I was on a plane seated beside a young couple who were on their way home from their own spur of the moment wedding in Las Vegas. They spent the first hour picking apart the flaws in each other's families in an incredibly mean spirited and vulgar fashion, and at volume that made it all but impossible not to hear. At some point they seemed to realize that I was sitting beside them and they interrupted me to ask what I was reading. I told them it was a biography of Steve Jobs (which drew puzzled looks on their faces). I explained that he was the founder of Apple, and likely was responsible for Mac's and iPods and changed the music industry....but was now dead. Their response was one of horror. Apparently my saying the word "dead" was completely disgusting to them. Recalling the taboo around the word "dead" in some cultures, I quickly recanted and told them he had "passed". Upon which, they were visibly relieved and returned to their gruesome dissection of the personal traits of each other's friends. (Who knew that elbows were even part of the way people evaluate others' worth as human beings?...but to some people they are crucial. )
It reminded me of how quickly death and dying can elicit responses of disgust and horror.
Our phobia of death and mortality is so pervasive that defences like denial have become entrenched and habitual, to the point that we fail to give recognition to what has passed, what is lost, and how we suffer because of it.
I think most people in our culture struggle to grieve well. By which I mean, we generally struggle to effectively confront loss.
I'm on board with the idea that funeral's should be a celebration of a person's life, but not at the expense of also engaging the true reality of loss and all the sadness that entails. One of my few painful memories from childhood was being told by a relative that I shouldn't be sad when someone dear to me had died. Even as a six-year old I knew that I needed to feel the pain of losing someone important. The possibility of afterlife changes the meaning of loss, but it doesn't eliminate the sorrow of it entirely, and to pretend otherwise is a fool's errand. Many of us skirt the feelings of loss these days when someone dies by either avoiding the unpleasant rituals of death altogether, or trying to divert our attention by focusing only on the positive (hence my hesitation about being celebratory without acknowledging sorrow).
But this difficulty with grief doesn't just apply to actual death. It's a problem with loss in general.
We often fail to acknowledge the passing - the loss of things in our lives - especially when there's no body to bury.
Theologians like Arthur McGill, and psychologists like Rollo May, have suggested that we avoid confronting loss altogether in our culture because it reminds us of death, that perceived ultimate loss that inevitably awaits us. So we pretend that people can stay young. We offer products and services that create the illusions that time isn't lost or passing. We even desperately grasp on to nostalgia and recreations of our past to shield us from the truth that everything is in a constant state of change.
There are real consequences however when we fail to acknowledge loss. Perhaps most important of those consequences is the difficulty it creates in allowing us to live the life we have in the present.
So I've taken to giving some advice to people that seems a little peculiar at first glance: have funerals for things and people that are gone, even if they're still technically alive.
Sometimes people have changed so much they have become a totally different person than you used to know, and show no signs of going back. And this hurts. It hurts that they will never again play that role in your life, that they will never be the same person to you that they were. And like all loss, the more loving and important they were to you in the past, the deeper the hurt when they've become this new person who doesn't even resemble the one you knew.
It's a loss and it needs to be grieved. You don't get to go to the funeral home and look at a made up body in a casket. But you can bring in some elements of ritual that help you say goodbye and move through the grieving process.
Write a eulogy. Identify all the dearest memories, all the funny stories, all the things that person meant to you. Read it out loud to friends at a pub, or write it on index cards with crayon while sitting in your bathtub and listening to music they loved. It doesn't really matter the format as long as you're clearly seeing and naming what was, and acknowledging that it has passed.
Some of us need to have funerals for ourselves.
In a life permanently altered by an accident or medical condition, or even just the slow process of deterioration that comes with aging, we are changed so significantly that a part of us is gone. Very often our identities are tied up in what we "do" in our physical capabilities and activities. Is it any wonder then that an illness or disabling condition can feel remarkably like a part of our selves has died? This too is a loss we must grieve. The loss of self, even while we are alive is painful and disorienting. And if you need to have a funeral, go ahead. Wear black, bury something, make a poster-board of memories of what has passed. Honour your loss. Don't try to make it a good thing too quickly. Many of us have been lead to under appreciate the value and importance of negative emotions, thinking that we should quickly find a happier note to sing lest we fall into wallowing. A funeral can be a good place to find permission to be sad and cry.
At the heart of all grief is the uniquely human emotion of bittersweet. We who are made in the image of the Divine have this capacity to feel both sorrow and joy at the same time. Joy for what was, and for what the person or thing meant to us. But also sorrow. Sorrow for the fact that it is now gone and can never be exactly replaced. Remember, that its irreplaceable quality is precisely what made it so precious and special while it was present.
Loss is an ongoing part of our lives as they were in the past. Ignoring loss steals the present from us as well.
On one hand I'm tempted to be critical of the couple that sat next to me on the plane for covering up the reality of death with a more sanitized word like "passed" to avoid facing the fear and pain associated with loss.
On the other hand, I think the word "passed" has it's own value for marking the constant flow of loss that happens in all of our lives. There will never be a day exactly like today. Friends I love are getting older and closer to illness. My kids are growing up. Opportunities to show love are vanishing as quickly as they appear.
Today is passing.
All of life around us is passing as we journey forward. It makes every moment precious. It means constant losses.
I'm not writing this piece with any one person in mind. All of you who read this blog are on journey's of loss because you are human.
So may you discover the quintessentially bittersweet quality of human life in all of its fullness by acknowledging and honouring your losses. Even if it means having a small funeral for something that's alive but changed... and eating some triangle sandwiches in a church basement afterward.
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