“Even though it doesn’t seem possible, you can always get to know another person differently than you think you can, even if they’re dead, whether it’s through someone who knew them, finding something they wrote, etc., it’s never too late to get to know someone differently and more deeply.”
Anticipatory grief is known as the grief you experience prior to the death of someone. This is typically experienced when we have a loved one or friend who has a terminal or degenerative disease. In episode five of season one of All There Is, Anderson Cooper and Kirsten Johnson (a documentarian) discuss this topic in relationship to Kirsten’s father who currently has dementia, and her mother who died from Alzheimer’s. Kirsten shares how she has dealt with the losses she has experienced throughout both her mother’s and father’s diseases and how those losses ultimately resulted in anticipatory grief. She talks about the struggle of imagining her father dead while he is still alive, mourning his death, and the guilt she carries in that experience. This occurs as she witnesses his memory issues, loss of independence in driving, and inability to complete activities of daily living as he once did. The documentary, Dick Johnson Is Dead, is a film about Kirsten’s countless imagined deaths and resurrections of her father, which is a way for her to process her father’s decline and to anticipate what is to inevitably come. Though, through it all Kirsten expresses that her father, and mother, will live on through the relationship she keeps with them in and after life albeit differently, and yet more deeply.
A key point to this episode is the acknowledgement of how challenging it is to navigate grieving our loved ones before their death. It is an extremely confusing and disorienting space where you are mourning their absence even before they have slipped away. Additionally, continuing bonds with our loved ones after death keeps them alive, because the memory of our loved ones live on in our memories.