'18 years after my wife passed away, the grief still appears'

One of the first things Morten Elle did when his son graduated from high school was to go to the cemetery.

He wanted to share the news with his late wife, who during her illness had been very concerned about the future of their two children.

‘It's been like that every time something positive has happened for our children. I went to the cemetery to tell her about it.’

Today, 18 years have passed since Morten Elle's wife died of bone marrow cancer after a short and intense illness, but grief can still surface. It can happen on special occasions like his son's graduation, but it can also come suddenly out of the blue and leave Morten Elle downcast for days.

‘It can overwhelm me, and I often think: if only I could have told her this in person. So my grief is very much centred on the fact that there are many things I wish my wife had experienced,’ says Morten Elle, who has a degree in traffic and urban planning and worked as a researcher at DTU and Aalborg University for many years before retiring last autumn.

According to the National Bereavement Centre, each year 200,000 people lose someone near to them. This means that 1 in 10 employees are grieving the loss of a loved one at any given time, in addition to those who experience grief as a result of divorce, illness or other life crises.

Mai-Britt Guldin, a grief researcher at Aarhus University, explains that grief is a reaction to loss and that it affects those experiencing it in several ways. At the same time, it is a natural part of life that we will all experience several times, so you can't compare grief to an illness like depression, even though there are several commonalities.

‘Grief is a psychological, physical and social reaction, and most people find that they change during their grieving period. Many feel a greater need for support and to talk about their grief with those around them.’

‘At the same time, grief has an existential dimension, and many begin to ask themselves some very big questions like; why is this happening to me? Do I deserve it? And what is the meaning of life now?’

Back at work after two days

Two days after Morten Elle's wife died, he was back at work at DTU. His manager offered him some time off, but he decided it was best to get back to work as soon as possible.

‘I had spoken to a psychologist who said that the children should preferably go back to school right away. I started by being at work for four hours a day, and then I slowly increased my working hours. It worked very well’.

However, he also experienced the time after his wife's death as ‘foggy’ and had to tell colleagues that he didn't have the energy to attend all the meetings as usual.

‘There were several things that didn't seem important anymore. I would often sit in a meeting and think, ‘We can't discuss this little thing anymore. Should the colour of the logo be one shade or another? Why don't you make a decision and move on?’

On the other hand, he saw it as a small break when he could immerse himself in his calculations or an analysis and get a break from all the worries about the children. Morten Elle's son in particular reacted strongly to his mother's death and sometimes disappeared from school, forcing Morten Elle to rush from the office to find out where he had gone.

‘It was just easier to think about something else than these sad thoughts about what would happen to the poor children. There can be something safe about digging yourself into a corner where you have to sit and do some calculations on a model, and where you feel free of all the world's problems in the meantime. Rational and analytical pursuits can offer an escape,’ he says.

A few months after his wife's death, Morten Elle felt that everyday life was more or less back on track and that the worst was over. That's why he was surprised when the grief started to resurface. He also found that those around him, who had been almost overwhelming in their compassion right after the death, found it hard to understand that he was still grieving.

‘The further you get from the death, the funnier people look at you when you say you've had a period of depression. But these periods can happen suddenly, and that's also the case here 18 years later,’ says Morten Elle.

‘I couldn't look at baby pictures of my son for a year’

For Maria Bager Olsen, grief is here right now. Her five-year-old son has just been diagnosed with autism, but in recent years there have been several signs that something was wrong.

‘He has always had some challenges. He's very sensitive to sounds and he's very inflexible and rigid. If he has set his mind on something, he sticks to it, and if he can't live up to a demand or expectation, he breaks down and becomes disruptive and violent. He punches and kicks, throws things and screams.’

For Maria Bager Olsen, her grief is due to her family life not turning out the way she imagined, feeling inadequate as a mother and her son not thriving. She has also struggled with a postpartum reaction that she still feels at times.

‘As he got worse, I got worse too’.

‘I've also had to deal with shame and my guilty conscience, and I couldn't look at baby pictures of him for a year, for example, because I was afraid that my postpartum reaction was the reason why he got so bad.’

According to grief researcher Mai-Britt Guldin, many people associate grief with death, but in reality, the reaction is the same if we get divorced or experience illness or unhappiness in the family. In all cases, the body reacts by releasing high levels of stress hormones, which among other things make us depressed.

‘If your spouse gets dementia, it's sad because your relationship and everyday life changes. You don't only experience grief when your spouse dies,’ explains Mai-Britt Guldin and continues:

‘The same is true if your child becomes ill or disabled, because it causes a huge loss and changes in the life you loved. Loss can also be that life didn't turn out the way we imagined it would.’

Would prefer to be able to switch off the brain

Maria Bager Olsen is a biologist by training and is employed in a dual position as a communications officer and environmental advisor in a consulting engineering company.

She is happy in her workplace and has had great support from her manager throughout the process. He has encouraged her to work less and has emphasised that her well-being is the most important thing. But the work tasks themselves have seemed meaningless to her in comparison to her son's unhappiness and because she has spent most of her energy during the diagnostic assessment process liaising with the kindergarten and the municipality, while having to accommodate her son and the rest of the family.

‘I've been demotivated, and at one point I said to my husband that I wished I had a routine job, so I could just switch off my brain and type in some numbers because I already had too many responsibilities in my private life.’

For Maria Bager Olsen, this created a feeling that she was ‘hiding at work’ and only delivering the bare minimum at work instead of her usual effort.

‘In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have spent so much time at work, but I had just come back from maternity leave, so I just chose to go to work. That way I could maintain some kind of normality and stability,’ she says.

Now she's coming to terms with the fact that everyday life may never be the same again and she and her husband are facing some ‘hardcore prioritisation’, considering whether to sell their house, work less or organise their lives differently to have more resources.

She also tries to organise her work life so that she doesn't have to rush into a meeting in the morning if her son's drop-off goes amiss, and on good days she feels confident that they are getting back on track as a family.

‘If we can implement some things that we know work and give him a good framework, I hope and believe that we can have an almost normal everyday life. I also want to deliver and contribute at work, and I know I can do that again when there's more balance at home. Then I know I can go to work and come home with renewed energy,’ says Maria Bager Olsen.

Everyone grieves differently

Morten Elle, who lost his wife himself, was part of the department management team at Aalborg University in the last years of his working life, where he dealt with personnel cases where employees were affected by death or serious personal crises.

As a manager, he learnt that people react very differently when they are grieving. Some feel a need to work less for a period of time, while others seem to not react to the loss or bury themselves in their work.

Therefore, he believes that the best thing workplaces can do for grieving employees is to be flexible and find individual solutions. He also points out that workplaces need to be aware that grief is not always expressed immediately after a loss.

‘I've thought a lot about what could have been done differently after my wife's death, because I think my workplace and colleagues responded really well. Maybe what could have been done was to get in touch with me after a year and say that you're going to see a psychologist again and make sure you process the loss.’

According to Mai-Britt Guldin, there is not enough research on the subject to conclude how workplaces can best help grieving employees. However, as a practising psychologist, she has seen that it makes a big difference to grieving employees if the workplace can meet their needs.

‘We are very different as people. Some people want to talk a lot about what they've been through. Others want to use the workplace as a sanctuary where they can feel a bit normal. The best processes I've seen are where a manager or union representative has agreed with the employee whether they will work reduced hours for a period of time and what will be communicated to the rest of their colleagues.’

‘It makes it easier for colleagues to relate to the bereaved person and help them move on,’ says Mai-Britt Guldin, who emphasises that work is both a social network and a big part of many people's identity.

That's why she welcomes the fact that several workplaces have started to develop a mental well-being policy for when employees are grieving, have a child with school refusal or are affected by depression or stress.

‘It's really good to find out what you can offer as a workplace when an employee is grieving. When you create a policy for mental well-being, you also get to decide what should be defined as grief. Do we only honour deaths or does it also apply to loss in the form of divorce or when a child is affected by illness?’

‘As long as there is love, there is grief’

If you are grieving, the good news from Mai-Britt Guldin is that the difficult feelings subside over time for most people.

How long it takes depends on the loss, but also the individual's personality and life circumstances. For example, older people are usually better at coping with grief than younger people because they have experienced more losses and therefore know their own reactions better.

However, this does not mean that the pain disappears completely.

‘It's a huge misconception that we have to grieve for a period of time and that the difficult emotions then disappear completely. But most people adjust to the new situation and learn to live with their grief, even if they sometimes feel sad again,’ says Mai-Britt Guldin and continues:

‘Grief never goes away completely, because it's connected to love or to something that was very important to us, and as long as there is love, there is grief.’

For Morten Elle, going to the cemetery to visit his wife has become an important part of dealing with his grief. He does this with his children and grandchildren, including on her birthday and the day she passed away.

‘The first few years it was difficult, but it's becoming a little less sad and there's a little more room for telling funny stories. It should also be easier now that so many years have passed.’