Since 2015, until he fell ill, Stelios Logothetis brought blank sheets to Galilee, the first palliative care unit in Greece. “He always said that people who really need it will lie on these sheets,” Kaiti Skouras-Logotetis tells K. He wanted to lie on these sheets when he got melanoma. From these sheets, he “came out” in November 2021 at the age of 69.

Ms. Skouras-Logotetis has been living with him since she was 15 years old. So when he fell ill, she—a social worker who has volunteered at Galilee since 2010—didn’t want someone outside to take care of him. For 21 months, she gave him medication. She gave him a bath. During our conversation in Galilee, where Ms. Skouras-Logofetis now performs voluntary secretarial duties, an activity she calls “psychotherapy,” she burst into tears. It is clear that this loss still hurts, that it left a void that will probably never be filled. So it’s not out of a lack of love that she admits that there were times when she cared for her husband, that she was “practical”.

“Like I wanted my shift to end, at the end of the day I felt like I wanted to study, watch TV, take a bath, talk on the phone, do things for myself,” she says. “These moments haunt me.” But because of the existence of these moments, so unrecognized as he says, especially for caregivers who were chronically ill, and now themselves may be mentally, physically or financially exhausted, after the death of a relative, loved one, friend, maybe there is light in the depths of mourning? Does death bring relief?

“There are two types of terrain,” says Skouras-Logotetis. One of them has to do with “your man is ‘gone’ because life was useless for him – when you get to the point where people pass out, physically suffer, life becomes so trivial that it’s a relief for him and for you,” he says.

The second he calls “blame relief.” “Your man left and replaced you, he gave you rest. They say to me: “Now you rested.” Really. I rested. Pachina, I look rested, but this relief makes me feel guilty,” she explains. Life, he points out, is very strong—it pulls you forward. And when this happens, the feeling of guilt decreases. “You’ll move on with your wounds that you don’t have to constantly lick,” she says. “At some point, leaving your scars, the wounds will have to be closed.”

When someone grieves, they experience a rich range of emotions,” Spyros Tsotakos, a clinical psychologist at Galilee, who also provides bereavement support, told K. “For a caregiver who, due to the intensification of care, has reached emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, it is completely normal to express some petty wishes for death -“ God take him, let him feel better, ”the vast majority of caregivers say this – especially when the patient is chained to bed for more than 16-18 months, when the caregiver begins to flirt with burnout, as if all psychological and energy reserves have been exhausted, ”he says to“ K ”. “There, the arrival of death is beneficial,” he adds, “and it is an oxymoron that such a fatal event is also accompanied by benefits.” He explains that one and a half to three years after death, they see former caregivers who, “if they haven’t slipped into something more complex,” seem to be looking for a different identity, as if they seem to be more mental. sustainability.

But for some, because the topic is so rarely discussed, and perhaps even less often with compassion than criticism, in the context of bereavement, the word “relief” sounds hostile, almost aggressive, like a 10-letter indirect accusation. .

“A caregiver who, due to increased care, has reached emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, may express small wishes for death.”

Eleftheria Vatista, who recently lost her mother and lived in the Aniaton Orphanage for 11 years, tells K that she never got tired of taking care of her or visiting her, which she did every day for the first six years. The loss is still so fresh that it’s hard for her to say that she even felt relieved for her own mother when she “gone.” “You have a war inside you,” he declares, “on the one hand, I said: “rest.” But, on the other hand, I say: “I wish she was there, and I could see her.”

Eleftheria Papanicolaou, 54, lost her father two years ago and her mother seven months ago. She took care of both of them, and at some point taking care of them became her main job, her only job. When her mother also “gone”, she felt like a little girl with matches, she tells “K”. She felt like an orphan. “I meant it differently, in the end age doesn’t matter, but how important is the person you’re losing to you.” However, while she was taking care of her parents, “there were times when I couldn’t take it anymore,” she says, “I offered everything I could, and I saw that I had the strength inside me to do this.” “. . “The relief I felt was that these people left well, in peace,” he says. For herself, she avoids using the same word, although she says that the part that was exhausting has come to rest. The same applies to the financial part, as there were a lot of expenses. But then again, he could be emotionally lost because of the loss, he points out. But she set herself a time limit. “I used to say: “On Monday you will be active”, you need to do it, feel that you are still alive.

Vaso Kotsaki tells K that her brother never felt like a “burden”. At 40, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In October, minutes after he blew out a cake for his 58th birthday at the Aniaton Orphanage, where he had lived for several months, he himself passed out. Mrs. Kotsaki says he has been under her care since 2008. She bought it at the supermarket, took it to the doctors. She cooked and brought him food, clean clothes. He says he never got tired of her. The only thing that could tire her a little was the psychological hesitation and strain, and the need to think about things that aren’t self-evident, like whether there will be ramps on the sidewalk. Having lost him, she humanly admits that she rested. “I have more free time,” he tells K. But her loss is always there, especially when she’s having a good time – not out of regret, she makes clear. He just lives there, he exists somewhere.

To some extent, Maria Drosu, who volunteered in the Galilee for 7 years, the last two of which was in a bereavement support group, says K., she saw relief appear in all cases of bereavement. made contact, some more, some less, and most of them, when they externalize it – easier for her than for their people – tell her that they are ashamed of this feeling, they feel guilty.

“In the cases that we see here, because they are usually after long illnesses and because those who care for them also live in a strange situation, that is, there may be people who are bedridden for years or do not communicate, I think that there is always relief,” he says. But, he says, there is only pain in the sudden death of a healthy person. “The relief is related to how much the patient suffers, how difficult it is for the environment to support this whole situation, and with a sudden death or death of a young person, I think he is not there,” he notes.

However, an aspect of this feeling can manifest itself in other cases, even in the absence of long-term care for the sick, but in the presence of long-term care for a person who has long ceased to be loved. Ekaterina T. tells K that when her husband, to whom she had been married for 60 years, “left”, she did not feel relieved. “But I calmed down,” he says. “I no longer had the pressure that this man put on me every day that the fork had to be in his hand as soon as he came. What he constantly demanded,” he says.

The husband did not drink, did not play cards. He didn’t beat her. But he wasn’t the partner she wanted. “I was ashamed that, it turns out, my husband did not give me the love and care that he needed, he was a person indifferent to the family,” she says to “K”. Again. She emphasizes that she was never glad either that she “left” or that she was “relieved”. “So many years together, I can’t say it,” he says. Despite the bitterness, its absence is still felt. But, although they were both already in old age when he died, they still had life to live in peace. “Perhaps if I had been more attached, it would have bothered me even more when he“ left ”, but I didn’t get depressed,” he says in “K”. It is enough to say “I got rid of stress.” “I have freed myself,” he finally says, “from the pressure of all life.”

“They are ashamed of a very human emotion”

Psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Savvas Savvopoulos, who has studied the problem of grief in depth, tells K that very often his patients experience relief after the death of a loved one whom they may have taken care of for a long time. “This is a common thing, and they are embarrassed to talk about their own relief and rest, because they feel guilty – their ideal, their morality is not accepted,” he says.
“What moves inside a person is that the beloved “leaves” and the world becomes deserted, and on the other hand, the work of grief is that you crush it, it leaves you as a reality to become only a memory – if you want to live, you will not you can only live on the positive side of the initial loss,” Mr. Savvopoulos points out. But all too often, the reasons for guilt are social in nature, since the cultural environment largely determines how a person grieve, he notes.

“They seem very selfish, they feel like they are throwing a dead person into the ground, and they have a huge amount of guilt, some will not admit it, because some part of them feels that they have betrayed him,” he says. . They go so far as to say that it was their own person who “left” that was relieved, and not something in themselves. “But to a large extent this is a projection,” explains Mr. Savvopoulos, “of course, it also refers to the relief that the other person is no longer suffering, for example, if we are talking about a person with cancer, but there is also the relief of the educator, it’s a man.”
If grief develops normally, he adds, and if the mourner is all right with himself and in his relationship with the deceased, there is no guilt. “Innocent relief can be, if there were no conflicts – then the person himself is not ashamed of this relief,” he notes. The one who is in such a situation, again with a hitch, can say “I feel a little better, or now I will go outside and walk freely, I will not be afraid of the mobile phone ringing and go to the hospital, to tell how it is again a crisis or how he “leaves” today, “leaves” tomorrow,” states Mr. Savvopoulos.

When there is no guilt, only the pain of loss remains. “In this case, they say:“ I rested, but the pain of loss is very strong, ”this is a characteristic of mourning,” he emphasizes. In other cases, it may be a relief to waive the loss. Be that as it may, even when someone loses a very dear person, most often the desire to live is reflexively stronger than grief. “The desire to live in us selfishly asks to somehow say “you know, I’m alive” – that’s why sometimes you will see that there is a lot of laughter at the meal after the funeral, because people want to live,” Mr. Savvopoulos explains. “In response to this death, the anxiety of life awakens.”