Continuing Bonds in Grief
My sister Melissa’s birthday was on July 17. She would have turned 42.
The week before her birthday, I was in Target when I found myself feeling inexplicably pulled toward the greeting cards. If you’ve been here for a while, you might remember that I’ve talked about how I strictly avoid the “for her” greeting cards section unless I’m feeling up for a heavy blow to the chest.
But something felt different this time. This time, I wanted to imagine. I wanted to pretend, just for a moment, that I was still a person who had a reason to shop in the “sister” section. I wanted to imagine which card I would send to her if she were still alive, which one might help me express what I wanted to tell my beloved Seester on her 42nd birthday.
Tentatively, I started browning through the cards. I felt myself flooded with that familiar ache, and there were definitely tears, but there was also something comforting and sweet about engaging in the search for the just-right card: this one too cheesy, that one too goofy, until I found the one that had just the right message, images, and feel.
I held it for a moment in my hands, imagining how good it would feel if I could send it to her. Then I lovingly placed it back in its spot and slowly walked away.
But as I walked away, I felt that inexplicable pull again. It was a pull that told me to pick up the card and put it in my basket. Ummm…what? I can’t even send it. What on earth am I going to do with it? And is it perhaps a tiny bit creepy to buy a birthday card for a person who has died?
As it happens, I’m not a person who’s guided much by logic – when my heart tells me to do something, I tend to listen. So I bought the card – admittedly feeling a little strange doing it – even though I had no idea what I was going to do with it next.
On my sister’s birthday, I pulled out the card and wrote a note to her just as I would have on any other birthday. It felt good (and yes, it also felt sad) to write out happy birthday wishes and to tell her how grateful I was to have her in my life. I didn’t have anywhere to send the card, so I tucked it into a wooden box where I keep many of her belongings. I expect that over time there’s going to be a large collection of birthday cards in that box - cards that will forever remain unsent.
And while my first response to buying a card was, Isn’t this a bit creepy? I know this isn’t creepy at all. Neither is the journal full of letters that I’ve written to her since she died, or the way I talk to her all the time, or the way that the words “Aunt Melissa” leave my kids’ mouths as though we just saw her last week.
I find one of the most helpful and normalizing concepts in grief to be the concept of continuing bonds. Introduced in 1996 by Klass, Silverman, and Nickman in the book Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief, continuing bonds posits that not only is it normal and healthy to continue to be in relationship with those who’ve died, but that maintaining a relationship with the deceased can support us in coping with our grief and adjusting to life after loss.
(Important note: Continuing bonds aren’t always helpful. If you had a complicated or painful relationship with the person who has died, continuing bonds may actually do more harm than good. As always, lean into what feels right and supportive for you.)
What’s more, continuing bonds tells us that our relationships with our deceased loved ones don't stay the same, forever frozen in time. We continue to be in an ever-shifting relationship with those who have died (if we wish to be), finding new points of connection, continually growing and changing in our relationships with them as we grow and change throughout the course of our lives.
We know this intuitively. It’s why we keep talking to our loved ones long after they’ve left this earth. And yet, it’s easy in our culture to feel like there are limits to this, like we can somehow take our continuing relationships “too far” (Talk to your person? Sure. Buy them a birthday card? Ummm...)
So in case you’ve ever felt weird about it, allow me tell you this: continuing bonds are normal and healthy, and they support our healing. Rather than keeping us “stuck,” they are one of many things that can help us engage more fully in our lives following a loss.
By all means, keep talking with your person, wearing their jewelry, visiting places they loved, considering what advice they might give you, and having their pictures on display. As it is with any relationship, you get to decide how you want to connect and what feels right for you – even if it means accumulating a stack of birthday cards that will remain forever unsent.
As always, take gentle care of yourself.
