Dealing with grief

What would you say to a person who is inconsolable over the loss of a loved one?

This is the most powerful of all questions. As a pastor in Romania, I lived in a village with one paved street, and most people had to walk to the well on the corner for water. I loved walking the streets and meeting the people.

One family I became close with was from another faith tradition. The college-aged son became a good friend, and I visited their home often. He was involved in the party scene, and his faith tradition gave him no concrete hope for eternity.

One night, as he drove with his father, they rear-ended a horse-drawn carriage laden with logs. One log killed his father.

In Romania, funerals are held in the home of the deceased, and there is little or no embalming. The body rests for three days in an open casket. If it is a hot summer, they put ice under the body. Services are held daily in memoriam.

After the last day of services, I watched as the family said their goodbyes. They wailed in agony. The man’s widow finally collapsed on the coffin in anguish. I was in shock. I had never seen such hopelessness though I had seen too many funerals. A Scripture verse from the prophet Hosea that is often quoted at times like this is “Oh death, where is your victory, oh death, where is your sting?”

For this family, the sting of death was that they had no hope of ever seeing the man again. His eternity was sealed, and they didn’t know what it was.

The apostle Paul answers the prophet’s question when he teaches that the sting of death is erased by the promise that in the future, the faithful will be reunited with their bodies and, together with all the faithful of ages past, enter into the absolute fulfillment of the kingdom of God.

To the one who does not have or know the promises of an eternal future, death is a scary prospect. Will I cease to exist as a person? Am I merely a natural being that expires? Will I get another chance to be a better person and attain a higher spiritual status? Will my consciousness be absorbed into the greater consciousness, like a drop of water entering an endless ocean? Is there a personal existence after death? Do all people go to the same place or experience? What makes the difference? Is there any purpose at all in life itself?

The Christian Scriptures tell us, “It is appointed for everyone to die once, and then comes the judgment.” Not only does this tell me that there is a personal existence in the afterlife, but that I won’t be reincarnated and that I am responsible for how I live my life and treat others today. It also tells me that since there is a judgment, not all people get to the same place and experience.

Contrary to Dan Brown’s claims, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one gets to the Father except through me.” According to Jesus’ claims, there is something about a relationship with him that gives you access to the kingdom of God.

John, the close friend of Jesus, wrote, “These things were written so that you would know that you have eternal life.” John believed that people today could know their eternal destiny and not be frustrated by trying to, as one young Muslim said to me, “earn Brownie points with God.”

When you have to prove you are good enough, how can you ever be sure? The sting of death is uncertainty.

To answer someone who has lost a loved one, no one can know the spiritual condition or destiny of another person. We have to trust God with that decision. What we can know is where we will go when we die, and that knowledge should give us a “peace that surpasses all understanding,” even in the face of death. We approach death with the confidence of King David, who wrote, “Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure.”

If you are experiencing anxiety at the loss of a loved one, know that God’s heart breaks for you as he feels your pain. He lost his son as well, but he did it to empathize with your pain and give you hope for the future.

SENIOR ASSOCIATE

PASTOR RIC OLSEN

Harbor Trinity

Costa Mesa

There is no such development as “closure.” The door to grief and sadness over a loss is ever ajar. Counseling one to “close” a chapter and get on with life is an affront. Things are never “over,” for there is always a residue of pain that abides.

Though the door cannot be shut to keep the storm of grief at bay, neither should the door be left wide open to the bitter wind of despair. Death is to be seen as part of God’s created order, a natural component of the eternal cycle that he has ordained as part of the divine pattern of the universe. Life is an entrance, death an exit, and a healthy acceptance of this reality, through moderation in grief and emotional restoration, is Judaism’s goal. Though living in the shadow of death, we are summoned to live life to the fullest measure.

Although grief hurts, most people can confront it and continue to embrace life. Grief, though, is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, and there is no uniform pathway through it. Woe cannot be regulated.

But despite the variance in responding to the bombardments of sorrow, excessive grieving is to be resisted. Borrowing the gravedigger’s spade to shovel over our own heart and spirit is a desecration of life. When the Angel of Death comes to claim one soul, he should not be able to leave with two souls. It is dangerous to be obsessed with thoughts of the deceased; it is tragic to tumble through the abyss of loneliness; it is pitiful to experience existence as uniformly gloomy and life as meaningless and purposeless. We must not draw the drapes, pull up the covers and withdraw into a world where only the dead person lives.

Protracted grief is a distorted response to death.

A counsel of closure is counterintuitive, but permanent immersion in grief is counterproductive. In Psalm 31 we read, “My life is spent with grief and my years with sighing.” The Psalmist speaks on behalf of many for whom memory is more a torment than a blessing. These mourners are not free to embrace life because they are imprisoned in their grief. They cannot walk through the valley of the shadow because they are paralyzed by their misery.

We can proffer the gentle reminder that gratitude for what has been lent to us should conquer sadness over what has been redeemed from us; that departed loved ones would want only the best for us, their survivors, and would not want our emotional death to follow their physical demise.

One who is disconsolate should be made to remember that we best honor our loved ones not by despondency but by the determination to live as they would want us to live.

Death is inevitable. It cannot even be cured by health. But for as long as we live, we are called to be servants of life. We cannot close the door to grief, but we can open the door to recovery.

RABBI MARK S. MILLER

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

As little as possible. Being present, listening and allowing oneself to feel the other person’s pain is all we can do. But this is hard, and that is why people often shy away from being around those who are ill, dying or grieving. It does get to us, and we want to protect ourselves from the pain. We also tend to feel awkward and helpless, and we know that our words will fall short. Can we trust silence and simple actions, a hug or casserole, to best express our shared experience of life, love and death? I recall how my Zen teacher guided our congregation when a student burst into a retreat saying her father had died. She said quietly, “Let’s meditate together for a few minutes. This awaits us all.”

Most of us know of situations where clergy from various faiths have offended bereaved people or created havoc at funerals by offering religious platitudes and pap. Belonging to a spiritual tradition does not mean that we do not grieve.

There is a story about a Zen monk who was crying about the loss of his mentor. An onlooker asked: “Why are you sad? Hasn’t your Zen practice liberated you from suffering?”

The monk replied, “I miss him.”

A common miscon- ception about Zen is that those who practice have a stoicism, an indifference or bliss that is above or beyond ordinary feelings or experiences. Waking up to life each moment and experiencing it directly allows feelings to flow freely, feelings that are not generated by egotistical preoccupations. The Bodhisattva (an awakened being) hears the cries of the world and responds.

I have always felt that for a spiritual path to be authentic, it must deal directly with death. In the course I teach on spirituality and aging at Cal State Fullerton, both young and older students are especially interested in resources for preparing for death and for responding to those who are grieving. There are many practical lists of do’s and don’ts for responding to those who are grieving, and there are excellent materials on understanding the grief process.

But the best preparation is to steadily experience the reality of life beyond the ego or the false sense of self. This is what Zen practice is all about. As we practice dying to self each moment and awakening to life as it is, we are strengthening our ability to listen to those who are grieving and to respond with care and humility.

REV. DR. DEBORAH BARRETT

Zen Center of Orange County

Costa Mesa

Time-tested prayers lift to God those who need comfort in their grief.

Wonderful words and images are readily available to those who mourn. There are grief recovery groups in health agencies; I know and refer people to excellent counselors. Many faith communities have sub-fellowships dealing with loss; ours calls itself “Praying Our Goodbyes.” All such resources offer valuable support and comfort.

To someone who is “incon- solable,” there is nothing to “say;” one best “be.”

An example: When I was a campus minister, the daughter of a well-known professor at the Graduate Theological Union at UC Berkeley committed suicide. Several of the chaplains who formed the University Religious Council visited him, his wife and their other three daughters. He became an articulate spokesperson to seminaries, universities and Christian communities about the importance of observing grief honestly; his wife did likewise in Jewish communities and wrote a fine book.

Several years later, another daughter was killed in a tragic auto accident late one night. None of us were eager to visit her father and mother; as campus ministers we understood that they knew all the prayers and words and resources as well as we did. Because I counted him my friend, and because he called himself a “Zen Episcopalian,” I went to his home early the next morning. He and I, and from time to time his wife and one or both of their daughters, spent the entire day watching daytime television, rarely saying a word. Often tears would come and a head would rest on a shoulder; occasionally someone would laugh at TV silliness. Long afterward he would cite that day of watching TV together as the best pastoral care he and his family encountered. He and his wife and I continue to be friends, even between Berkeley and Corona del Mar.

Being with ? not doing for or saying to ? is the best support and comfort for the inconsolable.

(THE VERY REV’D CANON)

PETER D. HAYNES

Saint Michael & All Angels

Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar

That which consoles a person is the spirit within. Those who sit and pray with a grieving person need not accept responsibility to make their grief go away. The one who prays for the inconsolable person accepts the responsibility to hold the high watch and to know that any sense of loss will pass and that the divine intelligence of god’s love will move by means of their lives knowing exactly how to heal their sense of loss.

Prayer is an act of knowing the truth, and the truth will always set you free once you have surrendered any egocentric idea that you are going to heal someone. Always it is the spirit of the divine that acts, heals and consoles. Our job is to have confidence in god’s presence and ability to heal. It is no different than the miraculous process by which a cut heals. Every part of the body knows how to play its part in the healing. The same is true for any injury.

Our job is to be as St. Francis of Assisi suggested: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

We are all instruments of god’s peace. Many, however, have forgotten that. Time to remember!

SENIOR PASTOR

JAMES TURRELL

Center for Spiritual Discovery

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