Ralph Waldo Emerson once said : “Sorrow makes us all
children again - destroys
all differences of intellect. The
wisest know nothing.”
And he was right. Grief, loss and mourning cut us right to
the quick, shaving away all of the trappings and really hitting us where it
hurts. In a nutshell, grief is our
physical and emotional response to the death, separation or loss of a beloved
person, animal, or thing.
Traditionally, in times of loss and mourning, the solution
was to identify and work through the five stages of grief, a philosophy and
method devised by the Swiss doctor, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. According to Kubler-Ross, grief could
be categorized according to one of five stages:
1. Denial
and Isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression,
and
5. Acceptance
While this may be a fair generalization to describe the
overall experience of grief, it can’t be used as a one-size-fits-all approach
to mourning and loss. These are
merely terms to identify what “stage” of grief you are in, and not how you deal
with that manifestation of loss
Unique Grief. Responding
the emerging criticism of her theory in a later book, Grief and Grieving,
Kubler-Ross said: “The
stages have evolved since their introduction and have been very misunderstood
over the past three decades. They were never meant to help tuck away messy
emotions into neat packages.” She
further clarified: “They (the five stages) are responses to loss that many
people have, but there is no typical response to loss as there is no typical
loss. Our grief is as individual as our lives.”
Labels can be so easily institutionalized and misused. Instead of using fancy buzz words or
terminology, let’s get right to the heart of the matter and build on what Ross
said.
It’s time to leave the stages behind. Every single one of us
will lose somebody we love – it’s a given. It may take a while, and you may not
experience many losses, but there will be at least one. Grief and loss are a part of being
alive.
I’m not trying to suggest that we somehow deal with grief by
allowing ourselves to become excessively detached or indifferent about
death. What I’m talking about is
the specific struggles that each one of us will have when our loved ones pass
away.
We cannot afford to waste time and risk our very sanity with
this struggle over the “right” versus the “wrong” way to grieve. We’ve got to quit questing after a
simple solution of “do this, take that, resolve this and call me in the morning.”
Approaches like that just aren’t going to work.
It’s not as “easy” (or maddening) as listening to the advice
of well-meaning (yet, still, somehow unsupportive) friends and family. Nor is
it as difficult as attaining a Master’s degree in Psychology to figure out the
issues. The real answer lies in being able to look at your grief as wholly
unique to you, one requiring an exclusive, customized approach and perspective.
The reality is, we never “get over” loss. The real potential
of loss is its subtle integration into who you are and where you are going on
your journey into (or possibly even away from) healing and wholeness. It is a process. No one, and I mean no one, knows what
is right for you, except you.
The Primary Aspects of Loss. When it comes to mourning and loss, there are
essentially two primary aspects to that grief:
- The first aspect of loss is the actual absence of the
person, the loss of seeing them or spending time with them.
- The second aspect is what usually makes that deepest impact
on us: the secondary losses, the good times, the habits, the traditions, the
intangibles of your relationship.
Years ago, I spent many hours talking on the phone with my
friend Stanley. We’d known each other for many years, and in addition to our
every-other-day phone calls, we always made time to see each other at least
twice a month. Whenever there was
news to share, an accomplishment to brag about or a problem I needed to hash
out with him, all I had to do was pick up the phone and Stanley was there.
For weeks after Stanley’s death, whenever something big or
important would happen, I’d find that my hand would automatically reach for the
phone to call him and share the news.
At that moment, I’d have a hollow, empty feeling when I remembered he
wasn’t ever going to answer one of my calls again. It was a reminder of the void that had been created by his
absence.
This is merely one example of the impact that the secondary
aspects of grief can have on your own life. Whether it’s reaching for the phone
to call someone who’s passed away, or that sharp tinge of grief when you wake
up in the morning and roll over and no one is there. The primary loss is hard –
but these secondary losses are what have the potential to trip us up in our
healing process.
Fortunately, loss is a natural part of our lives, and we are
built to integrate it into our experience IF we can just get out of our own way
and let nature take its course.
As John Adams once said, “Grief drives men into habits of
serious reflection, sharpens the understanding, and softens the heart.”
by Dr. Eric Schneider
Director of Spiritual Counseling at Friends In Deed
