On anniversaries of death, we are faced with a choice, especially if our loved ones died more than a year ago. We can’t just say that it was great knowing them and move on, because we are still attached to the beauty and light that we saw in them. We also can’t give up on life and just mourn, because each day of life is precious. We learned this when our loved ones fought to live one more day.
Writing in the shadow and despair of the massive number of deaths from the first World War, and after the sudden loss of a love affair, Edna St. Vincent Millay was in no mood for the joy of April flowers. In “Spring,” Millay sarcastically wrote, “It is apparent that there is no death,” because it seemed that many people were out celebrating the warmth and fresh air and forgetting about their wartime dead.
Coming from a different perspective, Wang Wei, an 8th century Tang dynasty poet, wrote in his poem “Magnolia Basin” that hibiscus were blooming on a remote mountain hillside where no one would see them—“One by one flowers open, then fall.” He is saying that the hibiscus, and each living thing, is beautiful, whether or not anyone notices and appreciates it, and then it’s gone, without fanfare or anguish. While his poem affirms the natural course of life, in that everything living eventually dies, it also says that today is important and that we are called to celebrate it and celebrate how we blossom.
It is tempting to toss sorrow aside and rejoin life, because grief is not a happy place, although it is instructive. And in time, after a death, we do want to enjoy music and food again. We want to sing, go walking with a bounce in our step, and dance. We want to smile without feeling guilty. Yet it’s hard to celebrate while grieving.
We need to honor the anniversaries of the deaths of our loved ones, and remember what we loved about them—their silliness, their courage, their way of moving around the house, and how they cared for us—because it took us a long time to find them, and because they are still part of us. To say that their deaths don’t matter is to negate who they were, and to say that our love for them was like the morning mist.
In the April before she died, my wife Evelyn planted bearded purple iris. They bloomed again on the first anniversary of her death. They were beautiful and I felt joy, but I also felt sorrow knowing that she could not see them.
I don’t think the people in Millay’s day forgot their wartime dead. But after the long, hard years of struggle, sacrifice, and being battered by all the devastation, they needed to affirm that life was still good. They wanted to celebrate, if only for a moment, because they wanted to remember what joy felt like, and they needed to believe that hope had survived the horrors of war and the pandemic.
If a wren flies up and sings at my window, no matter how mired in grief I am, I want to be able to delight in it, because its song is beautiful, and it is here, and I am here, and we are part of the wonder of life that our loved ones believed in.
Our grief for the people we loved will last, because we will always miss them.
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A couple of weeks ago, The New York Times published an article about proposed changes in the DSM-V regarding grief. I worry that codifying and putting a time limit on grief will send the message to everyone who is grieving that grief is a psychological problem, and this will make them even more reluctant to let anyone know they are grieving. We already stigmatize grief and push it to the side. What we need is greater acceptance of grief as a normal response to losing someone we love, and greater awareness that talking with common people about what’s going on with our grief will help most of us find our footing again. This talking can be with friends, family, or in social support groups.
In response to the Times piece, Hope Edelman and Rebecca Soffer offered up their wise insights. You can read their thoughts here: http://modernloss.com/how-long-should-grief-last/
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