Good Grief
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Grief is more than just an intense form of pain. It is the emotion triggered by severe loss—a loss of a part of the self. The part has many names, but let’s just call it ego. Ego makes meaning in life by defining itself in relation to its surroundings. Some of those surroundings—such as a spouse, a parent, a child, a longtime intimate friend—are so incredibly close that the ego experiences them as part of itself. When one of those critical parts is lost, the ego is shattered. Its job is to manage life, and it suddenly cannot do that job.
A grievous loss does not necessarily involve a loved one. It could be a calling, such as music, lost by a physical trauma that makes that form of musicianship impossible. It could be something we think of as merely a backdrop in life, like the expectation that people and things around you will not be blown to bits. It could be something that just happens to you, like fate, shattering the bedrock expectation that things happen for a reason and life is fair. Or it could be a loss that flows from your own obliviousness to what is happening in your life, such as hurting someone close and causing a relationship to come crashing down.
What, then, is to be done with this shattering? Often, the ego’s immediate impulse is to do anything to shut off the pain. Left to its own devices, without deeper sources of meaning, the ego traffics mostly in seeking pleasure and comfort, and avoiding pain and suffering. Our market economy has responded impressively to this impulse, with anesthesia and distractions of every description.
Many books about grieving counsel strongly against acting on this intense desire to turn away from the pain. They advise engaging with the grief and experiencing it fully as a healing process. Engaging with the grief means inviting in the full awareness of how much you cared about what you have lost, instead of pushing it away.
No matter how much you appreciated whatever or whomever you have lost, grieving brings more gratitude for it. Along with that awareness comes a heightened sense of gratitude for what remains with you of the person who is gone—and even further, a greater appreciation for all of life. Grieving also calls for separating out what must be held on to from what we must let go. This process brings a heightened ability to be present to life, rather than living in the past that has become never again or in the future that has become never shall be.
It’s hard to separate anything out, of course, if you’re standing in the dark. And that’s where grief puts you—in a dark cave with the winds of painful emotion howling in your ears. Part of the work of grieving is to learn to trust that you do actually have a kind of spiritual night vision, which allows you to treat the dark not as an enemy, but rather as a place where something new and valuable can be cultivated.
The spiritual practice of grieving entails intentionally doing whatever will sharpen, rather than dull, the edges of loss. This practice is likely to include a mixture of solitude and companionship, particularly with people who have known grief. Companionship might also be found in poetic voices that can give words to your sorrow when your own words won’t come, such as these by Tennyson in a poem called “A Farewell”: But here will sigh thine alder tree, and here thine aspen shiver; and here by thee will hum the bee, forever and forever. A thousand suns will stream on thee, a thousand moons will quiver; but not by thee my steps shall be, for ever and for ever. No more strolls by the river with that one who has departed. How sharp the sweetness of those strolls becomes.
Moving from grief to grieving calls for hard work at the very time when you have been laid low, but it can bring great rewards. It is tempting to think of the spiritual practice of grieving as basically a matter of pacing, of regaining one’s balance without trying to “bounce back” too soon. But after a grievous loss, things will never be like they were.
The results of the grieving process—a heightened capacity for gratitude, a sharper sense of presence to life, and the ability to see your way in spiritual darkness—represent a foundation on which a newly constituted ego can arise from the wreckage of the shattered one. This is the destiny toward which grieving shows the way.
- Good Grief - October 1, 2020
