Living with a Grieving Heart

By Marianne Bette, M.D.

Grief knocks you to your knees and you’re left knowing your life will never be the same.

Losing someone you love is hard. But when the dust settles and the pain starts to fade, grief can surprise you in stark and subtle ways. A few bars of a tune, a faint hint of perfume, a brief glimpse of a stranger in a crowd can bring your loss crashing in.

But there are also lessons we can learn from grief. It’s not all pain. It can also bring appreciation: for the love you had, for the people who support you, for the life you still have ahead of you.

And as you pick yourself up, made subtly stronger by grief, you find more clarity of purpose, more appreciation for others, and more desire to live your life fully.

You become a grief warrior.

That’s what Dr. Marianne Bette calls herself. A grief warrior. She is no stranger to grief and the transformation it brings. Let her teach you how to embrace life again using her personal experiences with grief as well as those from others she has met during her forty years practicing family medicine.

You can live with a grieving heart.

Message from the author:
Grief has given me a reverence for life and love that I did not have before. I hope by sharing these stories, you’ll see that there’s no one right answer to how you should grieve. Living with a grieving heart does get easier. Those of us who have survived similar despair have discovered this by continuing to live. Don’t rush. Take your time. Grieving is a process that unfolds on its own timeline.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emerald Lake Books
• Release date: Sep 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781945847592

Marianne Bette, M.D.

Marianne Bette is a retired family physician from Southbury, Connecticut, the town where she was born and raised and still currently lives.After forty years in family medicine, she’s enjoying her retirement and getting to spend time with her second husband, Gene. The two of them have a truck camper in which they have traveled around the United States, including driving to Alaska and back. (One of their favorite travel destinations.) They share a trusty rescue dog named Buttons, who is their constant companion and she loves camping too.Marianne has three daughters she’s very proud of. Her oldest daughter Sarah lives in southern California with her family. While her other two daughters, Caitlin and Justine, both live in North Carolina.A consummate gardener and home chef, Marianne has also begun work on a third book. This one includes the inspiring stories of some of her former patients.Marianne loves to connect with her readers on Instagram (@bettemarianne) and invites you to follow her there.

Book preview

Part 1. Shock and Surprise

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The End Is the Beginning

THE LOGICAL MIND tells us we are all going to die. Yet when someone does, our comfortable, secure, safe world may feel like a grenade was just tossed into it, whether or not that loss was expected. We stagger into the part of life that defies logic. The death itself is one thing. Life after that parting is a whole other thing. Death is an ending, and it marks when your life completely changed.

After the initial shock of your loved one’s passing, you get busy with everything that then has to be done. (Even if you know that death is coming, it’s still a shock when it does.) You contact family, friends, your employer, the funeral home, and your place of worship if you have one. Writing an obituary is no easy task either. Maybe you even need to locate a will.

All these tasks seem to be spelled out. Do this, do that. Decisions are made. This immediately-after-death business follows a course we each have to go through. You may have a lot of help from friends and family or none at all, but at some point, this busy phase ends and a new one begins. This starts the difficult stage of stitching your life together after your loss.

There are grief groups to attend (or not). There are mornings to get up (or not), food to eat (or not), friends to talk to (or not). Sometimes, knowing what to do can be overwhelming.

We are left to figure it out by ourselves. It’s common to hide our pain and tears, put on a happy face, and do our grieving in solitude. We never see grief happening, even though it happens every day. We are all in it alone together.

Maureen is my best friend from high school. A few years after Thom’s death, her daughter died. There was more than an hour-long wait in line at the wake before I reached the casket. After some time, I could see Maureen on the other end of the receiving line. She was going through the motions of shaking each person’s hands as they cried and hugged her, then repeating the process with the next person. She was wrung out, almost transparent. Maureen’s other daughter and her first husband (the father to her daughters) were beside her, and next to him was her second husband. Sadness and somberness clung to each of them like a smoky haze.

When I reached her, she looked surprised and then relieved. "Oh my God. You know what it’s like! You get it."

As I held her in my arms, I whispered, Yes, my love. I do get it. I understand where you are. You are doing a beautiful job. Hang in there. We will catch up later.

The receiving line at a wake is no place to have a detailed discussion. But people want to be able to offer support, however briefly, and to share your pain. And while it may not seem like enough, don’t underestimate its significance.

At least the wake and funeral give people the chance to grieve together in the same space and time. For Maureen and me, understanding death’s painful impact cemented our friendship further. And the fact that people showed up for the services meant so much to each of us.

For work colleagues or more distant friends, you will have at least looked each other in the eye once and acknowledged the loss together. It helps not to have to tell the story from the beginning each time you see someone. You steel your emotional self, get through it, then go home and pass out.

The truth is, no one tells you that despite feeling raw grief over your loss, at the wake and service, you are the one consoling everyone else. The weight of their grief is added to your own. I am not really sure how that happens, but it does.

When Kerry died, his wake was held in the bar he co-owned. When I finally worked up the courage to walk inside that night and saw everyone we knew there with sadness in their eyes, I became overwhelmed, burst into tears, and hid out in the ladies’ room.

Not being able to face everyone at once, I refused to leave. I just could not do it. I was prepared to stay in there until everyone went home.

Vicky, a friend who worked as a nurse, suggested I see one person at a time. She kept guard at the bathroom door and, one by one, men and women came into the ladies’ room to pay their respects. It was slightly less overwhelming, but doable.

It didn’t even seem weird to me at the time! I got through it, but all I remember is being stuck in the ladies’ room and Vicky being my rock. Now it seems bizarrely comical.

But if you are mourning someone you love, the venue really doesn’t matter. You show up—even if it is in the ladies’ room.

Wondering Why

WHY DID YOUR LOVED ONE DIE? Why did this have to happen? Why now? Why not later? Why did she die the way she did? Why did it have to be so quick? Or why did he have to suffer so long? Contemplating their death raises questions that beg to be answered:

list.png What was his life all about?

list.png Why couldn’t we have more time?

list.png Why did she have to die?

list.png Why are we here?

list.png Why am I here?

There must be some reason things are the way they are. Death sets you on a quest to figure it all out.

We each find our own answers. Although I do not connect with organized religion, I do believe in a higher power. After forty-five years of working with and learning about the human body and all its beautiful, intricate workings, it is obvious to me that it is not simply the product of evolution. Add the mind and spirit to the body and you have a miraculous gift. (I feel the same awe for nature, the world body with all its animals, oceans and plants, and its equally, if not more, complex workings. And what about all the multifarious interactions between those worlds?)

If life is a gift, what am I supposed to do with mine? Is it a coincidence that I am here? When I look back on important events that shaped my life, I see patterns and connections. You might say these are coincidences, but I feel they are essential experiences. I would not be who I am or where I am without them. These are my personal answers, not only to how my life evolved, but to my own whys.

For example, I could have been on that plane with Kerry. In fact, we were up in the air minutes before, checking out the systems. When we were landing, my heart started racing and I felt short of breath. Kerry had to open the hatch so I could breathe fresh air. I almost felt pushed out of the plane.

Even now, I believe it was a sign that I was not supposed to be with Kerry when he crashed. I was supposed to live. I look back on that experience with awe and wonder.

Here is another example. I have four brothers, three older and one younger. The older ones often made my life challenging when we were young. A lot of times, they excluded me from their games and activities. Here is how it went: they would come up with a fun event for the day and ask my mom, Can we go fishing (or swimming or skating) today?

My mom’s answer was usually, Yes, but take Marianne with you.

They resented being the babysitters, so they took it out on me.

Not too long ago, our neighbor, a farmer, told me how the boys would head down to the fishing hole near his house. There would be your brothers, all in a line with their fishing poles slung over their shoulders. Then there would be you, a hundred yards behind. They never let you walk with them. He shook his head like he was thinking that’s boys for you. That is just how it was. I still can’t forget the time I was tied to the trunk of a big maple tree for an entire football game so they didn’t have to watch