Good Mourning Grief

A blog about my adventures as a grief warrior

Tag: #mourning

Death and Rituals to Seek Peace

March 13, 2022 /

Every family has rituals centered around death.  Burial or cremation.  Viewing or no viewing. Ashes kept together or shared in memory pieces. Our family is no different, although I do believe we have a few rituals that are not as common to others.

One of our rituals started with the cremation of Zane. My husband asked if we could lift Zane from the viewing table into his casket. And then, as a family, we put the casket into the incinerator together. And the three of us pushed the button to start the cremation process. At the start, I stood there, shocked and disapproving. I am his mother. It is against all my maternal instincts to be a part of such a final act of ensuring he is gone. My sister convinced me to join. She said, “you are his mother, be there for him” and somehow those words rallied me. In that second, my perception changed to think that this could be an act of brave love. We held him until the very end; we were with him until the last second to which his body left our earth. That thought helped me get through.

At the request of my sister, we repeated this ceremony at the cremation of her husband. She was fine until the door opened and the heat was felt. She turned away and it was my turn to say, “this is ok, we are sending him off together”. And she rallied. Admitting after, that with Zane, it was therapeutic for her and with her husband, not so much.

With each death, we grieve different. With each death there will be components of sending our loved ones off that will not be agreeable to all involved. That’s ok. Tensions are high, grief is overwhelming, shock is present, all things making us feel and react different.  Each time. Thus, I believe we must throw the rule book out the window. We can’t say, this is how I will feel, or this is what works because sometimes it does.  And sometimes it doesn’t. Patience, kindness, and an understanding that we are all experiencing total grief in our own way and in real time. That is the key to family rituals around death.

My sister started a new ritual, with the passing of her husband. She gave us the gift of writing Zane a letter to which we put in the casket to be taken to Heaven and given to him by his beloved Uncle. I enjoyed this one, thrilled that a letter to Zane is on its way. I think when it is my turn, I want my casket filled with letters from friends and family wanting me to take messages to their loved ones. One last act of love. So cool.

Our rituals after include a drink in their honor (which follows the cremation), an Irish wake, the choosing of a memory bead and a tattoo (for some of us) to bear witness of our beloved. These acts help our family start the grieving process by escorting our loved ones to the other side while we keeping a part of them on this side with us. These rituals, perhaps a bit unorthodox, are what brings us some peace. And with grief, peace is what we all strive for.

Living with the Dot

June 13, 2021 /

When we ignore our grief, when we distract ourselves or refuse to acknowledge it, the invisible pain of these actions create havoc worse than facing it in the first place.  At least that’s what the experts tell us.

My therapist drew a dot, in the middle of a piece of paper.  She said this is your grief, the first moment your grief arrived.  As she said this she kept pen on paper continuing to press in the shape of the dot until it bore a hole through the paper.  I liked her analogy.  Yes, my grief has ripped a hole in my being.

Then she drew a small circle from this centre, explaining this is time, the days that go on.  She said; “when something happens, a memory or just breathing, you are drawn back to the centre”.  She drew the line back to the dot. She continued drawing circles around the dot, each circle of time extending a little further away from the dot but with lines going back to the dot.  This illustrated that triggers never quit but, with time, it takes longer for the line from that outward circle to reach back to the dot. I think it was to be a map of realistic hope. If I believed this, then yes, I would always have grief, I would always have triggers bringing me right back to that centre of pain but with time it would lessen.

I have had moms who have lost a child decades ago tell me ‘the pain never goes away but it does get softer’.  When you are new in your grief this sounds impossible.  Even now, 2 ½ years later, there is no sign of fewer triggers or the intensity of them. Grief teaches you patience.

This is where ‘embrace the pain’ comes in. If we don’t face this centre dot, this boiling point of grief, if we don’t mourn, we become stuck in ‘the dot’.  If we are stuck, then we are unable to experience the lighter moments that occur in the lines circling our grief. And that is where we need to be to live our lives and fill our purpose; with grief as a part of which we are now but new things brought in to give us moments that are (hopefully) less painful.

How this looks and how fast this happens is an individual thing. The point is to strive towards this. Good mourning is learning to live with ‘the dot’.

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