Aug 08: Grief is ...



A few weeks ago I sat watching the children of Jane McGrath at their mum’s funeral. As they released three doves and blew bubbles I found myself bawling – you see I had also lost my mum from cancer, 15 months ago and I am much older than these two children. Older women have told me that the death of your mother is one of the hardest losses to work through. Grief catches us unawares, in unexpected times and ways, even if we think we are ‘done with all that’!

C.S. Lewis described grief in this way:
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.
There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don't really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man's life. I was happy before I ever met H. I've plenty of what are called 'resources.' People get over these things. Come, I shan't do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all the 'commonsense' vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace."  

Grief surprises us and sometimes seems to come from nowhere, involving a myriad of feelings. Grief has no timetable. Grief is a rollercoaster or spiral of emotions:

Anger, shock, guilt, sadness, fear, relief, depression. They’re all to expected and in no particular order. You might be irritable, distracted or confused, too. It’s all part of the normal grieving process.

BUT … grief is the inevitable and normal response to loss! In my personal experience and work as a chaplain in community aged care at Baptcare, I come across people who are grieving everyday. They grieve the loss of family and friends, the loss of their independence, of their health, of control over their affairs and life, of pets, of home and of the future.

So from my own experience and from talking to people I work with here is a brief list of ways you can help others who are grieving:

Please do …

•    Sit with me quietly – there are no right words and you can’t have all the answers, just sit with me a while in the silence, I will appreciate your presence
•    Speak their name – it is okay, my loved one may have died but it doesn’t mean they never existed
•    Cry with me – tears can heal
•    Feed me – the last thing I can be bothered doing is cooking or eating but providing a meal and eating with me might help
•    Be there if you said you would be – simple acts like taking the kids out or helping with the washing or dishes is helpful

Please don’t …

•    Avoid me – death/loss is not contagious
•    Say sorry – it isn’t your fault
•    Say time heals – the ache in my heart can’t be healed but I know time will change the way I deal with it
•    Try and fix it – you can’t & I just need to do what I need to do, let me grieve in my own way

The Psalmists cry out to God in the midst of their anguish and grief, even Jesus did at the tomb of Lazarus and as he faced his own death. The writer the first letter to the Thessalonians says not to grieve like others who have no hope (1 Thess 4:13). So grieve but grieve with hope!

A couple of good resources that are simple to read and stimulate discussion are:

•    “A Grief Observed” by C S Lewis published by Faber and Faber, London. 1961.
•    “Dying to Know – bringing death to life” Andrew Anastasios published by Pilotlight Australia, 2007
•    “Good Grief – a constructive approach to the problem of loss” by Granger E. Westberg, Augsburg Fortress Publishers, Revised Edition 1992
 

Rev Cheryl Williams is the Leading Chaplain of Community Aged Care at Baptcare, where she works with CAPS, EACH and EACH (Dementia) clients who have chosen to remain living independently in their own home.


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