On Grief and Grieving
For my generation, this is the time of our lives—the time we must say goodbye to our parents, aunts and uncles. This happens to all of us who live long enough, but still we stand a little stunned to have suddenly become part of the oldest generation in our families.
Over the last six weeks, I have suffered the death of my father and I have watched the grieving of three friends who have also lost a parent. Four funerals. In all cases, the deceased had lived a long and fulfilling life. That’s a blessing to be sure, but it’s still hard for those left alive. Not only do we miss our loved ones, we know that we’re next in line. That Mortality Gorilla in the room is getting harder and harder to ignore.
A couple of days after my father’s funeral, Time magazine arrived in my postal box with a very appropriate article: New Ways to Think About Grief. In recent decades. psychology practitioners have used the five stages of dying (denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross‘s On Death and Dying, and applied it to the grief process. Kubler-Ross, herself, got in on the action with On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss.
Today the psychology community is saying, “Not so fast!” As with all advice that attempts to package human experiences into nice little boxes wrapped with a bow, we instinctively know that one size does not fit all. There can be vast differences in how individuals experience these universal experiences.
The article busts through the wall of certain myths about the grieving process (i.e. We Grieve in Stages, and Grieving is Harder on Women than Men) to communicate the truths we’ve always known, and what science is confirming: grieving is different for different people; some can benefit from the stages approach to grief, while others (indeed, most of us) are resilient enough to get through loss on their own without stages or phases or tasks.
There may be traditional, religious and cultural scripts we follow when we grieve the loss of our loved ones, but in the end we take our own paths. Grieving is for the living.
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Want to read what others have to say about grief and grieving? Well, this wouldn’t be Okie Reads if we didn’t point you toward some titles. Amazon’s page on Death, Grief and Bereavement is a good place to start, as is your local bookstore or Oklahoma Public Library
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Comments
Sir Wayne! Much thanks on your thoughtful comments. Reminds me of a saying I heard some time ago: “Death gives meaning to life.” I’ve often thought that lives are like stories, and all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If they’re good stories, we learn something.
I will certainly track down your essay and give it a read.
Just went to my Twitter account and I see Wayne has more to share and say…
http://waynemcevilly.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-dimensions-of-our-mortality.html
“In the midst of life, we are in death.” I like that.
Hello dear friend …. Thank you for your perspectives, Bill. As always, so fitting, so graceful. I understand your comment that “in the end we take our own paths.” We cannot tell what lies behind in the background of people, what critical circumstances or incidents may have impacted everything about their lives, including their relationships with others. All of that brings a different type of, and reason for, grieving. It did (and still does) bear directly on my ongoing grief in missing my spirit-mother who moved to God’s home sixteen months ago.
I continue to think of you Bill, and now of Kitty, as you both are dealing with your parents’ departures for God’s home.
Note: Victoria Diane is doing some better now, so I should be able to return to my research work this week or next.
Thanks for your comments, vehoae. We really are in that time of life, aren’t we? It’s hard to say goodbye to the generation that gave us so much.
Glad that Victoria Diane is on the mend. Those pets of ours are really sweet and special! Tell her “Ruff! Ruff!”
Bill-
Thank you for this very thoughtful post. Our mortality is a common thread that should by all rights unite us and bind us together in one humanity with each and every other mortal on the planet. Rather, we seem to ignore it and not see it as conveying a precious quality and quantity on each and every life. This in itself is a fact worthy of grief, and we are surrounded by it. It pervades our social interactions. A true REALization of our common mortality would give rise to compassion and generosity. Yet we are bound to social conventions that place death in the category of taboo.
On a lighter side – I had this LOL moment when news reached me via a tweet (how else?) that Jane Russell had died at age 89 my first thought was: “How young to die!” -it just popped into my brainbox, and I thought 89 young! How funny!
Years ago when I was corresponding with Anais Nin and she was facing her own rapidly vanishing time on the planet I wrote an essay called “The Two Faces Of Death” – she had her publisher use it as an Afterword to her book “Seduction Of The Minotaur” – Time to re-read that and to reflect on the subject you treat here. My mind since childhood has never strayed far from reflections on mortality. It is, finally, what quickens us into an awakening -or not.
Wayne