THE JOURNEY OF GRIEF

Last week I made the point that when encountering grief - yours or somebody else's journey through the natural, normal response to loss in our everyday lives - it is important to remember that the suffering and sorrow of grief is a long journey when the loss is something of great meaning: a close family member, one's health - or a even a career.

What often makes the journey more difficult is our cultural discomfort with grief. 

We don't like to acknowledge or accept loss of any kind. Especially death. Even though it sounds ridiculous, if we were to admit it, most of us believe in the depths of our hearts that we will not die. If I eat healthy and exercise I won't die. If I stop smoking I won't die. Ever. The everyday encounter with death is a great shock to us - there's a sense of failure about it. 

That's why most people aren't given the time they need to grieve. There's an expectation that it should be over and done with in days - or weeks at the most. Friends and relatives don't like to be around grieving people - they're a downer. (Get over it.) Or the the grieving person is a source of worry - maybe they're getting depressed ... or they won't be able to cope. (What'll happen then?) 

A grieving person is evidence before our eyes that we can't always feel good - that the ideal of perpetual, unrelenting happiness is an illusion. Unless, of course the meaning of happiness is expanded to include the reality of loss and the response to it. But that's not something we like to consider - sadness, pain and sorrow as part of happiness? That's an oxymoron if ever there was one. 

Anything other than a feel-good definition of happiness doesn't make sense to us. In the face of grief and the grieving person (including ourselves) we find ourselves needing distraction, cheering up, mood-altering. The idea of acknowledging our pain, allowing it to run its course - of somehow befriending it, talking about it and feeling the loss deeply, strikes most of us as morbid. 

But therein lies the paradox. The way to transcend the experience of grief is directly through it. We have to undertake the journey, and most of us are too afraid. 

Death is part of life. And it must be given respectful attention.

Consider the analogy of a wound - say your arm is cut. There are a few possible responses: one is to make sure it is kept clean and covered with proper bandages. You pay attention to it - clean and change the dressings as needed. Pretty soon it begins to heal. The bleeding stops. The pain diminishes as a scab covers the wound over. If you guard it from further injury, with time the wound heals. You may be left with a scar, and on certain days, years later, there may be a flare-up of pain. Maybe a change in temperature will cause it to ache briefly for the rest of your life. 

Another way to respond to being cut is to slap a moleskin over the wound and ignore it. You pretend its not there and carry on as if nothing has happened. Of course we know that the result will be a festering, infected sore that will cause no end of problems down the road. The wound, if ignored and not tended properly, will become a threat to your long term happiness - maybe even your life. 

You cannot avoid grief. Sooner or later you will have to go through it. 

Grieving people have taught me a lot. I remember a lady many years ago who came to see me for counselling after her husband of fifty-something years had recently died. She was calm and sad. We talked about her husband and the long life they had shared - happily - together. She reminisced in affectionate tones. Sometimes she cried softly.

Then in one of the sessions she said something very important, and it's stayed with me ever since. 

Out of the blue she said, "Y'know I'm sad that my husband has died and I miss him very much. But I don't feel a lot of pain about it. We had a good life together and we loved each other. What I'm finding really hard to deal with in all this are the feelings that are coming up for me over a baby I lost over forty years ago. They didn't let me hold her, I didn't even see her. She was a still-birth and they took her away immediately. The biggest thing I remember was my mother saying to me, 'Don't let your husband see how upset you are'. I stuffed it down and left the feelings behind. Now they're coming up ... it's very hard ..." 

Grief is a complicated subject, as are most things about the human experience. But hopefully I've made my point that there two simple things that must be acknowledged and accepted about the journey if grief is to be transcended and a new relationship with the relationship that has been lost is to be transformed.

Those two things are: time and attention.