We can grieve for so many things in our lives e.g. relationships ending, redundancy, bereavement, and family problems. The grief I am writing about here is the grief experienced through bereavement. Most of us will experience this type of grief at least once in our lives and nothing prepares you for it. The loss of someone loved is a trauma of seemingly, unyielding suffering. While we may all experience it differently, one thing remains constant for most of us, we will face it unwillingly. Even with those loved ones that we are relieved to see die and end their suffering, we still wish it were otherwise.
Our grief is perhaps a testimony to someone’s life? With any relationship the inevitability of emotional pain, unhappiness, and grief are usually ignored. It is the unspoken part of the definition of love. And, grief felt for the loss of that loved person is an emotional pain like no other, as it is an emotion not consciously shared with the one you love – it is, so to speak, shared alone. You might feel sadness, fearful, angry, reflective, and lost in any number of emotions . C. S. Lewis thought grief felt more like fear. Like fear we may not know what to do, feel anxious, and be completely overwhelmed while feeling physically sick and trembling. Cruelly, not only do we experience grief, but we are also thinking about living with it. C.S Lewis explains these thoughts and feelings far more eloquently in his booklet ‘A Grief Observed’ about the loss of his wife Joy Davidman.
‘I once read the sentence “I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache and about lying awake.” That’s true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.’
Love invariably involves suffering and yet we willingly seek it out, which indicates how we value it over and above what we may eventually suffer. Loosing someone we love may leave us not knowing what to do and making mistakes in our daily choices. Some people might rush into another relationships to ease the pain. The warmth of another human being is often a way of coping with loss. However, the guilt then felt by the one that grieves sometimes creates its own problems. We might do things we have never done before, that others say are out of character, that we believe are out of character. We might start drinking just to get through the night. All of this and so much more to escape that most soulless of feelings – grief! Then comes the arbitrary end of the grieving time period. A time we feel awkward to say any more about our loss because others will think we should be over it, thereby lessening our expression of grief.
Time does not lessen the sadness, it only improves the mask. I wonder constantly what we [people] would be like if we did not suffer loss and grief but moved on almost immediately? The short answer, I think we could not know love with all its passion, twists, and weaves without the knowledge of losing it beckoning from the wings. And, while we may lose the person far too soon and the thief of life robs us of the heart that beats within, it can never take the knowledge of that person, the experience of that person. If you know that person dies loving you, you will always know in your heart that if they could return at any moment, he or she would still love you in exactly the same way. In this thinking love has never gone, changed yes, but still around us and in us. The physical is lost to memory yet it is difficult to move beyond because we base so much on touch.
Most of us will miss the physical communication of love, that which is beyond sex. The empty space in the bed, the warmth of that person’s body, the touch of him or her, the smell, and the sound of him or her breathing. In the physical loss there is an oppressive realisation that he or she is never physically coming back. I was once told by an older client that the most human of acts, the embrace, the cuddle, had gone and with it the kiss. He went on to say that no one wants to cuddle you when you are old. He missed her arms and I cannot help but agree with him. Therapy ticks boxes, sometimes too stringently, and it can help someone with continual grief that wants to stop feeling so bad but just sometimes, it never going to be any more than a moment to talk.
Therapy may be able to help you overcome feelings of hopelessness and other debilitating feelings. Some people want it over the week after it begins, which just isn’t possible. Most of the time we will have to work through our grief. However, I may be a romantic but I believe that sometimes with great love comes an insurmountable personal, emotional investment that no therapy can redirect (Freud thought it was possible until he felt loss in his life) . Suffering is part of attachment and Buddhist teachings are on reducing attachments to lessen suffering. But, could it be possible that some kinds of suffering are necessary for our understanding of life (a question for another time)?
Should I one day have to face the loss of my best friend, who is my lover, and wife, I will not try to avoid the suffering. Every tear I shed will be for our love and knowing each other. Every moment I spend alone will be in memory of us. I will know that every time I cough, smoke too many cigars, not eat because I am reading or writing and I forget, or feel low, she will be there telling me to take care of myself. And, even if I don’t take care of myself it is not a crime to love in distress till the welcome end of my own life (anti therapy). While philosophers seem to have difficulty with emotions and need to qualify them, I have a feeling John Stuart Mill, a great English Philosopher in his book ‘On Liberty’ (1869) sincerely believed what he wrote about his wife:
‘To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings—the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward—I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom. ‘
We come into a new relationship with the one who has died. We see and appreciate them in a clearer way. We yearn because we remember, we remember because we yearn for what has been lost. There is no solace to be found in my few words and nothing will quicken the lone journey through grief. But, If we take one moment to connect with everything we feel and think about the person we love, we will feel something strange. It is something different cultures have different names for and science does not acknowledge. However, it is apt to describe this something-special as the ‘soul’ ( I mean this in a non-religious sense) of the person. I would describe it as the essence, the core of that person who exists in you, and in the world you know. She or He is to be found everywhere you only have to look. Finally, one further thought – ‘what would that person you love want for you now?’
