Can We Learn From Grief And Loss?
It is not just around the death of a loved one that we feel such things as sadness, depression, anger, or loneliness, or perhaps utter such things as“Why did God do this to him/her (or me)”,“how will I go on?” “Why did my life have to go bad?”. The losses, which we experience, whether big or small, include many of these same feelings. Think of some of the other losses that we feel, or have felt, or know that others feel. There is the loss around a move to a new house, or community; the loss of changing schools, or jobs. There is a terrible loss if one gets demoted on the job or downsized. There is a powerful impact if one looses benefits and must become an independent contractor professionally. Don’t forget the losses in disruption of relationships, be it a divorce, a falling out of a couple who have been together a long time, the pain of a parent and child not being able to relate to each other, the loss of a special friendship, loss of a physical capability because of illness or aging, estrangement from God. And this list could go on. But around each loss there is some kind of grief reaction.
The strong reaction to a loss is understood quite simply: our life and routine as we have known it, in some way created it, become used to it, and depended on it, is permanently disrupted and will not be exactly the same again. We can not reduplicate exactly the way things were. We cannot have what we want, the way we might have pretty much wanted it. In a real sense we break ourselves; something that was a part of our larger self, i.e., our experience or our world, has broken away and cannot be replaced. We find ourselves grieving the loss. The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling , in an article about grief and loss, offers this definition of grief: “Grief is a process and not a state. Grief is not a set of symptoms, which start after a loss and then gradually fade away. It involves a succession of clinical pictures which blend into and replace one another.” (pp. 472-473). To work through the grief one must go through a series of stages to reorganize one’s life and move ahead to a life that approximates the levels of satisfaction, happiness and fulfillment as before.
By knowing that grief is a process we are given permission to know that we will feel all of those bad feelings described above, that we may think and behave in strange ways, and that we will need time, paying close attention to our inner selves and support to work through our grief reactions. There is a strong feeling these days that grief is damaging, that we should not work it through, and that it is unfair. But, as Rabbi David Wolpe has said elsewhere,“The blessing which we seek in life is not to live without pain. It is to live so that our pain has meaning.” To believe that grief is damaging or to be afraid of it gives our lives over to being controlled by fear. In that way we will diminish what the gift of life has to offer and thereby increase our pain. Clinically, complicated grief and mourning reactions can lead to denial, depression, or other clinical conditions which may be limiting to one’s life and its possibilities or even turn into something potentially damaging.
There is a word of health that comes to us through loss and grief. It is variously described in many of our religious traditions. Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity all point us in the direction of taking seriously the times, places and experiences of loss, and its related feelings of grief and depression. There are both sacred and secular wisdom in the notion that, to paraphrase one writer, the roots of religious expression are to be found in the ways a people honors its dead. To put it another way the kind of beginning we have for what is next, what is new, what it is that comes after the loss, has much to do with how completely we work through the loss.
The wisdom of God, and the sacredness of life, however understood, point for the spiritual and religious person to what is new, what is the promise of new life, what can be created out of that which has been lost. What are some of the things that we can do to help work through loss? Know that mourning a loss is a process and it will take some time. Talk about your loss. Write about the loss so you can better understand the impact of the loss upon you. Find someone or a group who has experienced the same or similar loss. If you feel guilt or blame about the loss try to understand them. Recall both the positives and the negatives associated with that which has been lost. Do not lose sight of the discipline of prayer, and your own religious faith to fall back on.
When the desperation or loneliness of grief may become overwhelming search for your religious leader, good friend, or pastoral psychotherapist. Our losses and our reactions can teach us so much about the blessings of life.
Dr. Paul Melrose
