Grief --
Done and Gone
It used to be that hospitals shut you out when a loved one was being operated on. You would be shunted off to a jail-like room from which you could pick up the phone and beg for information. By and by someone pretending to be a doctor would come into the waiting room and announce, "S/he's gone. What do you want us to do with the body?" Sometime later you would be allowed to see the remains.
| When Daddy died last week it was totally different. Not only was the family allowed in the room while he died, the family was left alone in the room while he died. |
By virtue of my priesthood office I have watched other people die, some slowly, and others in an instant; it is never easy to watch anyone die. When it is someone you love that you are watching it is even harder. But hardest of all is if you are the one that pulled the plug and you can change your mind at any time as the process of dying progresses.
Five of my six daughters were there in the room as Daddy struggled to make it over that hump-backed mountain called Death. Uncle Ray was there, and two of my brothers. Singly and together we had all made the decision to let him die. Then we watched Daddy's death throes as that decision was executed.
From the Army I have the gift of seeing everything that is in front of me. With my back against a wall I watched every face for sign of a weakening resolve. Even though there was grief, terror, and pain registering on every face, there was no hint of wavering or breaking. They stood firm even though tears streamed.
I was proud of my girls at that moment. They watched Daddy and they watched all the bells and whistles modern science has decorated our lives and deaths with. They knew what the signs meant. They knew how awful the pain was that sent Daddy's body into convulsion after convulsion. And, it hurt.
I was proud of my daughters, but neither was I ashamed of my brothers for gathering strength and support from the others in the room. I did too.
Grief comes to us in many forms. It affects us in many ways. Grief is natural. It has been said that real men don't cry. The corollary of that statement is that if you are a man you won't cry. I say to you, don't buy that bill of goods! Cry if you have to. Don't cry if the tears don't come of their own accord.
Uncle Ray was a lot like Daddy. A week, a month, even a year or two later, he will seek out a secret place and give anguished voice to his grief. But for this frozen moment in time his strength is like a boulder, immovable.
For others the tears gush freely and their grief is washed away. If not all of the grief is gone in the first washing, then more is washed away the second or third time. Who is to say when all our grief must be done or gone. There is no universal time frame our grief must be accomplished in. There is no set of scales to say when we have fulfilled our task and must stop our suffering and feel no more grief.
By the same token, there is no method of determining who feels the most grief for none of us feels grief in the same way, or even at the same time. Like Uncle Ray, my grief will come later; for now I am filled with rejoicing. I know that where he is going now there is no pain and I rejoice for that. A week, a month, or even a year from now my grief will come, and when it comes, I shall not hold it back.
For me to show anything now but rejoicing that my father has gone on to a far better place than this would be pure hypocrisy. For my daughter Cathi to show anything but tears and remorse would be pure hypocrisy. The real hypocrites are those who cry when they want only to be seen crying, and those who lock their tears of grief up inside them, but only because others would think the less of them for seeing them cry.
The great judge of us all has said, Judge not.
Judge not who suffers the most by what you see them do -- or don't. Don't weigh the tears in some mental balance. Don't wonder aloud why someone isn't crying at all. Don't judge how much love someone had by their outward show. Don't condemn those who can still smile when all is lost and a loved one has made it up over that hump-backed mountain called Death.
When your own grief comes, let the tears flow if you feel like crying. And if you are like my Uncle Ray, let the steel harden and shrink around your heart until the grief inside bursts asunder those steel walls you have built and escapes like hot lava through the ruptured cage, later, later when no one can see.
Grief is natural. It is only natural that we should mourn the loss of a loved one gone.
Don't ever try to force this natural force into some rigid channel where it doesn't want to go.
One last thing. It doesn't matter how firm your faith in God and the resurrection is, you don't ever know how much your grief will hurt. I was with my mother, day in, day out, for months before she died. I watched her weight slip away and knew that any minute might be our last. I expected her death. It was no shock hurtling through the phone at me; I knew it was coming and my strength was as the mountains all the while she was alive. Sometimes the smile of encouragement slipped for a moment, but not often.
But minutes, only minutes after she was gone I fled into the woods and fell to the earth, screaming and bawling. I begged for pity from God, to stop the pain ripping me apart so that I could be the strong one again, at least strong enough to discharge everything that needed to be done. Hours passed and still the tears poured down my cheeks.
Late that evening it was gone, all gone. I rose and came again to the house where once Mama struggled so hard to remain alive; I was smiling and cheerful. No one could tell by looking at me what I had gone through. Again and again at the funeral people remarked on how strong I was, and I smiled encouragingly. "Grief hits all of us in different ways."
Click HERE for help in dealing with funerals. Click HERE for more thoughts on this subject. Click HERE for more thoughts on funerals and grief.
THE NATURAL DEATH CENTRE, an educational charity which believes that all of us should, and can, prepare for our own deaths and those of our friends and loved ones, and that this intense personal experience should as far as possible be under our own control, not that of medical professionals or big institutions.
The Post Mortem Booklist Page Source is quite extensive.
Lin Stone is an author, writer and photographer living in Mena Arkansas among the gentle mountains known as Ouachita. His articles and essays are syndicated by talewins to be published automatically on other web sites. and he writes about the peaceable things of this world for Share Your State. In his spare time Lin writes copy for insurance roundup. You can have immediate, and free, reading of many more pieces when you send your little surfer scooting to Lin's home page at http://www.talewins.com/StoneSoup.htm where he keeps stirring up more good things for the soul.
You can have Lin's latest articles appear on your web site too. Simply insert this code <script src="http://www.talewins.com/linsy.js"></script> (If you copy and paste, be sure to run the line through a text editor -- like notebook -- before inserting it into your html) inside your html EXACTLY where you want it to appear inside your page. As Lin produces more articles, your page will automatically update. You won't need to do another thing.No advice on this site should be used
without first contacting a professional in that field.
.
Find Out More About Everything Worth Insuring in Your Life