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Spoiler alert: The following contains details of the Season 3 third episode of “Succession” that aired April 9. Don’t read further until you’ve seen this episode of the HBO series.
HBO’s “Succession” shocked audiences Sunday night after killing off its patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox). Those who have powered through the five stages of grief, however, might not have felt shocked, so much as seen.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance were all on full display among Roy’s children; Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) grappled with the fact their father couldn’t be revived. It didn’t matter the complicated state of their relationship with him and the billions of dollars of business decisions at stake on the series: He was their dad and now he was dead.
And that’s what it’s like in real life, too. When someone dies unexpectedly, their loved ones’ world shifts. Without warning. Without time to process. What’s left is substantial trauma.
“When people experience sudden loss, they may feel shocked, disbelief, confused and even in denial,” Shavonne Moore-Lobban, a licensed psychologist, previously told USA TODAY. “The suddenness of the loss may be too much to process and feel too unreal for a person to immediately grasps.”
Grief is different for everyone, experts say, and the trauma of an unexpected death only compounds that grief.
“Sudden loss can be more shocking and people can feel less ‘prepared’ than they might with expected loss,” Moore-Lobban added. “However, it is still hard to prepare for anything that is life-altering, whether a person knew it was coming.”
Logan Roy’s sudden death, grief and regret
Behaviors around grief vary among individuals, communities and within family units.
Regret is one powerful emotion that accompanies grief. This is particularly poignant for the Roy children, none of whom had pleasant final interactions with their father.
“Even when the last interaction was positive, there can be regret that the last interaction may feel incomplete,” Moore-Lobban said. “Of course, there can also be sadness and anger as a response to sudden loss. Both of those can be connected to a need to make sense of something that may feel nonsensical.”
And don’t underestimate shock.
“Based on the literature, we see that the more common emotions experienced when someone dies suddenly are sadness, anger, shock and surprise,” said Jonathan Singer, director, Grief and Responses to Illness into Late Life Lab at Texas Tech University. “These emotions can then lead to other experiences, such as yearning for the person who has passed away.”
Sudden death, according to some research, can lead to more intense grief reactions, in addition to “higher rates of post-traumatic stress after the loss, especially if they witnessed the death or if they were told the details about the death,” Singer previously told USA TODAY.
How to help someone grieve
If you’re trying to comfort someone going through such a loss, don’t minimize their loss nor put a timetable to the grieving the process.
“There is no limit to grief and because it is a cycle or process, it will continue as long as it needs to for the person who is experiencing it,” Moore-Lobban said.
If you’re going through loss yourself, talk about it. This “might mean acknowledging it and being open with someone you trust, about how you are feeling,” Moore-Lobban said. “It might also include engaging in therapy with a mental health provider, which can be individual or group therapy. Talking about it can also occur by writing, meaning a person can journal about how they feel and what they are thinking.”
Read more about grief here:
More on trauma and sudden death:Lisa Marie Presley, Grant Wahl, Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss and the trauma of a sudden death
Important:Ashley Judd’s mother, Chrissy Teigen’s baby and why we’re so judgmental about grief
‘An incredible force’:Ellen DeGeneres, Michelle Obama, more mourn the death of Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss
My dad died of an incurable, rare disease.Six months later, the grief endures.
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