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What Good is Grief?
By Carol Kline
"Snap out of it. Time to move on!" We've all heard the
world's business-model advice to the broken hearted.
Friends and relatives who are uncomfortable around our
grief try to cheer us up, distract us, or convince us
that we'll "get over it." If we've lost a love, they
remind us about all those other fish who are eagerly
swimming in the sea. We, however, are neither cheered
nor ready to go fishing.
In this culture, we are not raised to use grief for
growth. It's treated more like a low-level,
self-indulgent illness-the right words or a little
vacation are supposed to bring us back to the smiling
person we were, just as if nothing had ever happened. A
woman I know lost her daughter to cancer. "Kelly was a
generous, caring human being," she says. "But my friends
and family are tired of hearing me talk about her. They
don't know what to say to help me. I don't need words of
sympathy. I just want them to remember her life with me
and take joy in who she was."
Many people don't understand the value of the grieving
process. They want us to ignore it, largely out of their
own fears about the future-the deaths and losses we all
face if we live long enough. Grief, though, is not just
some bad habit that needs to be hidden from others'
eyes. It hears only the griever's drummer. And for good
reason.
Everything in life is crucial to our growth. That
includes grief. If we try to blot out the pain with
externals-with parties, shopping, food, or anything else
that allows us to pretend that great and important
things are not at work in our depths-the opportunity
that grief represents is lost. That deep pain asks us to
be quiet, to slow down for awhile, to go within and
maybe spend time out in Nature.
Grief is a natural process with its own heart-based
rhythm. It moves us into a slower gear. That's because
while we grieve, everything we experience flows first
through the heart and then through the mind. Minds are
not accustomed to a second-banana connection to the
heart. They don't quite know what to do. We may find
ourselves forgetful while we grieve. We lose our keys.
Misplace our shoes. We skip dinner-and remember it hours
later. Our thoughts veer off into memories. We're "not
ourselves." If we try to act normal while we don't feel
normal, life loses its flow. Fighting with grief is as
effective as boxing with the wind.
We would like to believe that time heals all things. It
doesn't-not if we think time will do the job for us. All
by itself, time does not heal anything. We heal
ourselves by examining and using what's going on inside
productively. Or we miss the opportunity.
When we break a leg, it heals faster if we get out of
bed and hobble about on crutches. That's because the
body was designed to move, just like emotions and
feelings. Stagnation of any kind is unhealthy. We reach
carefully, gently within to understand where grief wants
to take us, and what it can help us learn.
Recently, I lost someone. I spun into grief mode on
autopilot. My angry outer mind threw rocks at "the
enemy." After a few hours of going over and over the
same territory, I told myself that if everything happens
for a reason, this experience could not be the one and
only exception to that rule since time began. And so I
sat with it. And felt it. As my heart and my mind
communicated, I understood another deep "should" of
mine-that no one should hurt my friends. But the reality
was that what was done was done. The situation was out
of my control. I felt stymied. How could I respond in a
way that was respectful to the spirit of our friendship?
Eventually, I wrote down some qualities I will miss most
about this particular friend-his loyalty, his cracked
sense of humor, and his courage. And finally, this
thought came to mind: "Maybe I can learn to be more
loyal, laugh more about wonderfully crazy things, and be
willing to stand up faster for what I believe is right."
That thought could not bring him back. But it did soften
the hurt. It allowed me to tap into love, instead. And
that's when the anger began to subside. It was only
then, when I reached a new perspective on my grief, that
I understood the purpose of the anger. It was an arrow I
could use on a path toward growth.
The experience of grief and grief's timetable are
different for each person. Our inner self can tell us
when it's time to move on-if we listen. It's all right
to spend time in the land of grief, but it's a mistake
to be buying a mortgage there.
Our hearts grow brittle if we stuff them with nothing
but memories. Staying stuck in grief keeps it limited to
an emotion. Grief offers us a unique opportunity. If we
allow grief to evolve from an emotion into a feeling, it
scours us out and leaves a space behind. In that space,
we may find the seeds of compassion growing.
In the end, if all we do is drown in the emotion of
grief or sorrow, we choose drama over love, loss over
gain, and death over life-not what the people we love,
and have lost, would want for us. |
