A Personal Perspective: Changing our perception of grief can help us through it.

Kerry Tobin M.A.

Posted July 17, 2022 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

KEY POINTS

• To grieve is an act of love for those that died and for ourselves.

• Appreciating grief can help us move past it.

• The death of a loved one can be a time for redefining our relationship to them.

"Grief is itself a medicine." –William Cowper

"Grief develops the powers of the mind." –Marcel Proust

The Irish wake is quite the cultural phenomenon. Literature and poems have referenced it for ages. It is the plight of the Irish and one of my earliest memories. I attended the funerals of so many relatives at such an early age. Death was regarded as usual and customary. It is what we did and oh so well. It was weaved into our tapestry as family and part of our cultural story.

We greeted the dead, each other, and were brave and filled with sentimental longing. Stories were told, songs were sung, and sadness embraced. Local bars would fill with loved ones and if it were really a fun time sometimes even a fight broke out. It was extremely exciting for a little girl to witness. I learned to show up with pride and a certain grace.

So, in 2021 in the wake of my father’s death, I thought I was well prepared to also begin to say goodbye to my brother, for he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer four days after burying my father. He passed shortly after my dad and my world went dark. It was deafeningly quiet. There was a piercing silence. It was what struck me the most about this horrible time.

What is this concept we call grief? It is mostly associated with being sad and carrying a burden of loss and pain. It is seldom examined and rarely discussed in any depth by philosophers and in general. It is a frightening reality of life and can be daunting to really confront its complexity. But face it we must if we are to really heal.

Grief struck me as so much more than being sad. It is a stripping and a preparing, it is a revealing and a rendering of who you truly are and who those were that passed. Grief humbles you and calls you to action. It invites you to venture forth and make sense of it all, process and reshape your world and find new habits and ways of being. Loss profoundly awakens you to your own sense of humanity and creates a space that is livelier in the very void in which it leaves. Things become clearer, more vivid.

Grief grounds us and can stop us in our tracks as the familiar is lost and our sense of self missed too. It is in this grounding that we return to ourselves and a reshaping of our world and self begins. It is tragic but so empowering. To be forced to restructure your world and self is immensely challenging and with any challenge comes great reward.

But do we lose? We do in the sense that the person is no longer physically here. But the change is just a shift in perception. My friend remarked when her grandmother had passed, "I have a seat for her at the table." I thought it was a beautiful metaphor, but I learned she had a physical seat saved for her. It was a lovely surprise. What an homage to her and their relationship, a relationship that continued after her death.

It is precisely what we are called to do in grief. To honor the relationship and find ways to keep the connection active and real. How can we do anything else? The memories, love, and bond are still all too present. They are never absent. They only grow stronger. It is in the death of a loved one that who they are becomes more alive. How does the ultimate ending reveal the essence, core, and fundamental aspects of the person? It is known when they are alive but not the focus. That shifts though and in death we hone in on the true nature of who they were. It was in the viewing of images of them, the celebrating of their passions, and the endless discussion of their funny quirks, and ways of being in this world, that my connection to them stayed alive but more than that it deepened.

As a poem I wrote cements the fact that my brother loved music, more precisely King Crimson, jazz, and blues: I knew your love of music right from the start, eyes closed tight to feel it in your heart. Air guitar in hand we ate white castles in the sand.

To grieve is an act of love for those that died and for ourselves. Grief is the last gift we give to the departed but the grace we gain is the lifelong reward they continually give to us.