Then convention took over, and I found my voice. “Thank you,” I said to the surgeon, taking his hands in mine, “for everything you did to try to save him.” Mechanically, I turned to the next set of hands, and the next, thanking each person as they all watched me warily. I’m sure they thought that as soon as the words sank in, I’d fall to the ground.

I was in shock. But I was also aware of a bewildering mix of sadness, anger and, as hard as it was to admit, overwhelm-ing relief. The truth was, I had been unhappy in my marriage for several years and had kept up appearances as I tried to salvage our floundering relationship. I was initially very confused about what to do with the feelings I was having. I was equally aware, even in those earliest moments, that I must be careful to act like a grieving widow, and hide my relief from a world that would surely misunderstand. It was the beginning of a masquerade I would carry on for the next two years.

From the outside, my husband and I had an ideal marriage. He was the successful young doctor and I was his lucky wife. People would never have guessed that I would have traded my “luck” for their unhappiness any day. My husband had rigid and unreasonable expectations of how a proper doctor’s wife should look and act. He forbade me to go back to work or to school after the birth of our daughter. He belittled me, never treating me as his equal. Preoccupied with appearances, he always put my feelings last.

I was only 27, and couldn’t face the prospect of spending the rest of my life in a failed and unhappy marriage. One day in February of 1985, I told him I wanted a divorce. The next day he was dead, killed almost instantly when his compact car was hit by a semi truck on a dark stretch of highway.

Years later, in my counseling practice, I encountered others experiencing losses like mine, losses in which the predominant emotion was relief. But I, their counselor, was the only one they felt safe admitting it to. To be glad someone is dead is a powerful taboo in our culture, and when the bereaved don’t hew to society’s expectations, they are ridiculed, feared and shunned–the last thing someone grieving, however “nontraditionally,” needs. Americans have adopted the “five stages of grief” as a straitjacket, an edict on how to grieve, and woe unto the person whose behavior doesn’t fit the mold.

But there are many reasons that someone might feel relief when someone dies. Mental illness and addictions can turn the person you love into a monster. One woman told me that she’d loved her husband only when he was sober. Often a family member is adept at presenting one face to the world and quite another to his family, much as my husband was. “I felt like I’d wandered into the wrong funeral,” a woman exclaimed after her abusive, alcoholic brother died. She was stunned by the scores of flower arrangements and effusive tributes.

Relief when a child dies feels particularly shameful, yet who could criticize the couple whose baby, if he had lived, would have required round-the-clock nursing care? Or the mother whose severely mentally retarded preteen daughter died during an epileptic seizure? A woman whose mentally ill teenage son committed suicide still grieves the brilliant child she raised, but doesn’t miss lying awake wondering if this would be the night the phone would ring with grim news.

And then there are those who suffered from chronic physical illness: the cancer that kept recurring, the Alzheimer’s victims who had died inside years earlier when they stopped recognizing family members. Pain control during terminal illness is still inexact at best, causing both the dying and their families untold suffering. At the dawn of the 21st century, we’re very good at prolonging life but not quality of life. One woman described her mother’s death from a series of strokes: “She went through hell, and she took us with her.”

It may make us uncomfortable, or even anger us, but we must realize that it’s never our place to force someone to grieve in a way that we find acceptable. When someone dies, the bereaved family members must be forgiven if they are pleased to be getting their lives back, even if they can’t say it out loud.