainly say we do. Look at social media, for example. There are always people who are publicly mourning loved ones, who share anniversaries and birthdays involving the deceased, year in, year out, seemingly dealing with loss many years after death, unable to move on. “I miss and think about you every day,” they say. “Wish you were here.” I do not think they loved the deceased person any more or any less than I loved the deceased people in my life. For better or for worse, I do not spend a great deal of my life harking back to the past, particularly when I think about those family members and friends who died of horrible illnesses, often in misery and pain. It could be a fault within me that remembers the end-of-life times as much as the happier times.
I certainly don’t share death anniversaries on social media, although there was definitely a time when I did. I suspect it is cathartic for those left behind and if it is, who am I to question it? I do not quite understand why someone would publicly announce that today was an anniversary of a close friend or relative’s death on social media and not then do so in work or in the pub, settings that are actually real. But the point is that if it works, in this case long term public grieving, it might feel odd to some of us, but if helps the person concerned, then all well and good.
Some deaths turn out to be a blessing, a deliverance. One old friend I visited this year suffered terribly in his final year of life. We were not the closest of friends but we grew closer as his terminal illness progressed and I witnessed the suffering and decline first hand. It could be that as we were not the closest, the pain was less for me than it was for others and the grief I felt, twice removed, was tempered by relief. Someone, I imagine, was feeling more grief than I was, likely a closer friend or family member. There are no rules for grief, are there? I miss him, of course I do, but I am glad he is no longer suffering terribly. So, maybe that’s how it helps me to deal with grief?
There is always someone worse off than me. I meet them every week at our food bank, I walk past them lying in shop doorways in the freezing rain, I am related to or am friends with people who this year have lost far more than I have. I am grateful to those who care about my wellbeing and I am lucky that they are there for me. My loss, my grief, is still my loss and grief, regardless of whether it’s happened directly to my life or it’s twice removed. And if I don’t, at least on the face of it, appear to demonstrate the same levels of grief as someone else does, it doesn’t mean I don’t care. I really do care, it’s just that I carry mine in a different way, that’s all. And in my world, perspective matters, even if it doesn’t change anything.
