Sometimes, the truth is that the dead are not always our “beloved.” Relationships can be incredibly complex, and when a person in a complicated relationship dies, the grief that follows is…complicated. The often-heard phrase “Grief = Love” may resonate with some, but it is far from  universal. This week on the Best Life Best Death podcast, Tawnya Musser and I explore grief in the context of challenging relationships. How do we navigate loss when our feelings about the deceased are conflicted, unresolved, or even all-around negative? What does it mean to grieve someone we didn’t love – or who didn’t love us back? Whether you’re navigating your own feelings of complicated loss or are supporting someone else, this conversation will broaden your understanding of grief beyond a traditional narrative.

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Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I am Diane Hullet and you’re listening to the Best Life Best Death podcast. And today I am here for more conversation with Tanya Musser of Dear Departures, and our website is dear departures.com. Last week we talked about home funerals. This week we’ve got a whole new topic. Hi Tanya. 

Tawnya Musser: Hey Diane.

Diane Hullet: Welcome back. So. You and I kind of, you know, kicked around some ideas about what to talk about on the podcast and one of the things that came up is this idea of complicated relationships, right? And that sometimes we get a little what I’m going to call like monochromatic about it. Right. death and grief and when talking about relationships and we, you know, we act like it’s all peachy.

And if someone died, of course, Oh, the beloved. And if you’re grieving, it must be from love that you’re feeling. And I just, for many people, relationships are complicated, whether with the living or with the dead. And so you and I kind of were like, Ooh, let’s talk about that juicy topic, complicated relationships and death.

So. Gosh, where would you begin with that, Tanya? Go for it. I 

Tawnya Musser: mean, this is my truth. This is my truth as someone who had an abusive father, you know, and he died in 2013, and someone, as someone who had a strained relationship with one of my brothers who died, like, I have been a, moving in this space of grief is love is not an inclusive narrative for for several years now and even I had to like Unlearn that narrative because I was thinking back to my celebrant training and I actually went back and read some of my old Writing and some of like even some of the blog posts on my website Where I was sort of like parenting this narrative of grief as love, grief as love, even though like five ish years prior to that I had experienced this death of a person who had caused a lot of harm in my life and had very conflicting feelings and emotions around that whole situation and a lack of support and like all the other things that came along with that death.

So yeah, it’s something that I’m always game to talk about and actually I just, just today. Dropped a, a thing on my socials about a new group I’m going to be starting around this topic specifically because when you’re a person who had that type of relationship and you’re in a grief group and you’re hearing others talk about how close they were with their parent or their partner or their sibling or their grandparent or their friend or their co parent, you know, ex partner, like whatever it is, It can be, it can be tough to be in that space and to share that space with those folks.

So I think having spaces specifically for this dynamic is important. 

Diane Hullet: I think it’s really important, you know, you use the word conflated, which I think is such a great word. I practically had to look it up, but the grief gets conflated with love and it’s just not always the case. Yeah, 

Tawnya Musser: whoo, so the conflation of grief equals love in the end of life space as I mentioned it is it’s it’s just not an Inclusive narrative and it is everywhere literally everywhere all over I can’t be on social media for more than a day or two without Scrolling past some quote or post about how grief is love with no purpose Or how the more you love, the more you grieve, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

I just finished reading a book called The Grieving Brain for the second time. And I’m considering hosting a book club on it because it has, you know, some really great stuff in it. But, It really bothers me that the author makes such a strong connection between attachment and love because they actually aren’t the same thing.

And trauma bonds are real. So the simplest, most inclusive definition of grief is just that it is a normal response to loss. That’s it. Grief is a normal response. To loss and you can grieve things that you didn’t love. And I know some folks might be thinking like, well, how, why, what, but you know, you can be, you can be attached to an abusive person because of how the brain bonds to them.

for survival. You can grieve a job that you had for 20 years and hate it because now you’re worried about, you know, your finances and the stability and maybe some of the co workers that were there. I mean, there’s so many layers to it. I have a blog piece. It’s called The Formal Grievance of Grief Equals Love and, you know, that dives into this grief is love stuff and it has inputs from some gracious humans who were willing to share their experience with me because, you know, I knew I wasn’t the only one out here trying to sort of reconcile this, this narrative and not being able to.

And so, yeah, it was, it was great to have others who shared some very specific examples for me about how this played out for them. 

Diane Hullet: Do any of those come to mind now, like in terms of something you could share with us about this complexity? 

Tawnya Musser: Yeah, so so one of the things so for one of the things for me was when my dad died people Didn’t show up like they assumed that because we hadn’t been speaking for years That I didn’t need support that I wasn’t upset or that it wasn’t as big of a deal like if it had been You know, if I was daddy’s little girl, and I was close with my father, like, my friends and my circle, I feel like, really would have shown up in different ways.

But it was just sort of this, like, And I was like, y’all, like, I am grieving. Like there’s a lot going on here for a lot of reasons. Right. And there were people who sort of echoed that. One of the things I think about too was, you know, some of the folks who shared and actually had a similar experience to this as well, where.

You know, other people in their life would come up and talk about how great they were. So like, let’s say your person, like their co workers are coming up and they’re like, Oh my God, they were amazing. Like, they were so funny and kind and whatever. And then at home, that was not what you got. Like, how much of a slap in the face is that when you’re hearing this, like, you know, great version of someone that others got, when that’s not what you got?

My dad was he had been going to church. And so after he died some of the the folks in his church were telling my sister and and I and our family things like oh He was such a great man And it was like you knew him for two hours on sundays when he was on his best behavior because he had to be like And of course, I wasn’t gonna disparage him to them like they didn’t need that That wasn’t you know, the the time or space to be doing but in my mind I was just like you have no freaking idea You haven’t you you have no idea And so that can be You know, really unfortunate too.

And then there’s this dynamic too, where like, yeah, you might be numb or you might not actually be responding in the types of ways that people may think. And so, you know, you like, if your partner dies and someone thinks that you’re callous because you don’t seem to be grieving when you like might be relieved that they’re gone because you really didn’t like them and, you know, they may have been, you know, a harmful person.

And one of the examples in the blog pieces about someone who’s, I believe it was somebody whose partner died. And she had told her mother, who, her mother was very close with her husband, so, you know, it was like, her son in law could do no wrong, and he was amazing, and she was like, mom, he was like, abusive to me, and the mom was like, how dare you lie about him when he’s not here to defend himself, and all this kind of stuff, and it wasn’t until the lady found a box of notes, like, he would love bomb her after these events, and then would like, write her letters, like, I’m really sorry about last night, And like, she took that, like, shoebox full of these, like, letters to her mom and was like, You didn’t believe me.

Like, you know, and so, I mean, there’s so much there, but yeah. Whether it’s, you know, regrets, whether it’s not being able to, Like you, one of the griefs for me was like knowing, even though I already knew because it was the second time I had chosen to cut ties with my father, like I knew there was never any chance.

There was no more chance at any sort of apology or repair, or there was, there was no room for any of that anymore, you know? And so it was like the finality of like, well, that’s it, you know, like I’m never going to get an apology. 

Diane Hullet: I’m struck too by sort of the difference between like, if there’s a disease process or the frailty of old age, there might even be in the estranged person’s life, a sense of like, well, I know they’re going like, even that allows us to process it a little more slowly.

But if there’s a sudden death. Then that has this whole other impact of there will be no apology, there’ll be no repair, there’ll be no way to come together and have any kind of resolution of this in my life. So the resolution is no resolution, which, you know, maybe is always true, but it’s, but it’s painful.

And so I think about that sudden death piece, what would you say about those qualities? 

Tawnya Musser: Yeah, so there’s dynamics in both situations whether it is like an expected death or or an unexpected death So my dad died in a back alley in downtown Denver like alone and like that is it’s so distressing to me He had almost nothing to his name.

It was very surreal because not only was he gone, but he had just been kicked out of the hotel he was living in, he was unhoused, he didn’t, all of his stuff had been thrown into a dumpster because of bed bugs, all he had, his wallet had been stolen on the street, so like, all he had was a cell phone, a walker, and the clothes on his back.

Like, that was really all we had of his. And so, and then he donated his body to science, and we chose to go the route where you don’t get any, like, cremates back or anything. So there was like not, there wasn’t all the like stuff to do and we didn’t wanna have a funeral because like, frankly we didn’t, we didn’t need to, we didn’t wanna honor him.

Right. Like in our mind back then, this was before my days of death and grief work. Like you think of a funeral as the thing where you’re putting someone on a pedestal and you’re doing it in church and you know, most of us in the family aren’t religious. And so we were just like, what do we do with any of this?

It was just really, really weird and uncomfortable. I’ll back up to the whole, like, expected versus unexpected death. One of the things that can happen, and I don’t know how I would feel about it, one of the things that can happen when someone is dying is they may try to, like, apologize or make amends and frankly their children or their family or their people may not want to hear it because they’re like oh you want to unburden yourself now that you’re on your death bed so that you feel better about this like no you had all this time and all that and like don’t want to talk to you don’t want to hear it and so that can be you know upsetting for everyone involved as well but yeah the sudden death piece you know it If someone was open to having a conversation, you know, if someone wanted to go there, you might get that in, in a disease progression type of death, but yeah, there’s no, there’s no chance of that after the fact, and I’ve tried to go back and do, you know, some work around this for, you know, 10, 11 years, and I keep thinking like, man, am I still gonna hate my dad on my deathbed?

Like, I might take this to my grave, and I’m okay with that. This whole narrative around like, Forgiveness and stuff like I’m not there. And I think that is also really a disservice to a lot of people. Like, yeah, I know it’s only hurting me and you know, whatever, whatever. And I I’ve done work to try to figure out what pieces I can let go of and as loaded as like letting go of something can be.

So I do ceremonies for people. I actually specialize in in working with folks who had these types of relationships and I do ceremonies and offer support and create containers and rituals for folks who had these complicated relationships. And I have a grief journal that’s going to be out in the world here soon.

That has not only writing prompts, because like, again, the grief journals that are out there, like they, a lot of them just kind of assume that you have this good relationship. And so my prompts are like very specific to the fact that the relationship was complicated and there are ritual ideas of You know, the sort of letting go type of thing, but I do, I do think that they have, you know, some, they can be meaningful and they can have some power behind them to see what little bits you can, you know, work through in a very ritual type of way.

Because sometimes the whole talk side of talk therapy or, you know, just talking it out or support group space, like sometimes that’s just not enough. So yeah, the specific prompts and the, the little ritual ideas around letting go, so to speak. 

Diane Hullet: I think that’s so huge. I think sometimes that’s, that’s almost more important than the talking, as you said, because it’s, it’s really speaking to our unconscious.

And I think that rituals sometimes are speaking across time and space, and they’re just operating on different levels that allow us to kind of process the information differently. And I want to go back to the sudden death. piece, because, you know, when I think about it and, and I think you would echo this and can amplify this, maybe part of the challenges, sometimes sudden deaths have come from part of what was making the relationship difficult, right?

So whether it’s a suicide or an accident or an overdose, those qualities that led. to that probably made the relationship hard. 

Tawnya Musser: Yes. Yes. So when we think suicide, when we think overdose, we think substance use, we think mental health challenges. You know, I’ve heard so many stories about somebody who had someone come knock on their door or they get a phone call and they’re like, I’ve been waiting for this phone call.

I’ve been waiting for the call that my child overdosed. I’ve been waiting for my husband to kill himself. Like, like they knew it was coming or they, they knew that it could be coming because they had dealt with it over and over and over again. And, or, you know, if they, if the person struggled with alcoholism and they die in a drunk driving accident or something to that effect.

There’s so much wrapped up in that, where, you know, they couldn’t break free from this addiction, and, and they caused harm, and, you know, everything that, that can go along with the thought processes, and, and all the feelings that are wrapped up in that. The things that contributed to you having a complicated relationship, or not being on talking terms, or whatever it was, that also contributed to the death.

And was that something that you had already been anticipating, or is it something that You know, I mean this is hard to say for a lot of folks, but sometimes, like, they’re, like, even with suicides, like, there’s relief, because it’s like, oh, man, we’ve been through this so many times, and now they’re actually, they’re actually gone, and, you know, it’s just that, like, you, they’re in the hospital, or they’re threatening, or, you know, they’re struggling, and you know, for some people it is like, well, at least now they’re at peace, like, you know, or hopefully they’re at peace, but you know.

Yeah, it just, it’s really, really tough stuff. And, and, you know, you can have folks that you do love and care about that you don’t have complicated relationships with die suddenly. But when the, a sudden death with someone who you had a complicated relationship with was, you know, possibly tied into the reason that you had a complicated relationship, it’s just layers and layers and layers.

Diane Hullet: It’s layers and layers. I think that’s really what I’m hearing in this, right? If it’s a, if it’s a more clear relationship with open communication, and there’s time in the length of the death, that’s just a really different experience than a complicated relationship that’s For many people been complicated for years and then potentially a sudden death like that just those are just different animals and they’re both grief.

They’re both lost. They’re both death and the layers of what the bereaved is experiencing are just so God, just the word that’s coming to mind is like enriched, but that makes it sound positive. It’s just heavy. It’s like X. Extra heavy. So one thing to think about, I think, for listeners is, is to be aware that people in your life are probably holding some of this complicated grief.

And so the idea that people, you know, move through grief quickly or that they move through grief because it was love is, it’s just not that simple. And so how do we hold the tenderness of people’s complicated grief with complicated relationships? Yeah, you know, 

Tawnya Musser: one other thing I wanted to add was that as a celebrant, so when I’m sitting down to do these interviews with, you know, someone’s family or circle and I’m, and I’m getting all this information about their life and who they were and what they loved and their legacy and yada, yada.

One of the. One of the questions that I ask, and probably my favorite question, is when I ask them how were they human? How were they imperfect? Because none of us are perfect. And, you know, what annoyed you about them? I’ll ask something like that. And sometimes I’ll be with a group of people who just spent an hour and a half gushing about how great somebody was.

And maybe all they can come up with was, You know, they sucked at driving, like they were a terrible driver. But sometimes I get that very real response of, Mom was really, really mean sometimes. And You know, it’s interesting to see that shift in a conversation when they’ve been, you know, because there’s this idea that like, you don’t speak ill of the dead, this like, these old, you know, narratives of don’t speak ill of the dead, we put them on a pedestal you know, and And sometimes I’ll hesitate, like, well, how much do I share with Tanya?

And it’s not even necessarily that this stuff’s gonna end up in, in the ceremony. It’s not like I’m gonna be standing up there, you know, just like, saying it all. But, it gives me a well rounded idea of who this person really was, because people aren’t perfect, and it really humanizes them for me. And If I do find out that there was some of this harm or trauma embedded in the relationships and dynamics, like, I’m going to find a way with the blessing of the family to tactfully work that into the ceremony because it is a disservice.

To sweep all that type of stuff under the rug and pretend like that stuff didn’t happen and for people to be leaving a funeral going Whose funeral was I even at? That was so disingenuous. It was not authentic, you know We don’t have to demonize or belabor someone’s, you know Challenges or the hurts that they cause in order to really speak those truths and when I think back to the way that my father’s funeral went down Because we actually did have one, because his church was like, they were like, you, you can’t not have a funeral, and of course we weren’t telling them why we didn’t want to, and, and then none of them showed up, so they were like, you have to have a funeral, like, that, like, why would you not, and then we all went to the church, and no one from the church showed up, so it was just a bunch of our family, who was, Mostly non religious, sitting in a church to memorialize someone who had caused so many harms in an unfa Like, it was just so awkward!

And thinking back, like, that’s why I do what I do with people who have a strained relationship. Because if it’s very clear going in, and someone comes to me for that reason, we’re creating ritual and ceremony around that, but we literally are doing it through the lens of Let’s just be real about who this person was and the harm that they caused and the way that that’s Affected us and then what that means for how we’re going to move forward in our lives and what we’re doing around 

Diane Hullet: that Truth.

Yeah, you help them name it Which I can only imagine is helpful in the grief because otherwise it’s like let’s just stuff all that over in the corner Pretend none of it happened and try to get on with our lives and the way we get on with our lives is by Integrating the truth, the whole truth, the whole truth, Diane, the whole truth, all of it, all of it, Tanya, we’re going in.

Well, I appreciate the way you you know, are calling out the hearts and flowers and asking for a more deeper, rounded look at the relationship with the person who died and the circumstances. And you’re just Asking people to stand up for what’s real in their experience. And as we’ve kind of alluded to, sometimes different people in the family have different experiences with the same situation, right?

So an older sibling might have experienced one thing and the younger sibling might have something totally different. And that’s interesting, too. So how to make. space in the work you do to hold the whole complex truth of a family and the whole complex truth of a death in order to help people move forward.

I mean, I think that’s why you and I do the work we do is in order to help people move forward as healthfully as they are able. And that starts early. Talk about death early and often, and it moves through a death, whether it’s. Longer and drawn out and less complex or whether it’s more complex and maybe short, however, it plays out the death and the relationship.

There’s this intertwining of those that matters so much to the living. And I think about, I think too, about Sarah Curran. She talks a lot about how what we do matters for the living, the dying and the dead. And how can we be connected to those pieces, even after someone has died, what we do about them matters and that’s, that’s coming again to this idea of holding a funeral that matters to you, holding a home funeral or pieces of a home funeral that matter to you and acknowledging the parts of a relationship that are complex, because as you said, we’re all human and all relationships have some complexity.

There’s no. Perfect relationship. There’s no perfect years together. So being with that is part of being human. 

Tawnya Musser: Absolutely. You know, I, I do try to give my father some credit and humanize him in, in some ways. And one of the ways that I do that is by keeping his bronze baby shoe on a shelf. And it’s my reminder.

It’s a tough one. I have no photos of him in my home. I have photos all throughout my house. And my little niece, who is now 10, a couple of years ago, asked me, who, who’s that? And who’s that? And who’s that? And who is that? And then, you know, she was like, well, where’s your dad? And I was like, Very astute, young one.

I don’t have any photos of him up in my home, and, you know, and I, I gently explained to her in a very age appropriate way why that was, but his shoe was something I can do. I can’t look into his eyes in a photo. I don’t want to do that, but His shoe reminds me that at one point in life, he was just a little guy, and it gives me just a little bit of grace, you know, for that, for that truth, and, you know, when you talked about Kerr and, and, and why it’s important for the dying and the, the living and the dead, like, that is my sort of paying tribute to him.

to him and his hurts and, you know, the hurt people, hurt people narrative. And yeah, so dad, dad’s bronze baby shoe on a shelf. 

Diane Hullet: That’s beautiful. Well, Tanya, I thank you so much for your time last week. We talked about home funerals and today talking about complicated relationships. There’s just a lot there.

Do you have any favorite resources? Are there any favorite kind of books on this subject? You mentioned the grieving brain. 

Tawnya Musser: Yeah, The Cramming Brain is an interesting one but that one is hard because Mary just uses loved one, loved one, loved one, loved one, love, love, love, love, love all throughout, so that one’s challenging.

There’s a book, let me Google it to make sure, yeah, so I haven’t actually read it, but it’s on my list and I’m very curious. I’ve heard a lot of folks who have read it. It’s called I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy, and so I’m curious about that one. But when you ask, like, are there resources?

Like, Diane, that’s why I’m creating the resources. I’m making the group that I’m making and doing the, the, the journal that I’m, you know, making because I haven’t found them. So if others have other resources, please share those with me, with Diane, with us. I would love to know about them to build a better resource list.

Yeah. Nothing really comes. 

Diane Hullet: To mine right now. Great. So we’re creating the resources that are needed. I love that. Well, Tanya and I are both part of the Colorado end of life collaborative, and that’s an incredible resource in the Colorado area. A lot of end of life professionals come together through that and in all kinds of different ways and, and do all kinds of different things.

And you can find out more about Tanya’s work at dear departures. com. Thanks so much, Tanya. Absolutely, Diane. It’s been a pleasure. As always, you can find out about the work I do at bestlifebestdeath. com. Thanks so much for listening.