After my son Brady died one of the first books I read was “The Other Side of Sadness,” by George A. Bonanno. The subtitle was “What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss,” and Bonanno is possibly the ideal author of a book with that objective.

As much as anybody, Bonanno is responsible for updating our understanding of grief with the help of modern investigative techniques. One of his studies, published in 2005 and titled “Loss, trauma, and human resilience: have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events?” has been cited by other scholars 4,507 times, according to Google Scholar. For a psychology study, this is rock star territory and shows that he has been highly influential in his field.

Bonanno throughout his career has studied people’s resilience to devastating experiences. It’s the same with “The Other Side of Sadness.” The first chapter is “The Worst Thing That Could Happen.” This is what my son’s mother said she was afraid that her husband was trying to tell her when he came to her hospital room (she’d had surgery the day before) to give her the bad news about Brady. The overall finding of Bonanno’s life work is that we deal with the worst we can imagine, for the most part, better than you might think.

On the first page, Bonanno notes that rankings of stressful events like the Social Readjustment Rating Scale put death of a loved on top of the list ahead of divorce, jail and personal injury. Actually, the scale has “death of a spouse” at the top, which annoys me because I feel, and many experts agree, that death of a child is typically harder than death of a spouse. This scale doesn’t even include death of a child on the list. But whatever.

Bonanno reporting finding many shortcomings in grief research when he entered the field about 1990. For the most part, there just wasn’t any good research. Theories and practices were based largely on Freud’s 1917 “Mourning and Melancholia” prescription for grief work, augmented with a handful of largely mediocre research efforts. That suggested to him this was an area ripe for real research, and he dug in. I’m glad he did.

Three Trajectories of Grief

Grief trajectoryWhen I saw the chart on page 7 in this book, a light bulb went on. It describes the three common trajectories of grief as found in his widely cited 2004 resilience study. This chart showed some people never get over grief, others gradually recover and some never feel bad to begin with. Seeing it opened my eyes.

Given the prevalence of the “you never get over it” and “grief has no schedule” proverbs in the world of grief, this evidence-based finding helped me to understand that many people actually do get over it. Also, while there may be no one-size-fits-all schedule, useful generalizations can be made. After seeing this, I resolved to reject “you never get over it” and get better, faster.

The Temporary Nature of Feelings

Grief fluctuationAnother influential page was 42. This was another chart (I seem to be susceptible to visual information displays) drawn from a 2006 study by other researchers. It illustrates  the wide daily fluctuations, generally reducing in intensity over time, of two widows’ grief feelings. This tells us something we already know — the intensity of our grieving feelings changes rapidly and powerfully and somewhat randomly — and yet somehow also don’t seem to know.

Think for a moment how often you’ve felt like a black mood will continue forever. Sometimes it seems you’ll never get over this grief, right? Why is it that we can’t realize then that these bad feelings will fade, and probably soon? This chart of grief fluctuations helps me remember that no matter how bad my agony is now, it will likely ease before long, and may not get this bad again soon, or possibly ever.

Bonanno makes many other valid points and he almost always supports them with citations from reputable research studies. This is not knowledge derived from prayer, or mystical insight, or traditional practices, or folk wisdom, or personal anecdote or common sense. It’s what highly skilled, objective professionals found when they applied the tools of rigorous investigation to the phenomenon of grief. This may not produce unquestionable truth or always be what we want to hear, but it’s the best way we have of figuring out what’s going on in our world and in our selves.

Among his well-grounded observations: Effective coping has many faces. Most people are not debilitated by grief but cope pretty well. The quality and nature of the relationship between deceased and survivor is probably the most important factor controlling grief’s intensity and duration, although other factors like the survivor’s mental and emotional health, circumstances of the loss and availability of support are also important.

Many of Bonanno’s observations on grief research suggest coping strategies. For instance, he says obsessive clinging to the deceased’s possessions is generally maladaptive — research-speak for “not smart.” But other ways of maintaining connection, such as talking to the deceased, are not likely to be disadvantageous. I could go on for a long time about evidence-based coping strategies suggested by this book. For now, suffice to say that it is full of good ideas for successfully navigating a grieving episode.

And Now … A Tour of Global Grief

The last third of the book is much different from the first part. Bonanno talks about his personal experience with communicating with his dead father. He takes us on a global tour of mourning and death-related practices from America to West Africa, Vietnam to Mexico, and Tibet to Taiwan. He describes burning paper joss offerings to his father’s spirit. If you are looking for ideas about mourning that differ from your own culture’s practices, there are lots of thoughts on that here.

Bonanno closes with a look at what is for me a critical issue: Forgetting. I am torn on this. On one hand, it seems likely right now that my last thought on this earth will be of my lost son, even if I live to be 100. I just don’t think forgetting Brady is in the cards. On the other hand, after only eight months he is already a less vivid presence in my memory. And the idea that I might someday lose touch with his memory to any significant degree fills me with profound sadness.

Bonanno helps me out here with a story about a woman who lost her daughter in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. This bereaved mother acknowledged the same fear I have of forgetting her daughter. But, eight years after her loss, she was sure she would always be able to summon her child’s memory. She felt reassured by that and so do I.

That’s a story, not a study. And I am generally suspicious of anybody who says with rock-solid confidence that they will always or never do anything. But it’s comforting nonetheless. And Bonanno says grieving people need comforting to recover. He supports that claim with a citation to a 2000 study, `”Meta-Analysis of Risk Factors For Posttraumatic Stress Disorder In Trauma,” that found social support was perhaps the most important post-trauma factor governing how well people did.

I trust you’ve found this look at evidence-based bereavement grief coping strategies helpful and perhaps even comforting. Grieve Well reports on evidence and research. It doesn’t prescribe or proscribe. I don’t intend to tell anybody what to do or what not to do. I do intend to suggest some ideas about what you might do if you are so inclined.

Thanks for reading, liking, commenting and following. I am sorry for the loss that brought you here and hope you find some peace today.