It feels weird to say it but the first thing I felt when my mother died was not sadness but relief. And for a long time I didn’t tell anyone that.
She had been slipping away for the better part of two years. First her memory, then her mobility, then the small dignities. By the end I was doing everything – medication charts, phone calls to the doctors that never seem to change anything.
So when the nurse told me she had gone my body did something I wasn’t expecting. I felt my shoulders drop, I let out a breath of been holding for months and felt relief that she wasn’t suffering anymore and neither was I.
But then I felt guilt, right on cue, telling me that a good daughter should be crying and feeling devastated.
If you’re and reading this my guess is you know what I am talking about. Maybe someone you love has died and instead of the wave of grief you were expecting what you felt was a lot more confusing.
Relief can be like that. And now you’re wondering if there is something wrong with you.
There isn’t. Feeling relief after someone dies is one of the most normal but also least talked about parts of grief there is.
So I’m going to go through why it happens, why the guilt tends to follow and how to be a little easier on yourself while you deal with both.
Is It Normal to Feel Relief After Someone Dies?
Yes. Feeling relief after someone dies is completely normal. It’s also a lot more common than most people admit.
Grief is not one emotion that turns up to a set schedule. It is a mess of feelings that show up in no particular order and relief is one of them.
Grief counselors have a name for the mix of emotions that follows a loss when the relationship or the circumstances were complicated. They call it ambivalent grief and the American Psychological Association describes it as grief that carries conflicting feelings rather than one simple emotion.
Relief is a part of that. So is the guilt that tends to come with it.
The reason relief feels so wrong is that we are given a script for grief long before we ever need it. Films, books and well meaning people teach us that death should bring tears and sadness.
Anything else feels wrong or like you’re betraying the person. But real grief doesn’t follow any sort of a script.
It’s a lot messier, much more stranger and more human than that. Relief is all part of the mess.
Why Feeling Relief Is So Common
Relief rarely comes out of nowhere. It usually points to something you have been feeling for a long time. Below are the situations where it shows up most often.
After a Long Illness or Slow Decline
When someone you love has been ill for months or years the grieving doesn’t start the day they die. You have been grieving the all the way through it.
You grieve the conversations you can no longer have, the version of them you remember, the future you thought you would share etc.
So by the time death arrives a large part of the loss has already happened. That means the relief you feel is not relief that they are gone. It is relief that the suffering, theirs and yours, has finally stopped.
Watching someone you love be in pain and being powerless to fix it is awful. When it ends you find yourself letting go and sort of relaxing.
When You Have Been the Caregiver
Caregiving is relentless and exhausting work that can go on for years. If you have been the one managing the medications, the appointments, the feeding and the washing you’ll know the worry never stops and you’ll have been running on empty for a very long time.
Caregivers often lose their sleep, their health, their friendships and their sense of who they are outside of the caring. When that all ends the relief that follows is your body and mind finally being allowed to rest.
Anticipatory Grief Has Been Doing Its Work
There is a phenomenon called anticipatory grief where mourning begins long before the death happens. The National Institute on Aging notes that families facing a terminal diagnosis often start grieving from the moment they hear the news, not from the moment of death.
If you have spent months preparing yourself, saying your goodbyes and getting ready for the phone call then a great deal of your grief may already be behind you when the end comes. The relief you feel is the release of all that waiting and preparing.
That doesn’t mean you won’t grieve more later. The grief is just different from what you expected.
When the Relationship Was Difficult or Estranged
Not every relationship we lose was a loving one. Sometimes the person who died was someone who hurt us, frightened us, controlled us or simply caused us years of pain. When that relationship ends relief can be what you feel and very little grief comes with it. That in itself can feel even more disorienting.
If this is the situation you’re in you shouldn’t feel like a monster for feeling lighter now that a source of pain in your life is gone. The relief is because of the end of a difficult chapter.
Grief after a hard relationship is often the most complicated grief of all because you may be mourning the parent or partner you wished you had rather than the one you actually got.
When the Death Ended Fear, Chaos or Uncertainty
Sometimes the relief is simpler than any of this. If someone’s illness or behavior created you constant fear, financial strain, addiction in the home or a household that never felt safe then their death can bring an end to that.
The Guilt That Often Comes With Relief
For most people relief comes with guilt as well.
You feel your shoulders drop and then a voice comes into your head asking what kind of person feels relieved when someone dies. You start to worry that the relief means you didn’t love them enough or that you’re secretly glad.
Guilt after relief almost always comes from that grief script we talked about earlier, the one that says good people only feel sadness. When your real experience does not go like the script you feel guilty for doing it wrong.
But that isn’t your fault. It is a fault in the script. The script doesn’t account for loving someone through illness, exhaustion or a complicated history.
You did not want them to die. You wanted the suffering to end. Those are not the same thing even though grief loves to blur them together.
Relief and Grief Can Coexist
Feelings don’t take turns. We tend to imagine emotions as a queue where you finish being relieved before you are allowed to feel sad. Grief doesn’t work like that.
You can feel relieved that the suffering is over and heartbroken that they are gone at the same time. You can feel peace and longing together. You can be laughing at a memory in the morning and crying by the afternoon.
None of it cancels the rest out.
If you are struggling to find words for what you’re feeling sometimes other people’s words help. Our collection of grief quotes and these poems about grief can help.
What Your Relief Does Not Mean
When you’re really feeling the guilt it helps to be very clear about what relief is not. If you are feeling relief after a death it does not mean any of these things.
- It does not mean you did not love them
- It does not mean you are cold, heartless or broken
- It does not mean you wanted them to die
- It does not mean you will not grieve, now or later
- It does not mean you are grieving wrong
- It does not mean you have to explain or justify it to anyone
If it would help to hear it turned into the kind of thing you might say to yourself below are a few reminders you are can use.
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My relief and my love are both real and they can exist together.
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Feeling lighter does not mean I loved them any less.
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I wanted the suffering to end. That is a loving thing to want.
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There is no wrong way for me to grieve this.
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How to Cope With These Feelings
You can’t really argue yourself out of guilt but you can loosen its grip a little. There are some small things that helped me and that I have watched help others.
Say It Out Loud to One Safe Person
Relief gets heavier the longer it stays a secret. Telling one trusted person, a friend, a counselor or someone in a grief group that you feel relieved often takes the shame out of it. Nine times out of ten they will admit they felt the same way once, which will also help.
Name the Thing You Are Relieved About
Try finishing the sentence – I feel relieved because. You will almost always find that what follows is compassionate.
I feel relieved because they are no longer in pain.
I feel relieved because I can finally sleep.
I feel relieved because I do not have to be afraid anymore.
When you see the reason written out the guilt lessens because it makes more sense.
Let Yourself Rest
If you have been caregiving or living on high alert your body is exhausted in ways you may not fully feel yet. Taking some time off or resting is not betraying the person who died.
Give yourself permission to sleep, to eat, to do nothing for a while. You have earned it and you will grieve better when you’re rested than running on nothing.
Write It Down
You don’t have to show anyone this. Putting all the relief and grief and guilt onto paper gets it out of your head. Many people find the feelings make more sense once they are written down than they ever did when they were inside them.
When Relief Goes With Something Else
For most people relief is just a part of healthy grief. But grief can sometimes become something that doesn’t lift.
If weeks turn into months and you find yourself stuck and unable to function day to day, sinking into a guilt or sadness you can’t get out of, or feeling that life has lost its meaning, that’s something to be aware of. It is a sign that you deserve some support to carry this.
A grief counselor or your doctor can help and reaching out is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself. You don’t want or have to suffer through it alone.
For a starting point we gathered advice from professionals in our guide to expert grief support, and if a friend of yours is the one struggling, how to support someone who is grieving may help you help them.
Final Thoughts
If you are feeling relief today and wondering if there is something wrong with you please try not to. You loved someone through something hard and are dealing with a huge weight that you had to carry for a long time.
