How to Speak the Language of Grief
You walk into a house full of fresh grief. It’s fresh because the death just occurred. Your best friend’s husband went out to the bar last night, drowned his hard day in hard drink and he never made it back home. Fresh. Because both you and your friend have never experienced death this close.
You open the door like you have so many times before, but this time the familiarity of the house is unexpected different, dark and lonely. What once housed parties, life and love now houses something you’ve never known before. Like a river, everything is in the same place it was when you last saw it, but this home has changed.
You see your friend’s children sitting on the sofa, staring into space.
You ask them, “Where’s your mom?”
And as you reach to hug them, they snap back to reality and whisper, “Upstairs.”
Each step brings you closer to what you know is only an apparition of your friend. The nerves build. Fear begins to build. You repress it as you ready yourself to meet your closest friend who has all of a sudden become someone you may no longer know.
“Can I come in?” you ask. No response.
You push open the cracked bedroom door and see the body of your friend collapsed on her bed, with used tissues surrounding her like a moat.
You tip-toe into the room, slowly sit down on the bed, and not sure if she’s awake or asleep, you reach for your friends shoulder and begin rubbing her back. Her blood shot eyes open, look at you and then, they slowly look through you.
You fill the weird silence with an “It’s going to be alright”.
“It’s not”, she whispers. “I’m alone with two kids and no job.” Her voice suddenly raises as anger courses through her body, “Why the f*** would he do this to me?”
The curse word chides you into recognizing that you’ve not only misspoken, but you’ve spoken too soon, so you decide to wait in silence. She starts to cry. You respond to her tears with your own. Even though you want to respond with words, you know this isn’t the time for words. There’s no perfection words here. There’s no perfect anything here. And so you wait.
You stay. Listen. Silence. You take her pain into your soul. Hours pass. She rises out of bed and makes the children dinner.
You’ve spoken, not with words or advice; not by trying to solve the problem; nor by placing a limit on your time. You’ve taken the uncomfortable silence, allow the grace for tears, for brokenness; you’ve allowed yourself to sit in the unrest without trying to fix it.
With your presence. With your love. In your honest acknowledgement of real loss, you’ve spoken the language of grief.
Although the language of grief is usually spoken in love, presence and time, sometimes it’s spoken in words. And when it is, here are five practical “do”s and “don’ts”
The “DON’T”S:
1. At least she lived a long life, many people die young
2. He is in a better place
3. She brought this on herself
4. There is a reason for everything
5. Aren’t you over him yet, he has been dead for awhile now
The “DO”S:
1. I am so sorry for your loss.
2. I wish I had the right words, just know I care.
3. I don’t know how you feel, but I am here to help in anyway I can.
4. You and your loved one will be in my thoughts and prayers.
5. My favorite memory of your loved one is…
Disney: Stealing the Death Virginity of Another Generation
The first time death became real for me was when I watched Bambi’s mother die. I still remember it like it was yesterday. And yes, I cried.
I cried when Mufasa died.
And Disney’s “Old Yeller” messed me up for like a month.
Yup. Disney pretty much took away my death virginity.
In fact, Disney has effectively taken away the death virginity of multiple generations. And they do it so subtly too. One minute you are watching a movie that has been made for you. Life is good. Cartoons are dancing across your TV screen, singing happy songs about the circle of life and the whole time it’s a set up. A set up to pull you in and steal away your virginity.
Now, they are stealing away the death virginity of a new generation with their “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.”
I have to admit that when I saw the trailer for “The Odd Life of Timothy Green”, I didn’t want to see it. Not because it looking poorly written or poorly produced, but because of the emotional nature of the story: A couple who can’t have kids miraculously finds a boy named “Timothy Green”. I’ve grown wise to that cunning Walt Disney.
After watching the video below (spoiler alert), I’m pretty certain I will shield my tender soul from this movie.
Watch as Disney steals the death virginity from these unsuspecting children.
So … Are You an Organ Donor?!?
The sad fact of organ donation is this: If you are an organ donor, and you ever donate your organs, it’s probably because you died suddenly and tragically.
And yet, organ donation is the one thing that can provide a ray of hope for those that survive you. It’s a gift that is given to the recipients of your organs, and a gift to those you’ve left behind as they know your death had some, small aspect of redemption.
Organ donation redeems your deceased body, it redeems others’ lives and it can even provide some redemption for your survivors. It’s simply one of the most beautiful things to arise out of tragedy.
Here’s an example.
So … are you an organ donor?!?
It All Comes Down to Choice
Today’s guest post is written by Alece Ronzino and was originally hosted by A Deeper Story.
Alece is a New Yorker changed by Africa. She is the founder of One Word 365 and a communications coach for non-profits. She blogs candidly about searching for God in the question marks of life and faith.
*****
Someone asked me the other day where I’m at in my journey. She was talking about the traumatic loss and transition I’ve endured in just about every single area of my life over the past few years. “Do you feel like you’re on the other side of it?”
I didn’t really know how to answer that question because I don’t think she fully understood what she was asking (though I know she certainly meant well.)
I’m in a much better place than I’ve been in a long time. Although I’m painfully aware of how fragile it all is, life feels good right now. And I haven’t been able to say that truthfully in years.
But that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten over—or even through—my loss.
I think the idea of “recovery” from loss is a harmful and misleading mirage. It’s unrealistic to expect that life could ever go back to normal after catastrophic loss of any kind. In a way, life will be forever divided by before and after. And to strive to go back to normal—to return to how things were and how you felt before your loss—is like trying to get somewhere on a treadmill: exhausting and impossible.
I don’t know if I’m meant to come out on the other side of my heartache. At least not in the usual sense.
I’m discovering what it’s like to live in the delicate tension of sorrow and joy. What we deem to be opposites are not actually mutually exclusive. They can be—and maybe they should be—embraced together. We don’t move out of sorrow into joy, as if we’ve recovered from our heartache. Instead we learn to choose joy even when that seed of sorrow remains ever present.
Jerry Sittser, in A Grace Disguised, said it so beautifully:
“I did not go through pain and come out the other side; instead, I lived in it and found within that pain the grace to survive and eventually grow. I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am.”
What happens in me matters far more than what happens to me. It’s not my experiences that define me, but my responses to them.
So instead of making it my aim to get through what’s happened to me, I am learning to focus on my response to what’s happened to me. As with most things, it all comes down to choice.
That’s the reason “choose” is my One Word for this year. Because I need constant reminding that even when I have nothing else, I always have the power to choose.
While I can’t control what’s going on in this world or in my life, I do have control over my responses to those things. So today—same as yesterday and the day before—it’s entirely up to me to choose how I will respond to pain and sorrow and loss. I need to continue to choose to face, feel, and work through it, rather than to avoid it. And I need to continue to choose joy and trust right here, right now.
So if you’re wondering where I’m at in my journey, know this: You can always find me right here, in the middle of the tension between joy and sorrow, grief and gratitude, weakness and strength, questions and faith.
Join me here, won’t you?
*****
Connect with Alece via the following:
Visit Alece’s blog | Follow her on Twitter | Join One Word 365
This is Hard for You to Understand
Yesterday, the lovely Jessica Jensen gave me my 1,000th “Like” on my Confessions of a Funeral Director Facebook page. In honor of the 1,000th “Like”, here’s my first article that I posted on the Facebook page back in December of 2011.
*****
I picked up the phone with my rehearsed, “Hello. This is the Wilde Funeral Home. Caleb speaking.” The voice on the other end says abruptly, “I have a problem … my son-in-law was killed in a motorcycle accident yesterday.”
Now that I know the nature of her call, the next five or six sentences are as rehearsed as the first.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you” she says.
I pause … waiting to see if the silence elicits any farther response; and, at the same time I’m contemplating if I should deviate from the script and ask her about details of the death.
Keeping with the script, I continue on, inquiring about the hospital he’s at, the name of her daughter, her daughter’s phone number and then the hardest question of them all:
“Do you know if you want embalming or cremation?” I say with hesitation.
And what proceeded was her only scripted response.
“It depends on the condition of his body. The coroner told us he slammed into a tree without his helmet on, but they wouldn’t tell us anymore. If he’s bad … cremation. If he’s okay … embalming.”
We then went over the plan of action, which consists of me calling the hospital to see if her son-in-law’s released, calling the coroner to inquire about the condition of the body and then calling her back to let her know a time she could come in to the funeral home and make arrangements.
I called the coroners.
Got the release from the hospital.
And an hour later I was standing in the morgue unzipping the body bag to see if the body of this 40 year old man was viewable. It was the back of the head that hit the tree … something we could fix for his wife and four young children (ages 5 to 13), so they could see their husband and daddy one last time.
15 hours of restoration. He still didn’t look right. Dead people never look right. We’re so used to seeing them alive that dead is never accurate … but this was different. This was a motorcycle accident that threw a man into a tree.
We gave the wife the choice to continue on with the public viewing or close the lid and she chose to keep it open, sharing the reality and source of her pain in all its distortion … sharing it even with her four young children and all their schoolmates that came out in support, many of whom saw unperfected death for the very first time.
The scheduled end of the viewing came and went but people kept coming to view.
Finally the last person filed past the casket and the family knew the time to say their last good-bye had approached.
The viewing was held in a church, with the casket positioned at the front of a totally full sanctuary. As a way to provide privacy to the family, we turned the open casket around so that the lid blocked the view from the pews … creating a private space where tears could be shed in all their honest shock.
The sanctuary echoed with the cries of four children and their mother.
And the sanctuary echoed with the cries of four weeping children and their mother … making time stand silent.
Until the grandfather came up to the casket, wrapped his arms around the children and said, “This is hard for you to understand.” The tear soaked porcelain skin cheeks. The last look of their father’s physical body save the memories their young minds have stored.
In those moments as the sanctuary resounded with the cries produced by an inexplicable death, there wasn’t a person in the room who understood.
In these moments — as we watched these young children — we all became like them. With all the well intended cliches emptied of meaning, we allowed our minds to reconcile with what our hearts were telling us: we simply can’t understand something that doesn’t make sense.
