Practicing grief
27/10/14 05:18
Yesterday I had a short break between events and I had a few minutes to sit in the church parlor with a friend. It has been 5 months since that friend was widowed and he continues to work through a journey of grief. One of the things that he has often said to me over the months is that he didn’t have experiences to prepare him for this loss. Both of his parents are still living. The death didn’t occur in the order that most of us experience such things. Since my friend is a musician he thinks in terms of practice. For this major life event, there was no practice. He has been just thrown into the depths of grief without a guide.
Of course that is the case for everyone. You can anticipate the death of a loved one, but there is no way to prepare. What is more, each situation of grief is unique. What you have learned by going through the journey of grief over the loss of one loved one is not the same experience that you will have when another loved one dies.
For my friend, one role that I play is to remind him that it is going well. He is doing a good job with his grief. It is OK to still feel sad sometimes. It is normal to have something unexpectedly set off a flood of tears. His emotions are not out of control. It seems to reassure him just for him to know that he can discuss the process with others.
One of my mentors from an earlier stage in my life used to talk about all of the little griefs that we experience. He had a rather silly presentation in which he would talk through the stages of grief over a lost sock. When he first looked in the drawer and the sock was missing, he immediately went into denial: “It isn’t really gone. It has to be here someplace!” After denial, there was anger: “Who stole my sock!” Next comes bargaining: “Let me find that sock and I’ll be more careful to pick up my clothes and keep everything neat in the laundry.” Bargaining is followed by depression: “I feel like just going back to bed and giving up on this day.” After those stages comes acceptance: “I guess I’ll have to wear a different pair of socks today.”
The point of his presentation is not that we should get emotional over a lost sock, but rather that we have lots of small losses in our lives and if we are observant, it is possible to learn from small losses some skills that can ease the process of grief when a really big loss occurs.
It is easy to think about the little losses in the Autumn. One of the losses I notice most is the loss of daylight. In the summer I can paddle in the wee hours of the morning and still have a pleasant evening sitting on my deck the same day. These days when I do get up and go paddling before work it is still dark when I’m taking the boat out of the water. And if we get lucky enough to have dinner outdoors we don’t linger very long because it is starting to get cool before we finish our meal. In Autumn we notice the leaves turning color and falling from the trees as the trees prepare for an other winter of survival in the face of the storms. Even though we have had exceptionally pleasant weather this fall, we know that winter is coming and we can see it in the animals and plants that surround us. And each autumn is the reminder that another year has passed and we are another year older than the last time we experienced this season. In several North American tribes, one’s age and maturity was measured by counting the number of winters one had survived.
One of the blessings of having lived a few decades is that one begins to collect experiences that inform other things that happen in your life. In my family I have been through the death of a sister, my father, a brother and my mother. We have seen the deaths of my wife’s mother and father. We have walked the path of grief and at times known the journey of multiple griefs playing out at the same time. Three of those deaths listed above occurred in the same year. I isn’t that I am an expert in grief, but I have learned that I can survive and that grief is a journey that moves towards a sense of healing.
Then on this last Saturday I stood by one of the elders of our Dakota Association at the burial of a great grandson. The elder is one of the best funeral pastors I have ever met. He has a way of officiating at a committal that helps the mourners move on from this incredibly difficult experience. Over the years he has officiated at a lot of funerals. I doubt if anyone has a count of the number of times he has stood at the head of a grave and delivered words of committal and prayers for the grieving family members.
But there were no words for what we were experiencing on Saturday. Even a respected elder with years of experience and mountains of wisdom can be thrown by life’s unexpected twists and turns and the crushing reality of the death of a child.
Maybe my old mentor is right: little losses prepare us for the big ones. But maybe he is only partially right: there are some experiences for which there is no preparation.
What I do know is that we are not alone. Ours is not the first generation of our people to have know incredible loss and grief. We aren’t the first ones to feel like shaking our fist at God and questioning what has happened. This isn’t the first time our people have tried to bargain in the face of grief.
And it isn’t the last. We will go on. And going on means that there will be other occasions of grief.
Which brings me to another thing I know. We are survivors. Even though each of us will one day die from this life, our people go on. God isn’t finished with the journey of our family of faith in this generation.
And some days, just surviving is enough.
Of course that is the case for everyone. You can anticipate the death of a loved one, but there is no way to prepare. What is more, each situation of grief is unique. What you have learned by going through the journey of grief over the loss of one loved one is not the same experience that you will have when another loved one dies.
For my friend, one role that I play is to remind him that it is going well. He is doing a good job with his grief. It is OK to still feel sad sometimes. It is normal to have something unexpectedly set off a flood of tears. His emotions are not out of control. It seems to reassure him just for him to know that he can discuss the process with others.
One of my mentors from an earlier stage in my life used to talk about all of the little griefs that we experience. He had a rather silly presentation in which he would talk through the stages of grief over a lost sock. When he first looked in the drawer and the sock was missing, he immediately went into denial: “It isn’t really gone. It has to be here someplace!” After denial, there was anger: “Who stole my sock!” Next comes bargaining: “Let me find that sock and I’ll be more careful to pick up my clothes and keep everything neat in the laundry.” Bargaining is followed by depression: “I feel like just going back to bed and giving up on this day.” After those stages comes acceptance: “I guess I’ll have to wear a different pair of socks today.”
The point of his presentation is not that we should get emotional over a lost sock, but rather that we have lots of small losses in our lives and if we are observant, it is possible to learn from small losses some skills that can ease the process of grief when a really big loss occurs.
It is easy to think about the little losses in the Autumn. One of the losses I notice most is the loss of daylight. In the summer I can paddle in the wee hours of the morning and still have a pleasant evening sitting on my deck the same day. These days when I do get up and go paddling before work it is still dark when I’m taking the boat out of the water. And if we get lucky enough to have dinner outdoors we don’t linger very long because it is starting to get cool before we finish our meal. In Autumn we notice the leaves turning color and falling from the trees as the trees prepare for an other winter of survival in the face of the storms. Even though we have had exceptionally pleasant weather this fall, we know that winter is coming and we can see it in the animals and plants that surround us. And each autumn is the reminder that another year has passed and we are another year older than the last time we experienced this season. In several North American tribes, one’s age and maturity was measured by counting the number of winters one had survived.
One of the blessings of having lived a few decades is that one begins to collect experiences that inform other things that happen in your life. In my family I have been through the death of a sister, my father, a brother and my mother. We have seen the deaths of my wife’s mother and father. We have walked the path of grief and at times known the journey of multiple griefs playing out at the same time. Three of those deaths listed above occurred in the same year. I isn’t that I am an expert in grief, but I have learned that I can survive and that grief is a journey that moves towards a sense of healing.
Then on this last Saturday I stood by one of the elders of our Dakota Association at the burial of a great grandson. The elder is one of the best funeral pastors I have ever met. He has a way of officiating at a committal that helps the mourners move on from this incredibly difficult experience. Over the years he has officiated at a lot of funerals. I doubt if anyone has a count of the number of times he has stood at the head of a grave and delivered words of committal and prayers for the grieving family members.
But there were no words for what we were experiencing on Saturday. Even a respected elder with years of experience and mountains of wisdom can be thrown by life’s unexpected twists and turns and the crushing reality of the death of a child.
Maybe my old mentor is right: little losses prepare us for the big ones. But maybe he is only partially right: there are some experiences for which there is no preparation.
What I do know is that we are not alone. Ours is not the first generation of our people to have know incredible loss and grief. We aren’t the first ones to feel like shaking our fist at God and questioning what has happened. This isn’t the first time our people have tried to bargain in the face of grief.
And it isn’t the last. We will go on. And going on means that there will be other occasions of grief.
Which brings me to another thing I know. We are survivors. Even though each of us will one day die from this life, our people go on. God isn’t finished with the journey of our family of faith in this generation.
And some days, just surviving is enough.