This feels like a very challenging trick question, doesn’t it? A lot is captured in the word should. The should that meant what was best for me was different from the should of the judgment of my supervisor when negotiating my return which was different from the should of other people’s opinions on the length of my acute mourning.
I can’t tell you how long you should take off, but I can tell you how long I did take off and how those choices affected me.
According to my employer’s policy, I was entitled to three days of bereavement leave per “bereavement incident.” I traveled internationally to get home to my family, informing work I did not know when I would be back. I read the rest of the leave policy during the 24 hours before I could travel, and determined sick leave could be use for “mental incapacity.” I was certainly mentally incapacitated.
I had no concept of how long I would be gone. I made some laughable verbal commitment to some friends that I would still like to go on a trip we had planned for June 1-4. I packed haphazardly as though I might be away a week or so.
After somehow surviving the first week—getting through travel, making cremation arrangements, holding the private viewing, and picking up her ashes—I felt pressured to tell my supervisor when I would return. We settled on June 2, a little under two weeks since I had left. I hadn’t accounted for the stress and physical impacts of grieving, though, and as it got closer to my flight date, I fell sick. The kind of head, ear, nose, and throat sick that would not have been fun to soldier through for major international travel. I pushed my departure back a week, but compromised by teleworking.
In retrospect, I would have been much better off if I had taken three full weeks to grieve and have no responsibilities. That third week would have been more restful (for my recovery from illness, especially) if I hadn’t been working. Nothing that I did in that week was particularly important.
I returned to work three weeks after I left.
Well, more accurately stated, my physical self resumed going to work three weeks later. But the rest of me—my mind, my attention, my emotions—only began to return to work in mid-July. Even now, as I write this, I can confidently tell you that I am not fully present at work ever. Sometimes I get lost on mental tangents. Sometimes I have no motivation to do anything at all and do the New York Times crossword. Sometimes I diligently work on drafting a document while silently crying and my boss comes in to talk to me, looks uncomfortable, and backs out as I say, “No come back. What do you need? Sometimes this just happens now.”
Some people have expressed to me that I was away too long. That they can’t understand why I haven’t “bounced back,” as though losing my sister was a minor inconvenience and not a life-shattering change to my reality that happened without my consent. Others have said they can’t imagine coming back as soon as I did, usually couched in a comment about how strong I am, which makes me cringe. If I were strong, I would have fought to stay with my family longer. I let the friction of other people’s expectations push me to return before I was ready.
So the only advice I’ll give you, if you have come here asking the title’s question, is this: please take as long as you can, as long as you need. It is a big assumption I am making that these are both the same, because many people cannot afford the length of time they need. Take it however you can. In half days off whenever it’s too much. In not-even-a-lie sick days when you are sick in your soul and not your physical body. Grief is exhausting and heavy. You’re building new muscles, but instead of a chiseled physique, you’re building the strength to carry yourself forward, mind, body, and soul. You’ve earned that rest.
Unmoored Sister 