Gratitude and the Long Arc of Grief

             I’m sitting in a cemetery in Peru with the dead, thinking about Hope’s journey to a different Peru, sorrow for an entire culture of people, and trying to describe how moved I am by the breadth of her book The AfterGrief. 

Today is the fall equinox and dry leaves are beginning to drop from the trees and rest on graves in central Illinois, which means that October and Halloween will soon be here when we will dress our children up as skeletons and images of the living dead, but we still won’t talk about death.

 

            In her book, Hope Edelman discusses death, grief, and living, and includes so many insights that I won’t try to summarize everything here. My marked-up copy attests to all of her findings about the clarity and complexities of grief that I want to think about more. 

 

Doctor Who and the Afterlife

Clara’s dead, maybe.

Doctor Who is a science fiction program on the BBC that revolves around the relationship of the Doctor and various companions as they jump around different universes through time and space saving people, planets, and whatnot. Clara is one of the companions who remind him of his values and keep him in line. They travel in a blue TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), which looks like an old, British police telephone box from the outside, yet is enormous on the inside.

 

If you’re new to the Whovian Universe, you’ll probably miss some of the references in the episodes to what happened before and to previous incarnations of the Doctor. The writers like to do this a lot. In addition to the interesting storylines and characters, I also like the philosophical riffs, although sometimes I like them so much that I continue thinking about them, miss where the story went, and have to scramble to catch up.

 

The Grief Cafe

When we lose someone we love, we become members of the Grief Café. It doesn’t matter who died or under what circumstances, we loved them and our hearts have broken and are leaking. There are no dues and only one initiation rite, which we’ve already gone through. A look in the eyes is enough to tell who belongs. 

Lost to Suicide

Laughter in the Darkness

Robin Williams died on August 11, 2014 from suicide. 

He was dealing with Lewy body dementia that progresses quickly and is marked by depression, anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations. His death brought light to a difficult subject, and the discussions I heard afterward spoke of the mental illness aspect of suicide. They took the blame off those who kill themselves, and removed the guilt from family and friends who felt there was something more they could have done the night before that would have saved them.

Halloween and Holy Days

For a number of years, Halloween was a chore.I felt pressure to carve the gourds, dress up in a ghoulish costume, ooh and aah over neighborhood children who came to the door being cute, and dutifully eat whatever candy was left over, even if it had coconut. 

Men and Their Ocean of Emotions

(Finding grief books to recommend to you that were written by men continues to be a challenge. Of the books I’ve reviewed, 23 were by women but only 6 were by men. I have found women to be more honest, compassionate, and insightful. They speak of the heart, and not just what they thought. Through my blog, I am trying to overcome the male deficit, was well as share what all who grieve might find helpful. - Mark)

Our Public Face of Grief

When death comes to someone we love, our world changes and we are forced to change with it. When we go out in public, we bear the marks of grief. We are numb and in shock, yet most of the world doesn’t seem to notice. 

We sense people staring at us, especially those who know us well, because the face that they were used to seeing is gone. People also treat us differently because we are dealing with something that scares them, and they don’t know how to handle it.

Rituals of Community and Grief

People walk around a center altar, and kneel in the darkness of a sanctuary as a candle is processed in by a dancer to the middle where a circle of candles is lit. A bell rings, and we open ourselves to the mystery of this moment, not knowing what we will discover, or what will be uncovered, tonight. A cello plays a meditative melody. A cup is shared. Bread is broken and passed among the people. The bell rings again.

We long to be embraced by mystery, not have it explained it away.

Facing Grief

Book: Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, Finding Joy, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant.

I like Option B for a number of reasons, but I would not give it to someone in their first year of grief. That would be like telling a football player who has just suffered a concussion to get back in the game, even though he doesn’t know where he is or which team he’s playing on.

Labyrinth of the First Death

Inspector Morse

The members of grief’s subculture don’t always want superficial diversions to fill the empty hours, even though many of our days are ponderously heavy and shaded charcoal gray. Sometimes we want to dive into our chaos in intelligent and thoughtful ways. The Inspector Morse mystery series on PBS helped me do this.

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

(This is part of an essay that was first published by Back Road Café, London, U.K.)

Children Want the Truth

Book: Death Is Stupid, Anastasia Higginbotham

The things we don't tell our children about death can make them think there is a terrible force in the world waiting in the darkness to snatch them away, or worse, make them think that they killed grandma because of something they said.

Anastasia Higginbotham lays out the problem in her book — adults want the illusion; children want the truth.

Inspector Lewis

After being gone for a while, the PBS mystery series Inspector Morse came back, but with Lewis taking over the lead role. During the time the show was off the air, Lewis’s wife has died in a car accident. Not only does Lewis have to learn to do a new job without his mentor’s advice and his wife’s support, he also has to carry on in the midst of his grief, and deal with unresolved anger at the driver who killed her.

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

(This is part of an essay that was first published in Back Road Café, London, U.K.)

Joe Biden - Public Grieving

Joe Biden and grief were in the news, notably his interview with Stephen Colbert and his speech to military survivors. Everything Biden said is known to those who are grieving, yet his speaking about grief is important for a number of reasons.

One, he’s a man.

There's Not One Way to Grieve

Book: We Need To Talk About Grief (Speaking of Death), Annie Broadbent

One of the great contributions of Annie's book is making it clear that there is no one way to grieve, and no set way to help those who are grieving.

Rather than simply tell her own story of grief, and then broaden this out with contextual insights to help others, she shares 16 stories of people grieving a wide variety of deaths. Because of the different circumstances, what one person needs in her or his grief is opposite of what someone else needs. By having people tell their stories in ten pages, we understand why they feel the way they do and why they need different interactions with others. At the end of each story, Broadbent summarizes what we have learned.

Public Grieving

The bombings in Boston this week remind us that public tragedies lead to public grieving, and even if we don’t know anyone involved, when we see photographs of the faces of those who were killed from a time when they were happy, see the faces of the injured in pain, see the despair of those who lost loved ones, we also grieve. 

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