The sadness of loss usually fades. Is mourning then finished?
How does one know?
The positive news is that grieving past a human’s departure can open doors you believed were forever closed.
The danger of unfinished grieving is how much it captures us, holding hostage our present and future as ransom to the past.
At the end of our most important relationships, many realize they held the unspoken fantasy that the departed would always be there. The idea persisted because of how much we depend on and hope for secure possession of a stable, warming presence nearby.
A death mocks the innocence we maintained. We are without the loved one we could not live without. The earth underneath us gives way, and “the winter of our disconnect”* appears endless.
The one who abandoned us was present for many of our efforts to meet challenges, triumph over adversity, and achieve fulfillment. What will happen now?
Psychotherapy raises this issue and more. How will I get along? Where is a cure for a broken heart? I need permanent support; who else will give me happiness and the pleasure we shared?
Even when the most acute phase of distress ends, the psychotherapy patient often hides from the world. Reaching for attachments, he thinks, invites another blow.
Giving up on possibilities, fresh relationships, and self-reliance goes nowhere productive. The retreat to safety is unsafe, promising only solitude.
The death of a beloved pet offers an example of the problem. Not everyone chooses another gentle companion, fearful this animal, too, will pass.
To complete bereavement, treatment helps the suffering individual recognize he is responsible for himself and the creation of his further existence.
Any hidden, barricaded adaptation must be set aside to allow horizons to widen and new meaning to enter. Taking responsibility for personal satisfaction is the sole path to revitalization.
Remembering and honoring those who meant so much often includes lighting memorial candles and grave site visitation. We are left with such reminders, but even these demonstrate that the place of those who have left us has changed.
It is essential to admit the departed had imperfections lest we create an altar to them frozen in place, a false object of worship. Any such icon remains silent, failing to offer us the solace and joy of another living human, imperfect as we all are.
Our task is to allow the memories a space for transformation. This includes laughing at the dead’s peculiarities and foibles while respecting their guidance, wit, affection, and wisdom. Openness, enlarging over time, enables memory to move from a source of pain to a blessing.
This can be unimaginable immediately after the excruciating loss, but the work of grieving progresses for many — an outcome that the absent one most likely would have wished for us.
The best individuals of our acquaintance are irreplaceable. Yet, we replace them via our work, creativity, travel, spirituality, helping those in need, or another leap into the uncertainty of human contact.
Flourishing remains possible with enough courage to begin a more artistic and expansive view of what the world can offer despite everything.
The world waits for us to reenter. To move ahead comes with the knowledge that change cannot be wished away, and we will be unsettled in ways sizable and small.
The philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote, “We are thrown into the world.” Sometimes, we land badly, but fulfillment depends on getting up, however long it takes.
Humanity has never been without the fading of those closest to them. For most of our history, disappearance came with speed, often overnight and almost always at home. The wheat fields still needed harvesting, and the animals required transport to market. We wouldn’t be here if our ancestors had not gotten on with life.
Those who wrote the Egyptian Book of the Dead lived an average of 35 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, men could expect to see 50 summers.
At first, it is almost impossible to enjoy gratitude for the gift of lengthy periods with our darlings, a circumstance our ancestors would have marveled at. And yet time works its strange magic and may save room even for this.
The imperfect solution to our emptiness requires searching for joy, attachment, and delight. Desire need not die with the another’s departure.
Death and other losses are the ultimate denial of control. They challenge us to be imaginative and pursue life ravenously, aware that anything can happen in a fleeting, unprepared instant.
Without our persistence and courage, no bliss will enter to pull us out of a chosen, lightless cavern. A singular attempt at reshaping ourselves and our prospects moves us from the past into the here and now, from which we can envision a liveable future. With time, perhaps even more.
Personal resilience will be tested. Contentment — for as long as it lasts and as often as we can achieve it — requires us to raise our hand and volunteer for the search for renewed meaning and love in whatever form.
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*This quotation comes from Shakespeare’s Richard III.
The three outdoor photos are courtesy of the gifted Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.
The first is A Sunrise in the Italian Dolomites, in Late October 2022. The second image was taken at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2023. Finally, a vision of the Milky Way in New Mexico, October 17, 2023.
“Personal resilience will be tested. Contentment — for as long as it lasts and as often as we can achieve it — requires us to raise our hand and volunteer for the search for renewed meaning and love in whatever form.”
This. We all go through endings all the time, everyday, but those are our daily lives that are subject to change, but those really don’t prepare us or the life altering losses that come into our lives. We’re always taken by surprise, even when we expect it.
A very good point, Tamara. There can be an enormous space between anticipation and realization. The Stoics reminded us of the difference between imagined and lived experience. Some things can only be known if the are lived.
True. I see that similar to the colloquial expression “There’s a difference between book learning and real life!” which states that we can learn everything there is to learn about something, but until we live life and learn those lessons for ourselves, our knowledge is incomplete.
Gerald this is a beautiful and thoughtful and timely meditation, and I’m profoundly grateful for your wisdom and sage advice. I always gained something from your columns and this one feels particularly pertinent. I suspect that for you, as for many others, coronavirus is a thing of the past. For some of us who are clinically vulnerable we now have to live a life medically retired from the world because the transmission of the disease is so rife. I want the world back; I want to have dinner parties and go to theatres and this virus strikes at the heart of what it means to be in relationships because it’s passed on in intimate contact with others. I’ve done nearly 4 years now of shielding, of planned outdoor walks in miserable weather with friends cancelled because they don’t want to be cold and my health needs feel like a nuisance, of zoom social events with strangers: I do what I can but I live in a wet and cold climate and it is very lonely. I’m single and missing out on the chance to meet someone. But my doctor’s say I have to keep living like this and the risks are so high; I’m already slightly disabled by the health conditions I have and even if covid didn’t kill me I might lose my ability to work or function at all. I’d welcome some words of wisdom and advice when someone is trapped please; how do we live the best life we can now?
Thank you for your openness, Pink. You do sound embattled on many fronts. Clearly, you have made great effort to normalize your life. I wonder if there are online groups that face a similar range of challenges? I also wonder about creative outlets including writing, painting, gardening music, sculpture, or dance? Contact via movies, books, or films might also allow you to encounter heroines of the past who faced some combination of the limitations you describe. You sound steadfast. You might discover you could be helpful to those who are struggling with analogous problems. I wish you continued courage.
You might also profit from reading Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus — the great Stoic philosophers. Perhaps also “The Myth of Sysiphus.”
Help, dottor Stein!
During 1 hour and a half (!) I was writing a terribly profound commend, I would dare to say written with my blood, and just time to find my dictionary for one word’s translation, and, pfuitt! my comment disappeared into the void…
And it happened before, and, even more strangely, on a post of you on the same kind of subject as today’s…
I am sorry not to have had a chance to read what you labored to say, Micaela. I have had such experiences and they are never pleasant. But, I suppose, the unexpected void is part of what I wrote about.
Oh my. This: “Any hidden, barricaded adaptation must be set aside to allow horizons to widen and new meaning to enter. Taking responsibility for personal satisfaction is the sole path to revitalization. Remembering and honoring those who meant so much often includes lighting memorial candles…”
Yes…and as you point out so lovingly and honestly, we dare not gloss over and idolize, ignore the imperfections of those we’ve loved and lost. Balancing – just as you suggested — “laughing at the dead’s peculiarities and foibles while respecting their guidance, wit, affection, and wisdom.”
Thank you, Dr. Stein. Thank you. 💕
You would know about those imperfections and are a model of working through the arc of grieving. Thank you, Vickie.
What a lovely thing to say. Thank you, Dr. Stein. 💕
Helpful and much appreciated
Thank you, Rose. You are welcome. I still think of Harvey — the best of men. Be well.
An incredibly timely piece for me, Dr. Stein since I spent the last week lighting a candle for my dad and also visiting where he was interred. I love this paragraph, “Our task is to allow the memories a space for transformation. This includes laughing at the dead’s peculiarities and foibles while respecting their guidance, wit, affection, and wisdom. Openness, enlarging over time, enables memory to move from a source of pain to a blessing.”
Thank you for this beautiful essay that helps us move from grief towards a source of blessing, integrating our loved ones as we continue to live and grow. Wonderful!
Thank you, Wynne. Your weekly comic recollections of your dad and the more serious side of him shown elsewhere serve us an example of what I wrote about the transformation of remembrance. I think we each hit the target.
I know that my grief has passed when I can think of the dear one lost without sorrow in my heart. But it does take time. You express this well when you say that “Our task is to allow the memories a space for transformation.” I’ve reached that stage in life when dear friends leave this earthly life with more frequency.
Yes, Rosaliene. It is the saddest thing and the one towering inevitabilty that we face. One of the most profound books on the subject of how we deal with it is “The Denial of Death” by Earnest Becker, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Interestingly, many people are made uncomfortable when they try to read it. Thank you for your comment.
Following your recommendation some years ago, I did buy and read Becker’s book. Perhaps, I need to revisit it.
You deserve my praise since you finished it!
Let’s try again today!
I’m not going to digit again one of the many comments written by me which disappeared , so frustrating also because I need time to write in a language which is no mother language for me!
Found another way, a beautiful one, an artistic one ( well, I’m a musician, so it make⁷s sense!)
Do you know Marcel Carné’s movie “Les enfants du paradis”, caro dottor Stein?
Check the (sublime) first love scene between Garance (sublime radiant Arletty) and Baptiste (profoundly touching Jean-Louis Barrault).
1st part, scenes8 and 9 , around minutes 55′
You will cry, I’m can guess.
I cry each time, I cry only thinking about it.
It’s exactly how .y life is now.
Exactly.
I do not know the film (made during WWII, according to Wikipedia), but I will look for it. Thank you for the recommendation. If I can find it I will let you know. Clearly it touches your heart.
Please, please, per favore, La supplico in ginocchio dottor Stein: you simply cannot leave this world without having watched this movie.
I just forbid you this!
First of all, a wonderful thing, you WILL fall in love with Arletty, Garance in the movie, the main feminine character.
I am a woman, yes?
I AM in love with Arletty.
The complex, rich, intense parallel stories and events is just a miracle, a concentrate of Humanity, which will surely touch the man you are, caring for us human we all are.
See, I’m on my knees.
You now obey me!
I have found it at the local library and will get it. I promise to watch. I will look forward to it, Micaela. Thank you!
SO HAPPY , dottor Stein!
I suppose you have found it doubled in English or do you understand French.
If not, excuse me to insist (having the immense chance to be myself 100% bilingual Italian-French).
Listen on any short on You Tube to listen to Arletty’s voice an other reason to fall in love with her!
And ALL actors have splendid French voice tone!
I will follow your kind directions, Michaela. I have only had a bit of capacity in German.
Thank you. A very calming and helpful post.
You are most welcome. Thank you for reading it!