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How not to mourn
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Garrison Keillor, whose essays for Salon.com tend toward the kindly-Lutheran-statesmen-of-liberalism bent, has something good to say about celebrity and tragedy. He says he was listening, on the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, to several “survivors” discussing their “feelings.”
Thirty-two people were shot dead by a madman, and we remember them by listening to narcissistic mumbling. A man who was a friend of a victim said he was still recovering from the horror and trying to deal with his sense of loss, but he said not one word about his friend who died and a great deal about his own feelings. After a couple minutes of this, I wanted to break his arms.
If you are ambulatory and have most of your teeth and can take nourishment, you should be careful about lavish self-pity in public, my darlings. A memorial service is Not About You. Leave the stage to the parents and lovers of the victims and honor the dead by living out their best principles as you understand them. Put your maudlin preoccupations in a box and drop it in a landfill.
Thank you, Mr. Keillor. A good reminder to those of us who feel like the Public wants, nay, needs, us to grieve on television.
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One more diversion
Who was it that said we all get our 15 minutes of fame? That’s how I look at those the media puts in front of us when reporting tragedies. If I were the one grieving, I would hide from the cameras at all costs.
What’s interesting here is that if you lose a relative (say a parent, my own experience), you are expected to have “moved on” in about two months, preferably just one. I’ve never been one to cry much in public, so I’m not talking about that, but I am saying that casually mentioning missing the person one has lost after that point gets the other party uncomfortable (aren’t you over it yet?). In reality, the first year will have many “first-time” reminders of the loss: the person’s birthday, wedding anniversary, Mother’s/Father’s day, and finally the day of the person’s death and the funeral.
I hope I’m not just doing what is being condemned here; that isn’t my intention! It just seems an odd juxtoposition to me, having experienced the loss of both parents and seen how others in our culture respond to grief (unless/until they’ve been there themselves, often). Why should classmates be given space to “grieve” when family members are not?
I don’t think you are doing what Keillor is talkng about, Cheryl. When these things happen to you, these reminders, you are thinking about the deceased. Keillor complained about the people who make it all about “them” and never mention the deceased. The truth is both you and I will think about our deceased parents every day in one way or another, but some days, something may occur which makes us miss them a little bit more. I don’t think that’s unusual. In time, that’s not grief anymore, just a melancholy memory, and there’s nothing wrong with feeling that or mentioning it.
Is it really anyone’s business how another person grieves?
This draws to mind a highly narcissistic “memorial tribute” written about JFK Jr. As it turns out, the memoirist was not at all all that close to John-John, a fact which became painfully evident with narratives fashioned thusly: “From the other side of the banquet room I feverishly waved and attempted to get his attention. He was obviously still distraught over the break-up with Darryl Hannah, yet managed a pained smile and brief wave. He thereupon turned back to his reuben on rye bread with customary relish.”
Well, so much of the university experience is all about “you” - why not this?
I would guess that what a lot of these students are grieving for is the loss of the (illusory) sense of safety they had prior to the shootings. We know that people die every day in car crashes, heart attacks, etc and sometimes more unusual deaths due to intentional violence. But most of the time we go on with our lives without thinking about it. Then someone we know dies unexpectedly and it hits home how vulnerable we are, how easily it could have been me instead.
Cheryl D,
If you have freinds that you are close enough to confide your grief to, and they have the temerity to abuse that trust by asking why you’re not over it yet, I think you might need need to re-evaluate that relationship.
Cheryl,
You make an excellent point and one which is overlooked more often than not.
Losing a parent, or any close loved one takes time, sometimes it could be two years. There are people who don’t/can’t/won’t understand this because it hasn’t happened to them yet, OR they don’t love as deeply as you do.
When I lost my mother not to long ago, I was devastated. She was devoted to the LORD Jesus Christ and I knew exactly where she was, but the point was, I couldn’t talk to her anymore, I couldn’t hear her voice, ….. I just missed her with all my heart. I shared my heart with a cousin about two months later, and was shocked to hear “you need to get over this, and move on” I got off the phone as quickly as possible. Her words made it much worse, and inflicted pain which hurt me deeply.
I had made an appointment to see my Internist for another reason, and while there related what had happened. His words to me were thus; “it often times takes no less than 6 months and more likely a year and half to two years to get over the loss of a parent” I knew this deep down in my heart because my father was a pastor (my father passed away before my mother and that was painful too, but my mom and I could talk and share) and had dealt with those who grieve, but hearing it from someone else really helped.
My mother often grieved for her friends, she lost a dear friend when she was 35, it was heartbreaking. It isn’t a matter of my mother not knowing where her dear friend was, it was plainly a loss, which was painful and lasted a long time.
Cheryl, after reading your post, I would say you loved your mother dearly, and that says a lot about you and your mother.
Blessings
When people grieve, they are speaking from their painful hearts, often times at funerals people say and do things which others can’t understand in the pew. They make mistakes, they cry, or go off on tangents about their loved ones. We need to be kind hearted and understand.
Pastors most often bring the situation back, as they speak, sometimes as my dad did…. telling those in the audience about Salvation, the way to Jesus Christ. He was a strong man, even taking the funeral of his favorite sister, (she died of a heart attack very suddenly) I sat in the back, as I didn’t want anyone to see me sobbing. I watched my dad and saw how brave, and careful he was. However after the burial my dad walked away from the grave site, and it was his time to grieve as we walked arm and arm.
Just remember everyone who stands before the guests at a funeral or memorial are under a great deal of pressure and pain, they don’t always do it just the way you would expect, if they are close to the deceased their emotions will many times determine what they say.
Those of us who sit in the pew can pray for those who choose to speak, and pray GOD blesses them with the right words to comfort themselves and others.
What does it mean to be “over” the death of a parent (or other loved one)? I’m a middle-aged woman who lost my mother in my teens, and I still don’t consider myself “over it.” I still experience feelings of grief and sadness sometimes. I still ache for not having her part of my life, for her never having known her grandchildren, and for many other losses related to having lost her. Is it really expected that, even after two years, one should be “over” this? How strange that sounds to me.
Ree,
I wasn’t using two years as a CUT OFF date for grieving. Yes I still think of my mother, as I do my dad, and the tears fall down my face. However the deep pain I felt the first few years has gotten better, GOD has healed that pain, but I still miss them, and sometimes I cry.
Nothing I said should have meant that anyone would stop feeling sad about losing a loved one after any amount of time.
John M.,
I never had anyone actually say I should be over it. And with my mom, I was in a more caring community that mostly did OK. But when Dad died, I wasn’t yet 17, and people in my church simply didn’t know what to do with a teenager who’d lost her dad. If I so much as mentioned him (not even mentioning his death, necessarily, just mentioning something about him), the other person would be silent, and I could hear their brain working feverishly with, “What do I say?” I soon learned to change the subject to a “safe” one–not for my sake, but for the sake of the other person. The people who brought the most comfort were those who’d mention Dad on their own–who’d comment how good a picture that was of Dad, or how hard he had worked to build the porch.
But in years since I’ve seen that with other people. If they mention missing someone who has been dead three or four months, another person in the conversation often gets almost panicky. Grief is considered abnormal in our culture. Having been there myself, I deliberately continue the conversation if the other person brings up a deceased loved one.
We in the Christian community do particularly badly in one regard. SO often I’ve heard someone compliment someone who isn’t grieving much in the first week (the week when people are numb) and say that their calmness proves their spirituality. It may indeed–but if grief hits hard the next week, that doesn’t prove their faith isn’t real anymore. We need to let people grieve as they grieve, not how we want them to. Even Jesus showed grief at Lazarus’s death–even with full knowledge He was about to raise him! Death is a true enemy.
For me, May and June are coming up, and I plan to send notes to friends who’ve lost a parent in the last year (in the week or two before Mother’s and Father’s Day). My mom lived to be 78; her mom had died when she was in her 20s and out of the country, no clue she’d never see her again–and she told us she never had stopped missing her from time to time. Fifty years later, she still missed her–not pathologically, but just as a loss.
Victoria,
I’m sorry your cousin didn’t understand and was so blunt about it. That must have hurt; I hope when she experiences grief of her own someday, you’ll have a chance to offer better comfort.
It may be important to remember these are kids at VA Tech, and not experienced with life.
After my father died, an anticipated death, I still wanted to sit “shiva” for a couple days or even a week, just to give myself some space to grieve and cry. Kids pulled me on into life and activities revved up again. But I never felt I got the buffer I needed–which made the mourning feel incomplete.
I suspect many in our society are in a hurry to rush past grief because they don’t want to have to think about death, so they want you to have “reached closure” quickly. I don’t think grief works that way.
I make it a point to ask people how they’re doing after a death–often for months afterwards. I’ve found people want to talk about the recently deceased and appreciate hearing someone else remembers them.
I wrote a condolence this morning in which I noted “I don’t think we ever really get over the death of a parent. The pain lessens, of course, and the immediacy diminishes, but you honor them with your tears, so cry away.” No matter how long it’s been.
Maybe I’ve had too much practice, but I like to give mourners the benefit of the doubt in public–even if I agree with Keillor in private.
Cheryl,
After reading your post 13, …. I can certainly agree with you. I’m glad you continue the converstation, you most likely will help someone who needs comfort. When friends or anyone bring up my parents or others whom I have loved it makes me feel that they cared about them. Ignoring death or its heartache makes it much worse.
It must have been very difficult to lose your dad at such a young age, not even 17. My heart hurts to hear such a thing. If you had been in our church you would have been comforted, invited and loved in our home. My mother had a real spot in her heart for those who were hurting, so did my dad.
I’m joining the conversation late, but I wanted to say that I understand what you all are saying. I lost my boyfriend at the age of 20. I don’t know that one ever gets over the loss of someone they love. I will see him again, and I now have a wonderful husband and family. But, every once in awhile, I hear a song or think of something funny he said, and remember him. Anyone who thinks you can just “get over it” has never experienced such a loss. They will never understand until it happens to them.
I think that these large-scale events such as 9-11 or Virginia Tech or Columbine get slightly overblown. Their grief is real. But their grief is not any more real because the deaths of their loved ones happened in a large, public event.
I live near the Twin Cities in MN. The 35-W bridge collapse last summer was a huge event in our area. The state is now debating how much money each family should get for the loss of their family members. I don’t know that they are entitled to anything! Are the deaths of these people more important than the deaths of the hundreds of others who die in other ways on the roads of MN each year? I find that whole “compensation” thing odd. At some point, we need to move on as a society and let people grieve their losses on a personal level.