Introduction

Loss and grief are an inevitable part of our human experience. You will have experienced many losses in your life in the RCMP or the military, some easily recognized, some not as much.

This topic focuses on various death and non-death losses that you may have experienced during service. You may not have recognized many of these experiences as losses. The grief from these losses may still impact you as a Veteran, as well as your family. Recognizing losses is an important step in responding to grief.

Some of the losses outlined in this topic may have caused moral injury – this includes events you may have witnessed, participated in, or been prevented from stopping, that were deeply disturbing. They may have shaken your moral code, challenged your values, beliefs and how you understand the world. Racism, discrimination in its many forms, and cultural identity loss, are also types of moral injury and are discussed here. Moral injury is challenging and may be experienced as deep grief and trauma.

This topic also focuses on injuries you may have suffered while in service that resulted in losses to your cognitive, emotional or physical well- being.

Although grief is most often associated with death, it is also a human response to any significant loss. We recognize that you may have experienced many other losses during your time in service. In other topics, we have discussed loss associated with leaving the service, with long absences, deployments, moves, sexual trauma and the death of a colleague, among others. You may find it helpful to review:

• Living with loss and grief
• Grief and trauma
• Death of a colleague 
• Transition out of service

This topic:

• Describes the types of events that may have led to feelings of loss and grief.
• Outlines the grief responses you may be having to those events.
• Offers strategies that may help.

Once you have reviewed this topic, we recommend that you visit Your grief roadmap. It will help you consider additional strategies for responding to your grief.