Grieving Someone Who is Still Alive

How to mourn the relational deaths we endure here

“He’s dead to me.”

Growing up in a fiercely passionate Italian family, that’s a phrase I heard more than a few times. It’s admittedly a bit harsh sounding but in a way it’s actually a simple and fairly eloquent expression of complicated relational grieving.

Most of us have experienced a physical loss due to the death of a loved one and we are processing the subtractions that come from our collective mortality, from the fact that our time here is finite. In any relationship between two people, one of the only guarantees about that relationship is that a goodbye will one day take place. We sign up for this in the user agreement of loving and being loved.

When death interrupts, since we are the half of the relationship that is still living, one hundred percent of the burden of healing falls upon our shoulders. We are the only ones who can find closure for us. And though there are no hard and fast rules to grieving, there are certain methods of processing that kind of loss; ways we can accept and embrace the reality of the finality of that interruption.

But what do we do when the person we grieve is still living?
When it isn’t death that has severed the connection but something else?
When it is one or both of us?
How do we grieve when the divide has been a choice made on one side or the other?

I surveyed thousands of my readers recently and a massive 90 percent have expressed feelings of grief related to politics alone with over 15 percent of them experiencing a complete relationship separation in the last few years. That is a massive amount of collective and largely unprocessed pain.

Political affiliations, religious beliefs, interpersonal conflicts, the natural challenges of relationship dynamics, and the injuries others have inflicted upon us can all drive wedges between us and those we love and have lived life in close proximity to—and that introduces a complexity to our grieving that is incredibly challenging. In fact, often it takes us a long time to even realize that we are grieving.

A woman named Rachel came up to me at a Texas tour stop and said, “I am Fox News orphan.” She continued, talking about the way politics has become a divide between her and her 74-year-old mother. She said, "I don't recognize her anymore. She just believes everything she watches on partisan media."

Rachel said. "It’s gotten to be nearly impossible to find common ground with her. She isn't the mother I grew up with and things just aren’t the same between us anymore. I feel like I’ve lost her and she’s still here.”

Nearly every day I hear from people like Rachel, who are mourning a death that is both unnatural and ongoing. It's easier to eulogize someone after they leave the planet. Often, when someone we love dies, we can find ourselves remembering the best of those we’ve lost, we can, (sometimes) eventually let go of the anger and animosity we held toward them, perhaps simply because we realize that we have no way to resolve it between us.

But when the person on the other end of the divide still exists, and (in the case of family obligations or in a divorce where children and grandchildren need to be considered or fellow church members or neighbors), we still have to remain connected in some way‑—there is a messiness and unfinishedness that we live with. It’s almost more difficult to figure out how to move forward from relational deaths because the person on the other end of our grieving may still be doing damage and because grieving a physical death is easier for other people to understand from the outside.

A friend once described the end of his relationship with his former partner as “having someone who is dead to me but still alive to the people around me.” He shared that this reality made it almost impossible to process his negative feelings about the other person, because many of the people who comprise their shared tribe as still connected. The tribal fractures that accompany relational death are complex and always shifting. We find ourselves in triangulation or having to navigate a disconnection with one person while still being connected to others who are still in relationship with them. This makes talking about that kind of grief extremely tricky.

With the relationships we’ve found in crisis due to politics or religion or the pandemic, we sometimes vacillate wildly between cutting people out or giving them another chance; between hoping for progress and writing them off completely. Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules other than make the best decision you can in this day and be willing course correct the next day. The human heart’s capacity to heal is almost unfathomable. Many of us have had relationships that we assumed were beyond salvaging, somehow be reconciled with time and circumstance, in ways we’d have sworn were impossible. And in some ways, it is that possibility that keeps us in a state of suspended pain. Even if we have lost all connection points, we know that they still exist and that keeps a part of our grieving unresolved.  

There are a few ideas I’d like you to keep in mind as you face the in-between of relational grieving and the challenges they bring:

1. Accept your “at this moment” perspective toward the other person or group, whether your family, your church, a group of friends. Be OK with your vacillation, your inconsistency, your conflicted feelings, and your lack of tolerance toward those you are estranged from. Don’t burden yourself with how you feel you’re supposed to be responding and simply be authentic about what you can and can’t abide right now, in this moment.

2. Be willing to change that perspective. You are not beholden to how you feel right now, and you will likely not always feel the way you feel. Seek wise counsel, continually reflect, take time to heal and get perspective, and be OK changing your mind if you find yourself believing that to be necessary or healthy for you.

3. Acknowledge your de-tribing. Any kind of relational break is destabilizing and it leaves you in a deficit or with a relational absence. It pulls apart some of the communal threads that are critical to all of us. (Important: Even if the break between you and someone else is ultimately healthy it might not seem so at the time.) Honestly grieve the loss of the tribe that you are experiencing.

4. Lean into re-tribing. Intentionally build connections with others, especially those who may share your values. This may be volunteering for a local nonprofit or participating in social affinity groups or cultivating new friendships—not as a replacement for the person or people you may have lost or become separated from, but because community is non-negotiable for this life and you need to cultivate and seek it out continually.

5. Honor your grief. You are the world’s leading expert on your experience of grief, so err on the side of yourself when you don’t know what the best response is. Do what you need to feel safe or at peace in this moment and don’t apologize for it.

These relational divides brought on by politics and religion and by the injuries we sustain are not trivial and they are not arbitrary. They are sometimes the collateral damage of us being our most authentic selves. They are often signs of moral divides, opposing worldviews, or the result of profound differences between us and people who we once felt at home with. While not having the finality of physical loss, these fractures are real and painful and ones that we need to name and confront and move forward with.

It’s part of the beautiful mess of this life.

How are you grieving a relational loss right now? Let me know in the comments.