 |  | September 11th Families Share Their Advice to Bereaved Families of Future Attacks The September 11th grieving family members in the Chicago area came together through the Willow House September 11th Project to share the wisdom they learned about grieving. The following is their advice to any bereaved families in future terrorist attacks. - There’s nothing anyone can say or do to take the pain away.
- There’s no timeline to grief. You can take as long as you need.
- There’s no right or wrong way to grieve.
- If you don’t want to answer the door or phone, you don’t have to. Caller ID is a beautiful thing.
- You don’t have to comply with what others tell you is normal.
- The grief process in a sudden death or with the death of a younger person is very different from when you lose an older person from an illness where you know death is expected.
- If you want to cry all day, go ahead.
- Know that grief gets stirred up with new life experiences. Even the positive experiences (such as having a baby, graduating or getting married) bring up different elements of the grief.
- You never know when the grief might get set off or triggered.
- It can be helpful to have the right people visit and offer support. You may realize who your real friends are.
- Grief re-writes your address book.
- Expect family relationships to be difficult because everyone grieves differently.
- If someone asks what they can do to help you, you may want to suggest they put together a scrapbook of the life of your loved one who died. Another idea is to bring food in a few weeks -- not right away when many may be bringing food or you may not feel like eating. The book “I Wasn’t Ready to Say Good-Bye” has a list of ideas for things that others can do to help you. Make a copy of this list and give to those who ask.
- Drink orange juice or eat bananas to help your blood sugar and potassium if you are not eating much of anything else.
- If you don’t receive your loved one’s remains or identification, know that it will be very hard emotionally.
- Don’t worry about getting thank you notes out.
- It sucks! There’s no way to put a spin on it.
- Have someone you trust make notification phone calls for you.
- Do what you need to do to take care of yourself and decide that is.
- Find appropriate and helpful literature about grief.
- Try to not think about the rest of your life. Take it moment by moment.
- There are no “shoulds” and no “stages” in grief.
- You eventually learn to live with the grief and function.
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