Shielding Ourselves from Grief

Vol. 4

I am late this month in getting out my newsletter because I have been avoiding this topic, which is fitting considering the title. It’s summer. Nature knocks on the door and beckons, “Can you come out and play?” There are vacations to be planned, friends to see. There is ice cream to be eaten.  

We have an instinctual preference for joy. When a baby smiles everyone in plain view smiles. Have you ever watched a baby see another baby cry and burst into tears immediately? We grow up and find clever ways to distract ourselves from sadness, but like those babies, we are still acutely sensitive and at a loss for how to help a grieving friend, or how to help ourselves.

We tiptoe delicately around those who are mourning, or dealing with a serious illness. There is a natural awkwardness with stilted conversation. We call this evasion politeness, or respectful boundaries. We think we are protecting the person, or helping them preserve composure, but perhaps we are shielding ourselves. The line between offering comfort and being intrusive is not clear, so we err on the side of caution. Our hesitation is palpable to the bereaved who are stuck in this unwanted position. It is difficult for all.

I saw a young man whose mom died of breast cancer in his senior year of high school. In his first session he went through an entire box of Kleenex as he relayed how hard it was to sit and listen to his friends rant and whine about their mothers. He said, “I just don’t say anything because I don’t want to be “that kid”, that one who everyone pities, the one who kills the mood when he walks in the door, and everyone stops laughing.” He masked his grief to fit in because he didn’t think they could handle his real feelings. He didn’t want to be a burden, and he was afraid to tell his truth. He wanted them to see him as cool, strong, and holding it together.

I have had friends tell me that I should write about how death is a just a normal part of life. I listen but bristle. It doesn’t ring true for me. Yes, death is expected in old age; yes, it is a naturally occurring biological reality, but despite my many years of hearing hundreds of death stories, it does not feel normal. It is exceptional. Of the many days you have lived, how many of them were days when someone you loved died? This is not a normal experience. It’s a life-altering, unwanted one. Using the word “normal” feels dismissive.

The pressure to normalize, minimize, camouflage grief is endemic to a society that has sterilized death. While some have the good fortune to die at home with the help of Hospice, many die in clinical settings such as hospitals or nursing homes. Their bodies are too rapidly whisked away to morgues or crematoriums, and are visited at time-limited services held in funeral homes. Now we have drive-thru funeral parlors.

It was not that long ago that we held wakes in our homes, where the body was fussed over, lovingly washed and groomed, and set upon a board, raised up on chairs or a table in the middle of the living room. Friends, relatives and neighbors, came calling with casseroles and homemade pies, and took turns holding shifts of organized comfort. We wore our grief with black arm bands or black dresses for an extended time. Now we go back to work in a few days and no one acknowledges this cataclysmic loss because HR protocols have changed.

Now we give it a week and try not to mention it. We walk around the grieving person gingerly and if they mourn conspicuously we encourage them to find a good therapist.

Try as we might, we cannot put a positive spin on grief. We cannot find the silver lining, or neatly explain it away with science or religious beliefs. Positive spins may work for rainy days, small setbacks, delays, minor losses, and frustrations, but they do not apply here. Denial, avoidance, and suppression may at times be functional, even necessary. They can be useful temporary coping mechanisms but they do not hold. I believe that unprocessed grief will lodge itself in the body and surface later, gently tapping on your shoulder at first, perhaps alighting in your dreams, and if ignored continue knocking more loudly with the presentation of symptoms. If you stoically stuff your emotions where do you think they go? Trauma related disorders are rampant. Trauma release therapies are thriving.

We must learn how to gradually increase our tolerance for discomfort with negative emotions and devise individually tailored strategies for recognition, exploration and release. We need to be patient and open to whatever grief brings, and allow it to take as long as it takes.

Negative emotion is a normal part of daily life that most of us, because of societal conditioning, do not have an aptitude for. We need to cultivate a willingness to befriend these teachers, for our sake and for the sake of those we love. We can help those who are slogging through grief by offering acknowledgment, inquisitiveness, kindness, and full presence.

If you have failed to console someone because you or they were initially hesitant, you can still show that you are truly interested in their journey and their well-being. You can ask them where they are (now) in their grief process. They are most likely still grieving after one month, four months, one year, or two. It takes a very long time and most of their friends have stopped asking. They may be ready. Extend the invitation but respect their answer if they decline. 

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you missed your chance to comfort someone, didn’t understand what your mother went through when your father died, or what your friend faced when her child died. There may have been a time when you spied a grieving neighbor in the grocery store and froze, or ducked into another aisle. Maybe you only signed your name on that sympathy card. You didn’t know what to do or say then. But once upon a time, they didn’t know either. None of us excel at this.

We have been collectively conditioned to be grief-avoidant and death-phobic. As children, we are frightened by death. Fairy tales and Disney storylines are riddled with dead or dying parents. Role models are scarce. Some of us have been hardened by life experience. We are unprepared.

If we look at the historical context for how our grief theories and models evolved this phenomena becomes clearer. I would like to delve into this to provide a more objective backdrop, but in an effort to shorten this newsletter, I have divided this piece into two parts.

You can find Part 2 in my latest blog post titled How Our View of Grief Has Changed. If you are short on time or need to run outside and play, come back later. Thanks for visiting today and I hope to see you next month.