Wednesday 30 November 2011

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

For the first ten Christmases (and Easters, and Thanksgivings) of my daughter's life, she has been safe and loved within our extended, chosen family. This will be the first celebration of her life when that circle of love will be diminished by one. Our beloved Jutta will not be with us. She is dying and is not likely to be alive. At Thanksgiving we all said our goodbyes. We held each other. We cried. We said, "I love you." My daughter was part of all of that. But she has never lost a family member to death.

This Christmas will be different. There will be one less place setting at the table. There will be one less present for us under the tree. There will be things spoken and things left unsaid. There will be one less source of love in the room.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Not Everyone Falls Apart

Last month Zoomer magazine published an article challenging the idea that all people fall apart following a bereavement. They admit that their subjects were self-selected and a rather small sample, which may have biased the results of the study. I would have to agree with both statements: not everyone does fall apart, and that their choice of subjects did bias the outcome of the study. Zoomer magazine is one that is aimed at an aging populace, and those who have reached a mature age have probably experienced sufficient bereavement that they do not fall apart when faced with yet another. Sometimes, as we have discussed earlier, the death of a spouse has been long and difficult, making the death almost a relief. Life can now be resumed without the constraints of caring for the dying. Much of the burden of grief has already been released through the thousand goodbyes as the relationship slips away piece by piece. Often there has already been time to adjust to new roles and to find help with unfamiliar tasks. Thus, it may appear that some people do not grieve as deeply (read here "as well") as we might like.
For those of us who have lived through many bereavements, death becomes a natural end to life. We may no longer fall apart for long periods of time, but we do grieve. The sadness we feel may not devastate us or cause us to lose time at work. But, I would suggest, it is foolish to think that we are not grieving. When we lose our temper over relatively minor events, or rush into questionable relationships or committments, when we change jobs or pack up and move, we may in fact be responding to unresolved grief. I would caution those of us who do not fall apart to be especially gentle with ourselves, and to put off major decisions for at least 6 months, if possible.

Friday 14 October 2011

What is Multiple-Bereavement Grief?

     Studies have shown that it takes up to two years to move through all the work of grief following a single bereavement. So, what happens when those two years are interrupted by another death, or perhaps more? It's not so much that the load of grief increases, but rather that the work of grief gets postponed. Our hearts and minds can only deal with so much grief at one time. There is a natural "off" switch that kicks in when we are faced with multiple losses, and we may feel as if we are numb rather than overwhelmed.
     I have found that multiple-bereavement grief is very complex, but that it follows a path that is similar for different grievers. The book I am working on is about this unique path of grief. I will explore some of my findings in this blog at a later date. What I want to share right now is that the awareness of the importance of saying intentional goodbyes is one of the gifts that arises from experiencing multiple bereavements. When you have lost many friends or family members to death, death becomes a more normal part of living. It is no longer something to fear or avoid, but can be faced and addressed with those who are dying and with other supportive people.

Wednesday 12 October 2011

Intentional Goodbyes

On Thanksgiving weekend I had the blessing of being able to say goodbye to someone I love very much. She has been an important part of all of my family celebrations, every year since before my daughter was born. My daughter has never known a Christmas, Easter, or Thanksgiving without Jutta. But Jutta is dying of lung cancer. We all know that this will be her last gathering with us, her chosen family.
Saying goodbye to one I love who is dying may seem like an odd thing to list as one of my Thanksgiving blessings, but that is truly how I feel. At least we got to say how much we love each other one last time. We got to ask and answer some important questions. I was able to convey to her how integral a part of our future celebrations she will be: not just by her absence, but much more in all the memories and love that have been shared over the years. We got to hold each other, to walk together, to snuggle on the couch. We were able to be open-hearted when it mattered most.
I am so grateful that my friend did not die suddenly while alone in her home. I am grateful that she is surrounded by loved ones as she makes this final journey. I am sad. She is ready to go. I am ready to let her go. I cannot ask for more.

Monday 26 September 2011

Why Her? Why Him? Why not Me?

Sometimes we would give anything, even our own lives, to stop the dying of our beloved. Death never makes sense in the moment, even the death of the elderly. The death of a child or of a relatively young adult is especially unbearable. At these times we can be crushed by the feeling that “it should have been me.” Death brings us face to face with our own mortality, and raises deep questions about the meaning of life, our life.

When the anguish of early grief is past, a type of survivor guilt may possess us. We can’t understand why we are still alive while our loved one is gone. Trying to make sense of our life without our beloved is one of the toughest aspects of grief work. Sometimes, without our beloved it is difficult even to find meaning in our own existence. The work we have to do does not come easily or quickly. It takes months, even years, to find our way to affirming our own lives as significant and worthy. We have to live into our new realities and new names: widow, widower, child-less mother/father, orphan.

Survivor guilt is especially significant for those who have survived a trauma in which others have died. This is complicated grief, and may result in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Those suffering from this type of grief are strongly advised to seek professional help. Please know that you are not alone. There are others who can walk this road with you. If you are unable to seek help on your own, speak to someone who can direct you: your physician, your faith leader, a close friend.

Monday 19 September 2011

Grief and Therapy

I hope, by now, it is evident that I have a deep respect for therapists and for the therapeutic process. I have benefited many times throughout my life by spending time with wonderful, competent therapists. Yet, as I do more work in the area of grief and grieving, I become more convinced daily that a great deal of time and money is being spent on therapy when what is actually needed is simply somewhere to grieve. So many of us carry so much grief: we’ve lost lovers, friends, jobs, homes, pets. We’ve lost our youth, our energy, our faith. Add to that a significant death and we have a perfect storm of grief; with no where to express it, and no one to witness it. With no one to guide us, or help us feel like what we’re going through is normal. In this day and age it is easier to assume that we are losing our minds and that we need a therapist in order to “sort everything out.”

If this weren’t such a tragedy it would be amusing. Here we are, in North America, able to benefit from the insights of psychology and psychiatry, able to spout clichés about healing our inner child and getting free of co-dependency, yet unable to grasp the simple truth that grieving is a necessary part of living. We continually deny the depth of change and transformation that comes with death and loss. We don’t even have words to describe who we are without our sister, without our child, without our in-laws. It’s as if some types of grief can be recognized and affirmed, because they bestow names: widow, widower, orphan.

I wish that all of us who are carrying grief could simply be purple for a day, so that our grief could be witnessed and affirmed. I know that we like to have our protective walls up sometimes, especially at work. But, I think if we could meet our fellow travelers, the pathway of grief would not be so desolate. At the very least, we could be sharing our experience, strength and hope, as other self-help groups advocate. It seems to me that our grieving selves need to see the light of day if true healing is to happen. That light may be found in a therapist's office, but it might also be found in the eyes of a friend.

Can You Die of a Broken Heart?


            We probably know, or have heard of, spouses who die within a year of one another. We sometimes say, “He died of a broken heart.” What we mean is, people love one another so much that they literally die without each other. Or perhaps we mean that the weight of grief is too much for the surviving spouse to bear. Possibly, the work of grief is just too hard, and death is the way out. I do believe that people can die of a broken heart.      

     This begs the question, “Can someone die because of the hurt I have caused them?” When we have been the ones to inflict hurt on the dying person, we may find ourselves struggling with very difficult and conflicting feelings. I have known ex-spouses who endure overwhelming feelings of guilt if they were the ones who left the relationship. This is exacerbated when they left to follow an affair that began while they were still in relationship with the dying one.

     Sometimes, when we are in this situation, we don’t have access to the person who is dying. There is no chance to say goodbye, let alone to try to ask forgiveness for our behaviour in the past. Even when we do have access, when someone is dying is hardly the right time to say we are sorry. The one who is dying does not likely have the energy to make us feel better. Nor should this time in his or her life, be about us. The time for confessions, amends, and forgiveness is past. If we didn’t take it when our ex-partners were living, we cannot justify taking it now.

     The guilt that haunts us in these circumstances is ours, alone. It will complicate our grief work, and may linger much longer than the emotional pain of knowing that our former love has died. If we allow our pain to direct us to deepen our self-examination, and use the new insights we gain to avoid repeating painful patterns with others, this aspect of grief can be a gift. Again, this may be a situation in which therapy is called for.

Sunday 18 September 2011

I Feel Cheated.

Often when someone we love dies we have unfinished business with him or her. There are things we’ve never said, secrets we’ve never revealed, confessions we have not made or received. When the person is gone forever we suddenly realize how hopeless our situation is: we can never rectify or have rectified the wrongs that stood between us. The time for making amends, on both sides, is utterly gone. We cannot get even the hope, the possibility, of healing or forgiveness back.

When the dying person has hurt us, our need for them to confess their knowledge of what they did, even just in secret to us alone, may overwhelm us as we see them moving away from us. The death of an abuser will naturally trigger deep angers and fears. We may feel that we want to strike out, to wound, to exact revenge or justice, as if dying was not good enough. Indeed, dying is not good enough to heal the wounds the dying one has inflicted. But our release from the anger and hurt we carry will rarely come from the other, the one who caused the pain. Our release, our healing must come from within. Hearing the words, “I’m sorry,” before it’s too late, may help, but in the long run we must do the hard work of giving life to ourselves from the inside out. A wise therapist is called for to help with this process.

When the abuser is a parent or spouse, our feelings as they die are further complicated by the fact that we have also loved him or her. We may feel guilty for having loved this person, or guilty for wanting him or her to love us differently than they have. We may feel guilty for the times when we wished he or she would die, as if our wishing it were somehow powerful enough to make it happen. We may have feelings of guilt about our own worth, tormenting ourselves with all of the, “If only I had” s.
Again, work with a competent therapist is called for in order to sort through these conflicting and self-deprecating feelings.

In the absence of a therapist there are some things that may help. Finding a room where we can scream, punch pillows, or kick boxes can give us some of the physical release we need. Confronting our dying one by “talking to” an empty chair may also help us find relief. Writing letters, throwing stones into water, jumping on a trampoline, or just stomping lets some of our pent up anger find a place outside of our bodies. Letting the anger out is an essential part of the work of grief.
I will deal with the guilt that comes from feeling that we have somehow abused the dying one in my next posting.

Monday 12 September 2011

Grief Surfaces In Little Things

The other day I was speaking to a friend whose mother died this past summer. I was reminded again of how often our sadness finds us at unexpected moments, and often in the most ordinary of circumstances. When someone we have loved for many years dies, our minds have to grasp the reality on many different levels. The most obvious level is the cold hard facts of death: the last breath has been drawn, the last words spoken or left unsaid, the beloved's body has been taken from us. The physical aspects of death are difficult enough to comprehend. Yet even when we have coped with those stark realities, our brains are slow to grasp the full meaning of our loved one's eternal absence. Our minds still get caught in the, "Oh, I must talk to ... about that." We see a good movie or read a great book, and suddenly realize that we can't share our find with the one we loved. We begin to realize that pieces of our own history have died with our loved one. There is no longer one who can remember certain events with us, or tell us of our family history, or sing the family songs with us.
It is natural for our sadness to deepen over the first few months of bereavement, not lessen. Our initial searing pain gives way to a much deeper understanding of just how much we have lost, just which aspects of our lives will never be the same again. At the precise time when others are expecting us to be "getting over it," we are, in fact, just getting into it. It usually takes 6 months for us to fully grasp how life has changed, and to grieve all of the losses incurred with the death of our beloved.
My friend is no longer a mother's daughter. She can no longer call up for a recipe or share some news about her own daughters. She is on the journey of bereavement, and the waves of sadness will continue to arrive unexpectedly, for quite some time.

Friday 26 August 2011

Public Outpouring of Grief

Jack Layton, the leader of our country's opposition party, died on Monday. Since then, he has been given the honour of a state funeral, complete with lying in state in the House of Commons in Ottawa, and in the rotunda of the Toronto City Hall. Thousands of members of the public have lined up for hours for their chance to file past his coffin and write in his memory book.
What can it mean that so many people are expressing deep grief during these visits? Some, of course, are there to express respect, but many are finding themselves overwhelmed by grief. Can such a mass of people all be grieving at once? Watching the TV coverage, the answer has to be, "Yes."
In this public outpouring of admiration and grief, we can witness again how important it is to allow people to grieve individually and collectively. So often, we find ourselves in shock and disbelief when a loved one dies, and we don't always feel the deep grief at the time of the funeral. Public memorial services, whether for virtual strangers, or those designed by hospitals or funeral homes to mourn people who have died in a given year, give a social sanction to our need to mourn. Those times allow us to be in touch with our loss of hope, our fear for the future, our need to reconnect with the one(s) who has died.
This past week has been a living testimonial to the importance of allowing people to grieve. Grief is a universal and powerful emotion. It can bind strangers and separate loved ones. It can paralyze us, and motivate us. It can reinforce our beliefs, or tear those beliefs to shreds. Grief is the heartbeat of compassion.
Rest in peace, Jack, and may your family find the peace that passes all understanding.

Tuesday 23 August 2011

I thought this was all over.

As I was working on my book today, I was recounting the funeral of my spiritual soul mate, Sylvia. I found that I had to take time out from the writing to sob, and sob, and sob. I felt like her death had happened yesterday. Or, perhaps, I found the freedom to feel all the grief I had needed to suppress in order to get through that funeral. I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that such deep mourning indicates to me that I still have emotional and spiritual work to do that is somehow connected to Sylvia's death. Her death left me devoid of a spiritual companion at that time. Her death, and my grief led to the demise of my congregation and the loss of my ministry. So much is tangled up with the death of a beloved. I am still trying to figure out just exactly who I am in ministry without her. I am so thankful for Katherine, the love of my life, and our beautiful daughter, Anna. Sylvia never got to know Katherine well, or to see Anna. My life has gone on, and is a constant source of wonder to me. Yet, there still linger the shadows of grief and the work of learning to live fully in the world without the ones I've lost.

Thursday 11 August 2011

Guilt and Grief

When we've been waiting a while for death to come to a loved one, there can be a sense of relief when he or she actually dies. Our lives will no longer be ruled by hospital visits or home care burdens. We will no longer have to watch our beloved wasting away or listen to moans of pain. The death really is "for the best." Yet, we feel guilty for those thoughts, and if anyone dares to voice them, we feel a spurt of anger. The emotions of grief are so confusing.


We may feel, rightly or wrongly, that we are somehow responsible for the death. This type of guilt is especially present when death comes through accident or suicide. Surely there must have been something I could have/should have done to prevent this horror. Many of the grievers in these situations will be blaming themselves or each other. I strongly urge professional help for those suffering this type of bereavement guilt.


There is also survivor guilt - why am I alive when my beloved is dead? Again, this will be extreme if we have survived an accident in which another died. But in its lesser form, it is usually present as a normal part of grief. Death is no respecter of persons. It may feel to us as though the best, the brightest, the smartest, the most... has been taken away, while we are left to carry on. We may feel frightened and unequal to the tasks ahead. Why couldn't we have died instead? What is so special about us that we are alive when our loved one is dead?


Finally, there may be guilt involved in grief due to an unresolved aspect of our relationship with the deceased. We find ourselves endlessly wrestling with questions: why didn't I..? why did I...? what if I had...? When death happens there are always many things left unsaid, many acts left undone. We always have regrets. Now we will have to work out our own solutions without the one who has died.

Feelings of guilt are a normal part of grief. In most cases we manage to let go of the guilt, as we realize it has no point. If guilt becomes paralyzing during the grieving period, we probably need professional help. Talking things out in a safe environment can help us resolve issues even without our loved one's presence.





















Thursday 4 August 2011

When You're not Supposed to Grieve

Sometimes we are forced to grieve alone, in silence, because no one knows the depth of our connection to the one who has died. Sometimes no one knows that we even exist. Sometimes we are known, but not recognized as part of the group of legitimate grievers. Perhaps we were a secret lover, an ex-partner, a divorced spouse. Perhaps we find ourselves excluded by homophobic families or churches when our lovers or friends die. Perhaps our loved one has "gone home to die," and we are left without an outlet for our grief. Or, maybe, we simply feel that no one knew how close we really were.
No matter what the circumstances that cause this, we are dealing with exclusion as grievers. Our grieving is compounded by a deep sense of isolation. We may even be forced to hide our grief entirely, crying only when we are sure of being alone. It is extremely difficult to do the work of grief in a conscious way when we can't even acknowledge that we are grieving. It becomes essential that we understand our own grief, and take special care to make spaces for it. Grief symbols and private rituals will help, and joining a bereavement group may lessen the intensity of our feelings of isolation. As with any grieving, it is important to be able to tell our stories over and over again. Finding a friend, pastor, counsellor or group is even more important when dealing with disenfranchised grief.
I want to say a word to those of us who are in ministry. When we conduct the funerals of our congregants, we are often disenfranchised grievers. We are there to facilitate the grieving of our people, but we are expected to be calm, composed and comforted by our faith. Our reality may be quite different. We, too, may have lost a loved one, a friend, a significant member of our circle of support. We may also have walked with this person through the dying process. The death may have been completely unexpected, or especially traumatic. We carry all of our knowledge of the person, the family and the situation into the worship service. We probably also know of other difficult situations being lived by other members of the grieving congregation. As pastors, we have to try to hold all of this grief inside, while staying emotionally open and present. This adds up to a heavy burden. And the load gets heavier with every funeral.
I strongly encourage my clergy friends to find a holy companion. Find someone who can listen to your grief stories. Find someone who will affirm your right to grieve. Give yourself permission to take regular time in your week to sit with those who have gone before, and to feel whatever you need to feel. Refusing to understand our own grief will ultimately lead to burn-out or compassion fatigue, neither of which will serve us or anyone else.

Sunday 31 July 2011

The load of grief we carry.

I attended a funeral this week. I went to honour the life of someone from my congregation. I didn't know her very well, but she had made my life at church richer every time we met. Even though I was not grieving a deep loss at this particular funeral, I found myself close to tears several times during the service. I was reminded, once again, that every funeral we attend adds to the grief we carry. We bring to each funeral all of the other funerals we have attended, particularly when more than one person dies in any given year. When we lose someone we loved deeply, the grief of that loss will overlie all subsequent losses. Our load of grief gets heavier.
Attending a funeral may feel impossible when we are in deep grief, or when we are deeply in anticipatory grief. We feel as if we are attending the funeral of our loved one, and his or her death, past or imminent, consumes our attention and emotions. We may feel guilty about this. We may feel we should be putting those feelings aside for now, and grieving instead for the one whose funeral we are at. But, we are not robots. We cannot so easily compartmentalize our feelings. We cannot simply switch off our pain, our memories, and stay present to the moment we are in. We will naturally react with sadness, emptiness, despair over the loss of our beloved whenever we grieve the next death or deaths.

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Just die, already!

There is a unique time of grieving that happens before someone we love dies, especially when the dying process is protracted. Our grief is focused on all of the parts of our loved one we have lost: the wit, the imagination, the sense of humour, the caring and love - in essence, all of the traits that made that person an individual. All of those things have slipped or been stripped away by disease or drugs, or both.
If the person dying is someone with whom we share our lives intimately, or daily, there will be grief a thousand times a day. There will be an empty place at the table, no one to drive us to the store, no extra hands for the many chores of living, no one with whom to share the little events that make up our days.
This grieving is all-pervasive, and yet is the grief that is acknowledged the least by those around us. After all, our loved one is still alive. How can we be so terribly sad? But, we ARE grieving, and this grief takes a huge emotional toll on us every waking minute.
If the person who is dying is not in hospital or hospice care, we may have the added burden of caring for him or her physically, as well. Again, this is extremely costly in terms of physical and emotional energy; and the cost is not limited to us. The time we are forced to spend with our dying loved one may cause tensions for us in our jobs, our families, our other support networks of friends, spiritual communities, neighbours. It may impact us financially, as we take time off, or pay for supplies like Depends, or food supplements. People just don't understand what we are going through. They can't possibly know how difficult it is to be us. They have no idea how to help.
We have lost our lives, in some ways, and we are not the one who is dying. At some point, we want our lives back. We want to be restored to some facsimile of the life we had, even if it can only be through the death of this one whom we have loved, but who has now become a stranger.
Wishing, hoping,waiting for someone we have loved deeply to die, may feel to us like the ultimate betrayal. Actually, it is an opportunity; an opportunity to begin learning not to judge ourselves so harshly. One of the complicating factors in all grief work is that we judge ourselves to be "doing it wrong." Emotions are morally neutral. They are not good or bad in and of themselves. Wanting our loved one to die is not "incredibly selfish," or an indicator that we are somehow unloving. It is simply that we have, to a huge degree, already lost the person. We are tired. We are deeply wounded. We are stressed. We have nothing left to give.
We need to let ourselves off the hook of judgement, and take care of ourselves. We need to find respite care, through organizations dealing with specific illnesses. We need to go for ice-cream, see a movie, stay home and go to bed early. We need to reach out to others, or let them reach in to us. We need to make lists of things others can do for us: laundry, shopping, even vacuuming, making meals. And then we need to let them do it.
Wanting an end to the dying process is simply human. Be gentle with yourself.

Saturday 23 July 2011

The Black Arm-Band

In an earlier post I was talking about the need for a grief symbol. We each need something that will remind us, hourly, daily, that we are grieving. This will give us permission to label our feelings more accurately: we'll know we are sad, not depressed; we'll know we are grieving, not rage-aholics. It allows us to be gentle with ourselves, when the world around us is too often critical.
But someone wrote to say that this blog helped alleviate some of the sense of loneliness that is a part of grief. Which got me thinking, again, about the role of the black arm-band. The arm-band not only shows the world that we are grieving, it enables us to recognize our fellow grievers. How amazing it would be in the darkness of grief to be able to see others who are on the same pathway. How encouraging it would be to see other grievers who are able to laugh, make plans, have hope.
So, let's be more intentional about sharing our experience, strength and hope with each other through this blog. Please send in your comments. I may ask if I can use some of them in my book later on. In the meantime, your comments would be welcomed by many. Thank you for reading and writing with me.

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Is it grief or depression?

The fact that our culture does not teach us anything about grief means that we have a lot of myths about it in our minds. These myths cause us to doubt our sanity and to judge ourselves harshly, precisely when we need most to be gentle with ourselves. One of those myths is that any sadness is depression. This myth disenfranchises us as grievers.
It would seem redundant to say that when we are grieving we will be sad. Yet, this is precisely the aspect of grief which is judged the most harshly. Being sad very quickly becomes labelled as being depressed. We deny ourselves the time we need to be sad by fearing this label, whether it comes from inside or from someone else. In our society, being depressed is associated with mental illness. No one wants to be thought of as mentally ill, so we do our best to hide our sadness, even from ourselves.
So, what's the difference? How do I know if it is sadness or depression? This is tricky, because the feeling of being utterly bereft that follows the death of our beloved comes with many of the same feelings as are found in depression: loss of interest in life, inability to make decisions, lethargy regarding self-care. When we are experiencing the sadness of grief it is natural to go through periods of these feelings, accompanied by some degree of withdrawal from our social connections. During our grieving period we will move into and out of sadness.
Depression, on the other hand, is the prolonged and constant presence of an inability to engage in living. Depression is characterized by the prolonged and continuous presence of:
-major deterioration in hygiene habits
-difficulty in simple decision making
-expressions of fear, anger, or guilt
-hyperactivity or compulsive talking
-memory problems and confusion
-concern over hallucinations (seeing or hearing things not actually present)
-major disturbance of self-esteem, preoccupation with worthlessness, and self-condemnation
-withdrawal
-significant impairment of social functioning
-initiating or increasing drug and/or alcohol abuse
-physical complaints or symptoms including failure to eat, continued weight loss, extreme problems sleeping.[1]
The major difference, then, between sadness and depression is that depression is unrelenting. Even in our times of most profound sadness we will feel moments of happiness and love. If the symptoms above are temporary, they are part of grieving. If they are constant and persist for more than 6 weeks, we are probably depressed, and need to consult a professional.
We need to embrace our sadness, no matter how desolating it may seem, whenever it comes. We need to sit with it and pay attention to it, or our grieving will simply be pushed into our unconscious. If we are having times of sadness, even lasting days, we are grieving, not depressed.


[1] Leonard M. Zunin, and Hilary Stanton Zunin, The Art of Condolence: What to Write, What to Say, What to Do at a Time of Loss, (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.), 213-214

Friday 15 July 2011

It's Been 18 Years!

Yesterday afternoon I re-watched It's My Party. Wow, what an emotional workout that was. It never ceases to amaze me how deep the grief I carry is, how "in this moment" it feels. It is not true that the hole inside heals, in the sense that it disappears. Rather, my experience of grief long after the death, is that the most excruciating pain of the hole is held by gentle, loving hands. These hands offer up my grief for my attention every now and then. I like to think of my deepest griefs in this way, because I don't experience grief as a diminishment. On the contrary, I am richer, fuller, more human because of the grief I suffer. The hands inside that hold my griefs are parts of me that have woven themselves into the very fabric of who I am.
Sometimes when the grief is offered up for my attention it feels as though my deceased loved one is holding the hole, asking me to spend time remembering and grieving. Other times it feels like a divine offering, as if God or the universe was inviting me to go more deeply into my pain. I recognize spiritual truth in the stories of the disciples "seeing" Jesus after his death: in eacth encounter, Jesus is both transformed and transformative. He is recognized by his wounds, and those who followed him are wounded for new life.

Friday 8 July 2011

Having a Grief Symbol

In my last post, I was thinking about our need to cry when we are grieving. I also mentioned that we tend to carry our grief in silence, day in and day out. Which brings me to an important point: we, and we alone, must give ourselves permission to grieve. Our society will try its best to deny us our right to grieve by telling us we should be "over that by now." This telling comes in many different guises. Often we get that message as much by silence as by actual spoken words. We find our friends and relatives no longer ask how we're doing. We find they won't talk about our deceased loved one. We find they can't bear to hear us rehearse the story one more time.
This is why I find it important to find a grief symbol that I can wear or carry with me. It reminds me of the fact that I am grieving, much like the wearing of a black armband used to do. In some cultures widows still wear black to the day they die. In the west, we need to find our own ways of wearing black. For me, it's a necklace, with 3 pendants. I bought all three pendants, one for myself and one for each of two parnters. The other two women have died, so I find myself in possession of all three pendants once again. Whenever someone close to me dies, I wear the necklace for at least six months.
The symbol my be something else, something you do, like a bubble bath, or attending a play. I believe that when Jesus was telling his disciples, "When you do this, remember me," he was giving them a grief symbol. Find out what "this" is, that will allow you to remember your beloved, and spend time with your grief.

When I need a good cry.

Last night, just as I was heading to bed, I happened to notice that the film, Steel Magnolias was on TV. This is one of my all-time favourite movies. It always makes me laugh and cry, in almost equal measures. I have never seen grief so boldly and accurately portrayed on screen.

There have been times in my life, when grief has piled upon grief, that I have felt an emotional numbness that is beyond tears. I have found myself raging over trivial frustrations, or lashing out at those I care about most, with little provocation. Sometimes, I have noticed that I hurt myself by bumping into walls, shutting cupboard doors on my fingers, tripping over things, all of which, I finally clue in, are designed to help me free up my tears so I can stop over-reacting to everyday situations. When I reach that state, I reach for Steel Magnolias, or Philadelphia Story, or Truly, Madly, Deeply. Sometimes we need a safe outlet for our tears, something that will allow us to access the deep grief we carry in silence day in and day out. A movie is the key for me. I recommend it.

Thursday 30 June 2011

An Outline of the Work of Grief

Many years ago, Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross proposed 5 stages of death and dying: anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance. While others have since used, abused, criticized, and added to her stages, the fact remains that she was the pioneer in helping us understand that momentous life events do not elicit simple, straightforward responses. She was unrelentingly willing to stay present to hundreds of people as they died, and by doing so, she paved an indisputably important path. Her work gave voice to the complexity of human responses in the face of death and dying. People finally had language to express the myriad of emotions both they and their loved ones were experiencing as death became forcefully part of life.

Kubler-Ross understood that the stages she outlined were not meant to imply a linear pathway. She realized that individuals moved into and out of, and into again, the various stages in her schema. What she was able to demonstrate and document was that each stage, when encountered, brought with it a different range of emotions, and demanded different responses from the individuals in those stages. A person who is dealing with denial will feel, think, and act differently from one who is dealing with anger or bargaining. Through her work she taught us that there was important emotional, psychological, and spiritual work to be done in different ways, in different stages.

The stages of death and dying remain a place to begin when trying to understand what we are talking about when we speak of the work of grief. From the time of diagnosis, or the time of trauma from sudden death, we will face a wild ride on an emotional roller-coaster. Denial, anger, and bargaining all consume us in equal parts, as we feel ourselves spinning out of control. The fact is, we are out of control. The death, present or impending, is beyond our control and so are our responses.

Likewise, there are predictable stages of grief, with attendant emotional, psychological, and spiritual work to be done during each stage. Like the stages of death and dying, they do not happen in a linear way, and they do not come with a road map or GPS. Rather than envisioning a straight path through grief, it is probably more helpful to picture a spiral, a path that continually doubles back on itself as we revisit the stages over time.
While time does not heal grief, it does lend perspective, and the perspective means that we are different when we revisit stages of grief we have previously passed through.

As a simple outline, which I will enlarge upon in time, the stages of grief are stages of integration: of the facts; of a new reality; of the deceased in our living; of others. In the case of multiple bereavement grief, which occurs when we have lost two or more significant people within two years, there is an added, prolonged time of grieving that I call entombment. In the unique situations where death has been by suicide, or where we are outside the grieving community for whatever reason, there are additional challenges inherent in the grieving process. All of these I will write about over the course of the next few months.

Monday 27 June 2011

A Thousand Goodbyes

When we have the work of saying goodbye to our beloved before he or she dies, we will experience both the crisis and the gift of that extended time. The gift, obviously, is that the beloved is still present, still in the world. The crisis is that so much of the person, and so much of our relationship with the person, has already died. Even before that last breath is taken, so much has been taken from us.

Among the first things to die are the dreams, the hopes, the plans we shared for the future. Even when we still dare to hope for a miracle, eventually we face the shock of realizing that we will not make that trip, we will not share those hoped for moments, we will not have one more ... Our dreams come crashing down on us like an immense weight, suffocating the life out of us. We have begun to grieve.

The next to die are those aspects of the relationship that gave it such richness; intimacy, both emotional and sexual; equality, of energy and enthusiasm; shared day to day experiences; simple phone calls at the end of the day. We grieve to find ourselves increasingly alone.

If the one dying is a friend, there may be a total loss of relationship, even long before death. The one who is dying will have an ever-diminishing circle of caring. They may not be able or willing to see people beyond their immediate care-givers. They may "go home to die," in a variety of ways that excludes us. For any number of reasons, we may not be recognized as part of the inner circle. We experience being utterly bereft and helpless to change that deep lonliness, long before death has occured. We have begun to grieve.

If our beloved has an illness that affects their minds and memories, we lose our relationship in bits and pieces. Shared memories are lost. Names from the present are lost. Names from the past are lost. Our names are lost. A terrible grieving begins. How can a mother forget her child? How can a father not recognize his own son? How can a partner of 30 years not know my name? "Come BACK!" we scream, into the ears of a seemingly deaf universe. We grieve through a thousand goodbyes.

Friday 24 June 2011

The work of grief

The old adage says, "Time heals all wounds." Nothing could be further from the truth. There are still huge holes in my being where people I loved belong. Bearing the pain of their loss becomes less oppressive, but only over a long period of time. Making the pain more manageable (note I do not say, "making the pain go away"), involves being willing to engage it, rather than avoid it. All of us find it easier to numb the pain - with drugs, alcohol, busy-ness, or other consuming passions. And, of course, life does go on, with its demands and responsibilities. We do, to some degree, have to move past the initial, immobilizing pain of our bereavement.
The essential thing to know, however, is that our grief is not so easily dismissed. In the first few months of bereavement we will be forced by our own consciousness into a gradual awareness of the fact that our beloved is dead. Our culture would have us do away even with the word "dead," in favour of "passed on", or some other euphemism. Yet our minds slowly, reluctantly, stubbornly force us to realize that our world has fundamentally changed. In the midst of our attempts to numb the pain, we hear a song, we catch a scent, we revisit a well-loved cafe, and suddenly we find ourselves overwhelmed by grief. Perhaps the hardest moments are the milliseconds when our hearts stop because we have seen our beloved in a crowd, or in a passing car. We know he or she is dead, but our mind is still yearning in such a profound way, that we think we actually see, just for a second, the one we love so much.
In our death-denying, grief-denying world we may be tempted to think that we must be going crazy. Yet, what is actually happening is that we are being brought face to face with the reality of deep grief. It is at this point that we can begin to engage our grief, to welcome it, to allow it the space, time, attention it deserves. It is at this point that we can begin to do the work necessary to make our pain an integral part of our lives. The pain and loss are ours, anyway. Far better to engage it and be transformed by it, than to numb it.

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Why am I still crying?

Thankyou, Norm, for commenting on the link, "Give Grief A Chance." I sometimes think that those of us who know what the real work of grief is like should send bereavement cards on the six-month anniversary of someone's loss. We need a tangible way of telling people that it is essential to keep telling the stories and talking about the loss, naming the beloved aloud, even years after the death.
When I say that the deep work of grief begins after the six-month mark, it's because until then we are essentially unaware of how permanent the loss is. We may have extreme feelings of emptiness, anger, abandonement, and overwhelming saddness in the wake of the death. Yet, even as we are consumed by our emotions, our intellect has retreated into numbness. We know that our beloved has died, but there is something in the mind that continues to hope, continues to "disbelieve", continues to convince us that this cannot be real, that somehow, some day, we will wake up from the nightmare.
It is during the first year following the death that our minds are confronted by the real extent of our loss. It's the birthdays not celebrated, the celebrations not shared, the accomplishments never seen. These are the things that make the loss sink in with a fresh fierceness of grief. We find we must begin all over again to acknowledge the death, grieve the loss, and figure out who we are without our beloved. Thus begins the real work of grief.

Monday 20 June 2011

Give grief a chance - The United Church Observer

Give grief a chance - The United Church Observer

I would recommend this article to anyone wrestling with issues around grief and funerals. I have been to some horrific funerals, used to lambaste the congregation with threats of eternal damnation. I have also been to funerals in which lives were celebrated and losses grieved, all at the same time. It seems to me that our society is always ready to deny us the space and time to grieve. If we give away our one permitted arena, the funeral, we risk losing even that small opportunity.
That being said, however, as agonizing as those first few days following a death may be, our deep grief does not usually begin until about six months after the funeral. It takes that long for us to fully realize that our loved one is gone. Until then, each time we walk through the door, or hear the phone ring, we still have that moment of thinking, "Oh, that's probably..." And then our hearts die a little more, as the hole inside us gets bigger. When we finally realize that our loved one is gone, the work of deep grief begins.

Sunday 19 June 2011

A Mother's Grief

On Friday, June 17, Betty Fox died, and Canada lost a most amazing role model. It is true that no parent should ever have to bury a child. Yet, having lived with her son through his courageous and traumatic battles with cancer, his cross-Canada run, and through his final struggles and death at the age of 22, Betty found the strength and courage to turn her grief into a catalyst for a life of humanitarian service. Just 3 months after Terry's death, Betty organized the first Terry Fox Run at more than 760 sites across Canada. Her great courage and relentless energy will be greatly missed. For a photo tribute, go to http://www.thestar.com/ and scroll down to the slide show. Rest in peace, Betty.

Saturday 18 June 2011

Grief at work

In the staff room the other day, I mentioned starting this blog. Immediately, every person at the table started talking about grief, and about how agonizing it is, and how little we know about it. Only one person knew that the grieving process takes a minimum of 2 years, just to "get through." Everyone agreed that you never "get over" the loss of someone deeply loved; the pain just gets less invasive and more bearable.
What struck me, yet again, is how little we share with each other what is actually going on in our lives. When did, "Fine, thanks." become the only appropriate answer to, "How are you?" I think there is a belief in all of us that we couldn't possible cope with each others' grief, let alone stay present to our own and be honest about it. We believe that we would be overwhelmed by the weight of it all, that we would somehow drown in the sadness. I am beginning to suspect, however, that we refuse to stay open to our pain and the pain of others at a terrible price; the price of our mind, body, spirit wholeness. We numb ourselves, hide ourselves, protect ourselves with food, alcohol, pills, work, sex, and a host of other escapes. Then we wonder why we have no energy, carry so much weight, use so many OTC drugs, and why the checkout person at the liquor store knows us by sight. I believe our route to healing many of these things lies directly through the grief we are trying to hide from. To paraphrase Ghandi, the only way through is through. I suspect that this journey I am on now is one of creating my own road- map through to my deepest self. Too bad we have no GPS for the life of the soul.

Wednesday 15 June 2011

In the tomb

Sometimes grief feels like entombment, as if we have entered a cave, and someone has rolled a big rock over the opening. There is nothing but darkness in our hearts, minds, spirits. There is a sense that we can't move, can't get enough air, can't see a way forward. And, the truth is, we can't. We must enter into this time of darkness. We must rest there, if rest is the right word. We must let ourselves simply stop. The trouble is, the world wants us to keep moving, expects us to keep moving, demands that we keep moving. Others are uncomfortable with us stopping in our grief. We must give ourselves permission.

Tuesday 14 June 2011

Going Crazy

My memories of my grief when my partner Joan died in 1986 are as clear today as if they happened yesterday. I recall being in Shoppers' Drug Mart a day or two after her death, and suddenly standing still, unable to move, unable to breathe. Most of all, I was unable to make any sense out of anything I could see. What were all these people doing? What was all this stuff on the shelves? Why was buying and selling going on when Joan was dead? How could life just go on, as if nothing had happened?
I think I stood there frozen for a matter of seconds, although it felt like forever. I wanted to scream, or throw things, or ... instead I put down the things in my hand and left the store. Everything in my world had changed. Nothing in the outside world had changed. Reconciling that seemed impossible.

Monday 13 June 2011

Let's talk!

I have spent many years grieving, studying grief, and teaching about grief. Now I want to talk - especially to talk to others who are grieving or wondering what grief is all about. I will post some of my thoughts on this page from time to time, but I want to hear from you, too.
To get started, I believe that every death is a sudden death. Even when we have days, weeks, or months to prepare for the death of a loved one, that final breath comes as a shock. Deaths that occur quickly and unexpectedly carry their own unique burden of grief, but the finality is the same. There is no more room for negotiating any aspect of the relationship with the deceased. Everything we had with them has died with that final breath.