Navigating Grief: Finding Hope in Our Darkest Hours

When Life Becomes Unbearable: Understanding Loss, Addiction, and Mental Health

Grief is perhaps the most universal human experience, yet it remains one of the most isolating. When we lose someone to addiction, mental illness, or suicide, the pain carries additional layers of complexity—questions that seem to have no answers, guilt that feels unbearable, and a profound sense of helplessness that can shake our faith in everything we once believed.

The truth is that bad things do happen to good people. As Hyrum Smith powerfully stated in his funeral address, “Pain is inevitable. Misery is an option.” This distinction becomes crucial when we find ourselves confronting losses that challenge our understanding of justice, mercy, and the very nature of existence itself.

The Landscape of Grief: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the Stages of Loss

Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross revolutionized our understanding of grief through her identification of five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, when dealing with addiction and mental health-related deaths, these stages often become more complex and cyclical.

Denial in these circumstances might involve refusing to acknowledge the severity of a loved one’s struggles, or later, an inability to accept that they’re truly gone. We might find ourselves saying, “If only I had seen the signs,” or “This can’t be real.”

Anger can be particularly intense and multifaceted. We might feel angry at our loved one for their choices, at ourselves for not doing more, at God for allowing suffering, or at a medical system that seemed inadequate. This anger is natural and necessary—it’s part of the process of trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.

Bargaining often involves endless “what if” scenarios. What if we had intervened sooner? What if treatment had been different? What if we had said something else in that last conversation? These thoughts can become consuming, but they’re part of our mind’s attempt to regain control over an uncontrollable situation.

Depression in these losses often carries additional weight. Beyond missing our loved one, we might grapple with feelings of failure, stigma from society, and questions about whether we could have prevented their death. The depression stage might involve confronting our own mortality and the fragility of mental health.

Acceptance doesn’t mean we’re “okay” with what happened. Instead, it means we’ve found a way to carry the loss while still engaging with life. For those who’ve lost someone to addiction or suicide, acceptance often includes coming to terms with the reality that some battles are beyond our control.

The Question That Haunts: Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his profound work “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” challenges the traditional notion that suffering is always deserved or meaningful. Sometimes, Kushner argues, bad things happen simply because we live in a world where randomness and human freedom exist alongside divine love.

C.S. Lewis, writing from his own profound grief in “A Grief Observed,” noted that “The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.” Lewis understood that love inherently carries the risk of loss, and that our capacity for joy is inseparable from our vulnerability to sorrow.

Truman G. Madsen, in “Eternal Man,” explores the concept that suffering serves multiple purposes in human development. Some suffering, he suggests, is redemptive—it teaches us empathy, deepens our capacity for love, and connects us more fully to the human experience. However, not all suffering falls into this category. Some pain exists simply because we live in a world where mental illness, addiction, and human frailty are real.

The Particular Pain of Addiction and Mental Health Losses

When we lose someone to addiction or mental health struggles, we’re often confronting what Hyrum Smith (Franklin Covey) called “a mistake”—but a mistake made by someone whose capacity for clear thinking had been compromised by illness. This understanding can be both comforting and complicated.

Mental illness and addiction are diseases that affect the brain’s ability to process reality, make decisions, and hope for the future. The person we loved was fighting a battle against their own neurochemistry, often while society stigmatized their struggle. Understanding this doesn’t eliminate our pain, but it can help us separate the illness from the person we loved.

Dr. Michael Hentrich’s work in psychiatry emphasizes that mental health conditions are medical conditions, not moral failings. When someone dies from diabetes complications, we don’t question their character or their eternal destiny. The same compassionate understanding should apply to those who die from mental health conditions, including addiction.

The Mercy Perspective: Insights from Hyrum Smith

Hyrum Smith’s courageous address at his friend Lowell’s funeral challenges many traditional assumptions about suicide and divine judgment. Speaking from his own experience with serious mistakes and the process of repentance, Smith offered several profound insights:

He posed five crucial questions, three of which he felt qualified to answer. When asking “What is Lowell thinking now?” Smith suggested that, based on his own experience with serious error, his friend was likely experiencing regret, pain, and anguish. But this led to his more critical questions:

“Will the Lord allow Lowell to repent?” Smith’s answer was an emphatic yes, calling the belief that suicide is an unpardonable sin “just flat not true.”

“Will the Lord forgive him?” Again, yes. Smith testified that Lowell would receive all the blessings he rightfully deserved from his remarkable life.

The final question—”Will you?”—places the responsibility for mercy and healing squarely on those left behind.

The Stockdale Paradox: Facing Brutal Facts with Faith

Smith shared the powerful story of Admiral Stockdale and his discovery of three types of people in crisis: pessimists, optimists, and realists. The pessimists saw only the brutal facts and gave up. The optimists ignored the brutal facts and lived in denial. Only the realists—who saw the brutal facts but maintained faith that they could be dealt with—survived.

This framework provides a powerful model for grief. The brutal facts of our loss are real and must be acknowledged. We lost someone precious. They suffered. We couldn’t save them. However, the realist also maintains faith that these brutal facts can be endured, processed, and eventually integrated into a life that still holds meaning and purpose.

The Gift of Forgiveness

One of Smith’s most profound insights concerned the nature of forgiveness. Through spiritual revelation, he learned that “forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting. Forgiveness means remembering—but it doesn’t matter anymore.”

This distinction is crucial for those grieving addiction and mental health losses. We may never forget the circumstances of our loved one’s death, the struggle that preceded it, or our own feelings of helplessness. But we can reach a point where remembering doesn’t carry the same crushing weight—where we can hold the memory without being destroyed by it.

Forgiving our loved one doesn’t mean condoning their final choice. It means releasing them from our anger and ourselves from the burden of perpetual judgment. As Smith noted, quoting scripture, “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I choose to forgive, but of you, you’re required to forgive all men.”

C.S. Lewis and the Reality of Love and Loss

C.S. Lewis, writing through his own devastating grief after losing his wife Joy, offers perhaps the most honest exploration of grief in Christian literature. In “A Grief Observed,” Lewis wrote, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” He described the physical and emotional reality of loss with unflinching honesty.

Lewis challenged the notion that faith should make grief easier or shorter. Instead, he argued that love necessarily includes the risk of devastating loss. “The pain now is part of the happiness then,” he wrote. The depth of our grief often reflects the depth of our love.

Most importantly, Lewis demonstrated that faith and doubt can coexist in grief. His questions about God’s goodness and presence weren’t signs of weak faith—they were signs of a faith mature enough to wrestle with mystery and contradiction.

Moving Forward: The Wagons Are Ready

Smith concluded his funeral address with a powerful metaphor from pioneer history. When pioneers died on the trail, families would stop to bury their dead and grieve. But eventually, the wagons would be ready to move on because staying meant death for everyone.

This metaphor speaks to the necessity of continuing to live while carrying our grief. The wagons represent life itself—responsibilities, relationships, opportunities for service and joy. They’re waiting for us to finish our necessary work of grieving so we can rejoin the journey.

This doesn’t mean rushing through grief or pretending to be “over it.” It means finding ways to carry our love and loss with us as we continue living. It means believing that our loved one would want us to experience joy again, form new relationships, and find meaning in our continued existence.

Practical Steps for the Journey

Acknowledge the complexity: Grief from addiction and mental health losses often involves guilt, anger, relief, and confusion alongside sadness. All of these feelings are valid and normal.

Seek professional support: Therapists who specialize in grief, particularly complicated grief, can provide tools and perspectives that friends and family may not be able to offer.

Connect with others who understand: Support groups for survivors of suicide or families affected by addiction can provide the understanding that comes only from shared experience.

Practice self-compassion: You didn’t cause your loved one’s illness or death. You couldn’t cure it or prevent it. You are not responsible for their final choices.

Honor their memory fully: Remember the whole person, not just their struggle or their death. Their illness was part of their story, but it wasn’t their entire story.

Consider their perspective: If they could speak to you now, would they want you to be consumed by guilt and sorrow? Or would they want you to find peace, joy, and meaning in your continuing life?

The Eternal Perspective

From an eternal standpoint, the questions that torment us now may seem less significant. Truman Madsen’s “Eternal Man” suggests that our current perspective, shaped by time and mortality, inevitably limits our understanding of justice, mercy, and purpose.

The God described in Smith’s funeral address—the God who “knows the weakness of man and how to succor them who are tempted”—is not a God of harsh judgment for those who struggle with illness. This is a God who sent Jesus precisely because He knew we would need an advocate, someone who understands our weaknesses and provides a way for all mistakes to be repaired.

Finding Hope in the Journey

The journey through grief, particularly grief complicated by addiction and mental health issues, is not linear. There will be good days and terrible days. There will be moments of peace and moments of overwhelming sadness. This is the nature of love continuing beyond physical presence.

But there is hope. Hope that our loved ones are at peace. Hope that their struggles are ended. Hope that love transcends death. Hope that we can learn to carry our grief in ways that honor both their memory and our own continued existence.

As Hyrum Smith testified, “God lives. Jesus is the Christ. He loves everybody in this room. He’ll take care of [our loved ones]. He’ll take care of us, too.”

This is the ultimate comfort for those walking through the valley of grief. We are not alone in our sorrow. We are not forgotten in our pain. And we are not without hope for healing, reunion, and peace.

The wagons are indeed ready when we are. The journey continues, and love travels with us—changed but not diminished, tested but not broken, and ultimately victorious over death itself.

Love & Light, Kevin Brough

Kevin Brough – Ascend Counseling and Wellness, St. George, Utah – 435.688.1111 – kevin@ascendcw.com