Winter's Light

 (We are currently in the middle of Christmastide, the liturgical season that runs from Christmas Eve to Epiphany Eve on January 5th.)

 

            When the year’s shadows are heaviest, when nights become long and cold, and feelings of self-doubt, despair, and death draw close, we light candles to push back the darkness that surrounds us. The flickering flames invite us to slow our busyness, set aside our fears, and open to everything that exists in this moment. 

 

            The twinkling of the stars, the bonfires in the backyard, and the strands of holiday lights on houses in our neighborhood remind us of people we loved who’ve died, dreams we tenaciously hang on to, and mentors whose wise guidance continues to help us find our way through life. The lights call us to reclaim the passions that stir our hearts with visions and imbue our lives with hope. 

 

Home for the Holidays

           No matter what holiday we celebrate at this time of year, our memories of being HOME for it are probably similar.

            The idea of going HOME for the holidays fills us with warm images, of sleigh bells and dreidels, of lattes and latkes, of Hallmark moments complete with snow, ice skating, and houses with glowing lights. If we live in a warmer climate, Santa might wear shorts, and holiday lights are strung in palm trees instead of spruce.

 

At the Hour of Our Death

In the hour before someone dies, the image that may come to mind is of someone fading peacefully away with a smile on their face, candles creating a warm ambiance, and people gathered around the bed in different positions of repose offering gentle assurances. 

 (On her blog, Elaine Mansfield talked about facing this moment of her husband’s death with him. It is well worth the read. link -  https://elainemansfield.com/2019/facing-deepest-fear/ )

Ideally, in the hours before this last one, we have talked with the person who is dying about important matters, our fears and hopes about the afterlife, and said everything we wanted to share with each other while we still could, our thank yous, wishes, and goodbyes. Unfortunately, for various reasons, many of us don’t want to acknowledge that death is a possibility, and we leave much of our hearts unsaid.

 

We gather by the bedside because we want to be there in case the person wants to say something, and to be there when they take their last breath, feeling that no one should die alone. We don’t want them to be in pain, confused, or feel lost, and yet we feel helpless to do anything.

 

During this time, Christians and Muslims often read scripture, recite creeds, or pray the Rosary, to bring comfort and assurance of Heaven. In Tibetan Buddhism, sacred scriptures are read to remind the dying to go towards the light when it appears in the Bardo, the transition place between this world and the next. They have three chances to see the light and go, or remain here as ghosts.

 

Some people put on soft music to calm the tension in the room. There are Threshold choirs that will sing continuously to the dying person until they pass. I suspect they sing the old, familiar hymns, or songs from Sweet Honey in the Rock. I doubt that they sing classic rock or jazz, but whatever music the dying person loved is appropriate because you want them to be in the right frame of mind for the transition into their Great Awakening.

 

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In the moment after someone’s death, there are options. You may be able to sit with your loved one’s body for an hour before it is taken away, but you will have to ask if this is possible. This could be important because some cultures and religions, like the Lakota Sioux and the Russian Orthodox, believe that the spirit lingers for a time before it takes leave of its body.

 

You may want to wash the body of your loved one and prepare them for burial. A friend did this for her mother with help from the nurses. In the ancient Celtic tradition, elderly women of the neighborhood would come in, wash the body, and lay it out in a room where mourners would offer a prayer and say a few words of condolence to the family. In another room there would be a wake where the deceased’s life was remembered through stories. At the funeral home, you may be able to light candles and sit with the body in vigil overnight or for 24 hours.

 

Sometimes we do not have time to say goodbye if they died in a car accident or had a heart attack. Sometimes, after a long struggle with an illness, signs of hope will begin to appear, before death slips back in and takes our loved one away. No one know when they will die. Say everything you want people to know today.

 

At the hour of our death, may the angels and archangels, and all the benevolent beings, draw near to receive our spirit, and comfort those who remain. May we open our arms to those who have lost someone, and comfort them in their grief.

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After the burial and have done all we can for the dead, the focus shifts to doing what we can for the living, for those who are mourning. Their journey of sorrow is just beginning and they will need our help in the coming weeks and months.

In Judaism, there are community observances to help mourners in the first three days, the first week, and the first month. In Islam, followers bring food, read verses from the Qur’an, and stay overnight so that the surviving spouse is not alone. In the Japanese culture, a small altar is set up in the house where the family can go, talk with the deceased, and keep the lines of communication open. The Amish visit the homes of those who died every Sunday for a year.

If your community doesn’t have a ritual that is meaningful for you, create your own. Find a way to remember and honor your loved one’s place in your life. Set up a small display or altar with items symbolic of your loved one, with their photo and ashes, as a way of remembering them. The relationship doesn’t end with death; it changes perspective. 

Having a ritual gives us a way to honor our loved one and keep them present in our life.

Faith and Grieving

If you’re grieving and a person of faith, no matter what religion you follow, you are probably torn between how you think you should feel and how you actually do. You sense a distance between the assurance of faith and the raw emotions of death. 

Laughter and Grief

For the most part, death isn’t funny.

“Grief” and “humor” aren’t often used in the same sentence. There are moments in the beginning of grief when we’re laughing hysterically, but generally that’s in the middle of the night and it’s not a happy sound. Or we’re laughing while standing by ourselves in the woods holding on to a tree to keep from falling. Or we’re in the shower staring at the soap for five minutes. These moments are more about trying not to cry than anything funny.

Clowns Are Bearers of Compassion

I like clowns. Some people don’t. Maybe they’re thinking of birthday clowns who entertain children and make squeaky balloon animals. Or the demented creeps who terrorize the woods. Or maybe the neo-fascist I-hate-people clowns. If this is the case with you, then think about fools instead. Fools like Buster Keaton, who, through his innocence and vulnerability, made us laugh and changed the world around him. Shakespeare had his rustic fools.

Walking the Desert Road

After the horror of Good Friday, after the utter despair of Holy Saturday, after the unexpected joy of Easter Sunday, came Monday morning when the disciples wondered what they were to do now.

The future they envisioned had come crashing down, and their leader, the person they loved, was gone. But they had changed because of him and, sink or swim, they were resolved to continue on and make the dream real. 

Dying and Grief

Book: Kate Bowler, Everything Happens For a Reason And Other Lies I’ve Loved

Most of the grief memoirs in bookstores are about dying. They’re not about grieving someone who has died. I don’t know why. Grieving goes on longer than dying, in most cases, yet both are epic journeys of fighting to survive. We gain insights and wisdom by reading both.

Dark Night of Grief

Dark Night 1 of 4: Shattered Illusions

Many people feel uncomfortable when they’re alone in the darkness, even when they’re standing in their own backyard and watching the stars at midnight. It’s as if the darkness can’t be trusted and this is where nasty creatures live. Like Thomas Merton, I find presence and solace watching the stars in the dark hours before dawn. This is when words of inspiration come, and meditation deepens.

With grief, however, when the darkness lingered for longer than I thought it should, and dawn did not come, I began to feel uneasy.

The Hollow Days

            I wasn’t finding much that was helpful for dealing with grief in my Christian community. Maybe this was because Ev died unexpectedly, or because her dying in her 40s left us in shock and made each of us feel vulnerable, as if any of us could die at any time. So I went looking at other religions to see what they did. The grief traditions in Judaism helped me the most, and this is what I understand about them.

Searching For Joy

Grief, Play, and Religion

Joy is really hard to muster when we’re grieving.

So is smiling. And if we let ourselves feel any joy, we then feel incredibly guilty for taking pleasure in something that our loved ones no longer can. In the beginning of grief, it’s a struggle just to get through the day.

Riding Shotgun With Grief

Exploring Your Grief

Many of us go into nature to unwind and be refreshed. Some of us go into the wilderness to work our way through a problem that befuddles us at home. Yet when we try to talk to others about what we are discovering in nature, or how our experiences there are transforming us, we find it hard to express this in words.

We Are Rivers in Spring

Signs of recovery, or are we just thawing?

When we are stuck smack dap in the midst of grief’s armpit, it’s hard to tell if we’re making any progress or if we’re slowly slipping back into the yak morass. There is so much movement backward, spinning in circles, and being yanked off on detours that we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. The parade of Life is passing us by and we’re waiting for an unscheduled bus to appear and pick us up.

* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *

     *
One Breath Out, my essay on grief, breathing, Pema Chodron, and Tonglen meditation has been published by The Manifest Station.

 http://themanifeststation.net/2015/05/17/one-breath-out/

Walking the Desert Road

Monday People

Those who grieve feel like Saturday people, in the Christian Holy Week lexicon of events. They wait in the dark, uncertain space between death and life, between the despair of Good Friday and the joy of Easter Sunday, finding it hard to believe that anything is left, because everywhere they look, they see destruction and emptiness.

* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *

Holy (Death) Saturday

Last Saturday I was online with sixty grieving friends who live around the world, and I realized that this day, Holy Saturday, is where grieving people live. Grievers are Saturday people, my friend Megan says.

            For people who have recently lost a spouse, a child or a parent, they exist in this nether world between death and life for a year, unable to let go of one and unable to embrace the other. If they are Christians, they may not even be able to feel the joy of Easter Sunday this year. 

The Bible and Grief

This is a quick glance at the Jewish Old Testament (OT) and the Christian New Testament (NT) to see what they say about grief. It is not complete, and my study of these scriptures will continue.

I looked up several key words in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible and the NRSV Harper Study Bible: grief (grieving, grieved, etc.), bereave (bereaved, bereavement, etc.) mourning, widow/widower, and death.

Comfort in a Time of Grief

There is little comfort when we’re deep in grief. When we’re done actively grieving, it’s different. But not completely, and it comes so slowly.

It will never be all right with me that Evelyn suffered for years with physical aches and pains, worked hard to recover and was almost back to full health when she died of an unknown heart problem. She was only in her forties when she died. I was bitter about that then, and I’m bitter about that now.

* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *

            (A version of this was first published by Refuge in Grief.)

Grief a Month In

Journal entry 12      

My grief hasn’t gone away.

People around me said they thought I would be over my grief after one month. It’s not. In fact, it’s worse. I feel like I've barely started. This is going to be a long journey and not something that I can jump over. 

I feel no gratitude for anything good that happened in the past, so please do not talk to me about feeling joy that Ev was in my life for 18 years. I might feel that eventually, but not today. Not today.

* If you would like to read the rest of this post, let me know and I’ll send it to you. *