Spring Break Series: A Humane Approach to Bereavement Leave

Welcome back to week four of my Spring Break Series. I know I told you this week was going to be about vacation days – I lied. Well, I didn’t lie exactly. That was the plan. But this morning, lying in bed, getting ready to write, bereavement leave was hitting me more strongly – so we’re going to go with that. I’ll come back to talk vacation days next week – I promise.

Bereavement Leave - what a downer, right? Sorry about that. But I think it’s important we get into the reality of death, dying, and the grief that accompanies both.

God-willing, I do not someday drop dead at work. This essay is not about dying on the job. It’s about the fact that each of us will experience loss in some deep way that requires our attention, our energy, and our time.

Thus far, I have experienced loss a number of ways:

 Loss that came as a surprise

 Loss that had a predictable lead time

 Loss with a long tail

Why am I saying “loss” and not death? Because I think we’ve got Bereavement Leave wrong.

Merriam-Webster has this to say, “The meaning of bereavement is the state or fact of being bereaved or deprived of something or someone.”

Deprived is such an evocative word. Something has been taken. Something has been withheld. Something has been denied. Something has been held back. Something has been stolen. Something has been lost.

If I widen the aperture to think more holistically about how major losses have impacted my life and my work, my list of loss would include:

 I have lost a friend to a car accident and to cancer

 I have lost family members to a range of illnesses

 I have lost a marriage

 I have lost campaigns

You may be wondering, should those things all ‘count’ as worthy of being bereaved?

That’s the question, isn’t it. Who decides which losses warrant time and space to grieve, to process, to reckon with how life has transformed in the wake of this loss?

Know this, on election night in November 2008, I was in California. On the ballot was the freedom to marry for LGBTQ people. We got our asses kicked. I was the deputy field director in LA County. We didn’t lose because we were stupid, we lost because homophobia was alive and well, and the anti-gay opposition was well funded and mobilized.

That vote was the culmination of over two years of a knock down drag out campaign. My colleagues and I had talked to tens of thousands of voters, pouring our hearts out about why we deserved to be treated like full human beings. And there, at an election night gathering, the crying and hugging began.

A group of us peeled off, heading to a local diner for a late-night breakfast and to have somewhere to sit in stunned silence. This is not my proudest moment, but I remember getting accidentally drunk that night and being consoled in the stall of a public bathroom.

Why am I telling you any of this? BECAUSE SOMETIMES SHIT IN OUR LIVES GOES SIDEWAYS AND WE NEED A MINUTE.

This is what I mean by taking a more humane approach to Bereavement Leave.

The question should NOT be, “who died?” it SHOULD BE, “are you well enough to be at work?”

Please stop allowing your Bereavement Leave policy to be a strange list of biological relatives that “count” as worthy of your grief if they die. As workplaces, we have zero business making wild guesses about who does and doesn’t matter most to our employees.

I’m here to tell you, if any of my best friends died (and last time I checked, ‘best friends’ was not on that list), I would be fucking inconsolable.

So, what is the alternative? I’m glad you asked ;)

By this point in the Spring Break Series, I bet you’re on to me. My recommendation comes in two parts:

1) STOP differentiating between kinds of days off – the point is that someone is out of the office. Trying to guess how to apportion sick vs. vacation vs. bereavement time in a year – get outta here with all that! None of us have a crystal ball.

2) PREPARE for what the rest of your staff will need to know and do - not if, but when, one of their colleagues needs to be absent for some reason.

I don’t know about you, but I found it a relief to learn that grief is a non-linear process. The five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – can each be revisited, and pop back up at any inopportune moment.

For a lot of us, the grieving doesn’t even get to begin until we’ve gotten through the logistical shit storm of loss. If you have ever been on the phone with Social Security, or Delta Airlines, or American Express, dealing with the paperwork and coordination part of loss – well, I’m fairly certain this is a special ring of hell.

From an equity perspective, if we are talking about death, specifically, it is imperative we recognize that dying, death, and reconfiguring life after a loss, often looks very different from one culture to another.

 Some religions have a practice of sitting vigil, of performing certain rites on certain days after death, and have requirements for mourning and a slow return to daily life after loss.

 Women and men are often either explicitly or implicitly expected to play different roles when there is a death in the family or community.

 In an increasingly globalized economy, it is also very likely that your colleagues may need to travel across states or across the globe to provide support to loved ones. The travel alone can take days and be a major financial stressor.

Here’s what’s true – loss, whether it be a shock or not, is disruptive.

Like sickness, it is often highly inconvenient, and may even happen during what feels like a “critical moment” at work. I get that. And yet, we are human beings having a human experience. Let’s do the work to get better prepared so that we can rally around our colleagues in their times of greatest need rather than act like they are letting us down and bothering us with their loss.

Final reminders:

 The question you should be asking is, “are you well enough to be at work today?”

 Practice receiving and believing what your colleagues tell you they need and want amidst a loss.

o You might want to be at work in the wake of a loss. If you’re capable of tending to what’s on your plate, that’s allowed. No one else should be deciding for you how you grieve.

o Don’t project what you imagine you’d want onto another adult. Let them be agents of their own lives.

o Do not police which losses warrant time off. If a pet dies, if a romantic relationship crumbles, if an accident occurs – adults know what they need to tend to – you don’t have to make people prove that they are really grieving, and that this loss really matters. Be compassionate. Be loving. Be kind.

When you are eventually in need you will be grateful you have seeded and supported a workplace culture that navigates loss humanely.

 Keep checking in – grief is not linear. A loss may have happened some time ago, but an anniversary triggers the need to take a day now.

 And just like with other staff absences – have workable plans in place for how deadlines will be moved, tasks will be redistributed, and notes will be kept so that upon a staff member’s return they can be brought up to speed with what they missed.

Having one or two quick calls with the person who needs to be out can get you filled in with what you need to know.

One quick story –

It’s been so long that I can’t recall now how it happened, but the 2005 movie “Elizabethtown,” starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst, became a favorite of myself, my sister, and my brother-in-law. All three of us could quote almost the entire movie word for word.

The brief synopsis is that it’s a story following an adult son in the days immediately following the surprise death of his father. There is an epic road trip, an almost romance, and family hijinks as the lead character tries to make it from one activity to the next.

There is one particularly apt scene I’d love to share here. By total coincidence, Orlando Bloom’s character ends up staying at a hotel while he is in town to retrieve his father’s body on the exact same floor as a raucous wedding party.

I won’t give the whole thing away, because it’s a good scene and I really do hope you decide to go watch the movie, but the key moment is this: Orlando Bloom runs into the groom-to-be in the hallway of the hotel. The groom is wearing the hotel’s terrycloth robe, and is carrying a bottle of beer in each of the two front pockets. He is in the midst of jaunting from room to room, drinking with his groomsmen. Upon finding out Bloom is there because his dad died, the drunken groom exclaims, “Death and life. Life and death. Right next door to each other!”

He’s right. As colleagues, we will be going through moments of death and life, life and death, right next door to each other. Choose to be nice about it. It’s possible, I promise.

Next week I’ll wrap up this Spring Break Series by covering vacations and how Americans fair on this score next to other developed nations.

I’m around if you need me – trina@trinaolson.com

Yours,