From Your Minister
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It was not a surprise when my mother died. Survival rates for ovarian cancer are not high, and hers was in stage four by the time it was diagnosed. Against those odds, she lived three years with a high quality of life.
Finally, when the experimental treatments could not stave it off any longer, she refused any more chemo and radiation, quit eating, and slowly let go.
After she died, I developed a condition known as “TMJ”—short for Temporomandibular joint disorder. What this meant is that my jaw was in intense pain that painkillers couldn’t touch. For some reason, gnawing on little pieces of cardboard that I placed in my mouth like a dentist doing x-rays helped the pain. My primary memory of this time is sitting in my then-office, with a box of outdated business cards by my phone, emptying slowly as I chewed them up one by one.
Finally, I realized that the one thing that stopped the excruciating pain was crying. After that, I didn’t get out of bed in the morning until I had, literally, driven myself to tears. Regular crying kept the pain at bay. Many days, I did not want to cry. I wanted to get up and function. It was only the threat of severe pain that made me linger on sad memories, that convinced me that crying was a priority. I kept photos of my mother nearby to help prompt the tears.
I still look back at this time and thank my body for its sheer genius in demanding that I take time to grieve, to mourn. My body would not let me say the things that my rational mind wanted to say: “Yes, it’s sad, but it was a long time coming…. Not such a big deal because I was already prepared for it…. She had three good years…. She would not want me to cry.” My body just said, “Cry. Or else it will really hurt.”
One religious people who, in my experience, really understand and honor the need for mourning rituals are the Jews. Having gone through some of the Jewish rituals and practices with friends who have lost loved ones, I have been deeply comforted by the traditions which make room for attention and special treatment for those who mourn. Jewish practices structure life for the bereaved as they move through stages of grief—special practices for the first week, the first month, the first year, and annually after that. I’m not Jewish, but I still find these rituals are deeply healing, deeply resonant with human experience. I can only imagine how comforting they would be for me if they also held the lived experiences of my ancestors.
Not everyone can listen to and honor such wisdom—the wisdom of the grieving heart and body, the wisdom of giving time to mourning. We may live in an environment that does not support feelings of any kind, much less crying. We may be in such a traumatic situation that there is simply no room for grief. Because mourning, like every-thing else we do with consciousness and intention, takes time. Takes energy. Takes us saying no to other things so that we can attend to it. Not everyone can do this, whether because the situation you are mourning about is still tilting full throttle, because you’re in prison, because you have young children who would never allow you to languish in bed weeping, or so many other situations.
In such cases, I’ve been aware that our grief will wait for us, will still be there to attend to when we are able to get to it. For instance, when marriage equality became legal in Minnesota, I was astonished to find not only euphoria and relief wash over me, but also tremendous grief. Suddenly, ghosts of all the beloved GLBT people I had lost, particularly during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, were right there with me. In order to mourn, I found myself seeking out other survivors from that time—those of us who had wept over, prayed over, buried way too many loved ones to fully grieve them all. Names I hadn’t thought of in decades came to my lips; faces rose before my eyes. My old comrades and I needed to mourn together, to name names and to send mental postcards to those we had lost, saying “Wish you were here.” Pain that I had not even realized I carried with me was released.
Absent traditions that hold us together as a people in the way that the Jews and other religious peoples mourn, Unitarian Universalists shape rituals ourselves which hold us, which support us in body and spirit. During the month of October, CLF will be offering opportunities for structured mourning with others. Please check out our website (www.QuestforMeaning.org) for updates on these opportunities.
Please consider honoring yourself by participating.
For all who are now mourning, may the depth of your grief be a measure of your love for those you have lost. May you feel the accompaniment of this community—people you may have never met, but who nonetheless care about you. May our company help you to find moments of peace, freedom, and comfort even in your pain. And may your tears bring healing.
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