A Friend to Grief
Death is no longer a taboo during conversations. You read the news and it is there. You watch TV and it is the plot of a story - real or imagined. You open a blog about great learning solutions and the subject matter is on death, dying, and its accompanying grief and mourning. It is as palpable and inescapable as the air we breathe. Death is as large as life itself, intimately woven into the fabric of our existence.
Death unlike life is something we avoid because it causes pain. We flee from the clasp of death as if we could outrun it. We defy it. We fight it. We denounce it. Death and dying are painful to us. And when we succumbed to its inevitability, we feel deflated, defeated, and reduced into someone less than ourselves. We mourn and grieve this terrible loss. Death and its twin emotions grief and mourn are not our friends.
In order to become a friend to grief, we have to understand it. When we lose someone we love through death, we are in shock even when we anticipate it. We all know that we will die someday; and it is always a shock when death confronts us NOW. The first question is WHY?
We deny it. Could we have, should we have, did we do everything to prevent it? Did we have a part in it? Was there something in our human power that we could have done to hold back death's sting?
We get angry. We somehow manage to transfer this guilt (survivor's guilt) to our own personal responsibility. I am angry at myself because I didn't do more. I am angry because I didn't spend more time, more money, said the right things, did the right things. I failed as a human being.
We bargain. We call on God however we conceived Him to be and promise to do everything right this time. We make promises to ourselves and to others. I will try to be a better person just as my departed loved one would have wanted me to do.
We feel depressed and lost. After listing the things we promise to do and then confronted by the enormity of the tasks or its unrealistic expectations on ourselves or on others, we become depressed and despondent.
We accept and move on. We realize that death is a natural progression and end to the life we know and we begin to move on. Life is for the living.
These stages of grief do not proceed in a sequential ordered manner. It comes in waves. Sometimes, we feel hopeful and accepting and the next time, we are in deep depression. The key is to learn to ride the waves, and to promise ourselves...by the grace of God go I for this too shall pass.
Death unlike life is something we avoid because it causes pain. We flee from the clasp of death as if we could outrun it. We defy it. We fight it. We denounce it. Death and dying are painful to us. And when we succumbed to its inevitability, we feel deflated, defeated, and reduced into someone less than ourselves. We mourn and grieve this terrible loss. Death and its twin emotions grief and mourn are not our friends.
In order to become a friend to grief, we have to understand it. When we lose someone we love through death, we are in shock even when we anticipate it. We all know that we will die someday; and it is always a shock when death confronts us NOW. The first question is WHY?
We deny it. Could we have, should we have, did we do everything to prevent it? Did we have a part in it? Was there something in our human power that we could have done to hold back death's sting?
We get angry. We somehow manage to transfer this guilt (survivor's guilt) to our own personal responsibility. I am angry at myself because I didn't do more. I am angry because I didn't spend more time, more money, said the right things, did the right things. I failed as a human being.
We bargain. We call on God however we conceived Him to be and promise to do everything right this time. We make promises to ourselves and to others. I will try to be a better person just as my departed loved one would have wanted me to do.
We feel depressed and lost. After listing the things we promise to do and then confronted by the enormity of the tasks or its unrealistic expectations on ourselves or on others, we become depressed and despondent.
We accept and move on. We realize that death is a natural progression and end to the life we know and we begin to move on. Life is for the living.
These stages of grief do not proceed in a sequential ordered manner. It comes in waves. Sometimes, we feel hopeful and accepting and the next time, we are in deep depression. The key is to learn to ride the waves, and to promise ourselves...by the grace of God go I for this too shall pass.