Explaining Death To A Child

Natalie Merchant's new song HERE



Spring and Fall: to a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving? 

Leaves, like the things of man, you 

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? 

Ah! as the heart grows older 

It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; 

And yet you will weep and know why. 

Now no matter, child, the name: 

Sorrow's springs are the same. 

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed 

What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed: 

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins


“Goldengrove,” - a child's play-world - is “unleaving,” or losing its leaves as winter approaches. Age will change her innocent response to loss, and that later whole “worlds” of forest will lie in leafless disarray (“leafmeal,” like “piecemeal”). Margaret will weep later, but for a more conscious reason - Margaret is already mourning over her own mortality.

Grief Caveats - Don't Be Outside Our Boxes, Please

"mellehcimb" is a blogger that I have been reading recently... her blog is full of her beautiful poems. Her blog cycles over the sacred grounds of her mourning. Her fiance', Nelson James, succumbed to sudden cardiac arrest in November 2009. She is mourning his loss, trying to pick up the pieces, and figure out where to go from here.

She writes a list that I think gives insight into the specific challenges that a "never married" in a faith community has in grieving... a high view of the institution of marriage can equal a low view of grief:

1) Don't tell me we might have/would have broken up. Our mutual love is one of the things I've still got.

2) Don't tell me I'll find someone new. It's not a breakup. We loved each other deeply. When he passed, we were planning on soon being engaged. See above. Our mutual love--and the memory of that-- is one of the few things I've still got.

3) Don't tell me I'll eventually be ready to find someone new, find new love, etc. I really don't care. I found the real thing, I found the man I wanted to get married to, and he died. Whether I get married now, ever, or not, I don't care--indefinitely.

4) Don't tell me I need to move on. It hasn't even been a month yet since his death. From all accounts, the first year is very hard, especially for widows, which I might as well be (albeit not legally).

5) Don't be afraid of mentioning him. I want you to mention him and tell me your memories. They are all precious to me.

6) Don't tell me I need to take, or increase, my psychopharmaceuticals. I can manage that myself.

7) I am coping as best as I can. Please spare me your advice on how I need to cope better. I can walk, I can drive, I can see without double vision. I'm doing much better. Right now I am focusing on getting through one day at a time.

8) Don't tell me it was God's will as if that will make me feel better. I wrote my thesis on the subject. I've probably pondered the issue more deeply than you have. God's will governs all things. Telling me so isn't really going to be helpful.

9) Don't tell me you understand because you lost your mother/father/sister/brother/friend/etc. It's not the same. Or at least, if you do, don't use that as your excuse to give me advice about it. If you use your experience to empathetically listen, though--that's good.

10) The Biblical saying that we are not to grieve as those without hope (1 Thess 4:13) does NOT mean that we are not supposed to grieve. Got that? If you want to get into an exegetical argument with me on that passage, bring it.
11) I believe he is in heaven. I believe he is praying for me. I pray for him. I talk to him. That mitigates the agony. But telling me, "At least he's in heaven now" is not going to make it go away. It's grief. It hurts.

12) Don't tell me I need to a) move on, b) move on faster, c) get over it, c) get over it faster, or ask me, at any point in the indefinite future, if I'm still grieving. I'm on grief's timetable, not yours--not even on mine. “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.” (John 21:18) I am being brought where I did not wish to go. Any assertions as to the slowness of grief's timetable, or questions thereunto, are manifestly unhelpful.

13) Don't assume that because I laugh, or smile at something, that it means I'm not grieving. It just relieves the pressure for a second. It's always there.

14) Don't tell me that, because I'm suffering, I need to see a doctor, or a psychiatrist, or a psychologist, or any other such professional, or ask me when I'm going to do so. Please assume I've got that covered.

15) Don't extrapolate your experience with grief, or your friend's, or your family's, onto my own. You may have handled your grief by a) throwing yourself into work, b) retreating into a little cave and shutting yourself off from everyone, c) needing antidepressants or sedatives, or needing the doses raised, d) or buying a farm and raising llamas. Everybody grieves differently. Don't assume that because I'm not grieving your way, I'm not grieving right.

16) Don't assume that because I'm grieving, I want to be left alone. Apparently that's not how I roll. Please call me. Please come over. It's hard to make calls, and it's hard to reach out to people, but when people reach out to me, I really appreciate it. The love and support of my friends and family is helping me get through/survive this.


LINK

Love,

Improvisation and Loss Part Two

This is a series, please read part one HERE.

Tell the story and add history.

Grief can be a silent state of being. Early on when we are grieving, we might be totally numb and silent. Much of our early vocalization is through plain crying, screaming, sobbing and the most simple expressions of agony. There may come a day, however, when the silence or the instinctive utterances are no longer enough to serve you. You hunger to talk about the one that is gone to people. You need to start talking, at the very least as a way to make sense out of what you have been through.

In our culture, people do not want to talk about losses. There is little cultural endurance for the material you are working through. Often we can find ourselves isolated and alone.

Another way to understand the work of the grieving person is to understand the cycle that you have entered into. Think about it this way - most people's lives are in an acceleration mode. When we have a loss, much of out lives shift into deceleration mode, apart from any early frenetic activities that must be conducted around administrating the loss. If we use the illustration of improv again - we have an ensemble of members on our team. There is a slowing, a necessary pause because a member of our ensemble is gone. There is a shuffling of roles, canceled "performances" and confusion. A certain energy has departed. The stage might be "dark" as they say in theater terms. It is a state of slowing.
























No one else's life may have slowed like yours... As Robert Frost aptly said: "And they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."

Again, no one can tell you when, but there may be a day when you feel muted and the silence may hold you back. Everyone's life may still be accelerating. If you do not have a community to begin to talk about your losses with, or that is not sufficient for your needs, PLEASE contact me for ideas. There are many places for you to talk that are safe, non-judgemental and caring.

Give lots of information to your many partners on this journey of loss. In improv theater, stronger scenes are built on team work and the scene tells a rich and complex story. In life, stronger communities are built on sharing in depth as opposed to silence. Grief can be a silent state of being. There ARE people who want to hear your story. They want to tell theirs as well. We can all take space to tell our stories and know others stories.

Whenever you are ready.

For storytelling, some improv teachers suggest focusing on the past and present tense as often as possible. They suggest actors avoid talking too much about the future. Things in the future only might happen, they only might shape your character. It is conjecture. Things in the past and present did happen, they did shape you.

(Note: Some losses require us to really actively problem-solve our futures, because we cannot delay - the loss wiped out an essential part of our daily lives and we cannot delay decisions. Other losses have less of a daily impact on the function of our lives.)

Try and take time, if you can, to tell your story among compassionate companions. Look for meaning-making within the story. Your story will grow to support you. Our stories have power. We need to practice telling them in a safe environment where there is a lot of acceptance.

Mark Twain had an adage that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. In telling your story you will start to have an ear for the rhyming.

Summary of Parts One and Two... Flow with the Change

Life, like improv is about flow and change. The characters in a scene must experience some type of change for the scene to progress. Characters need to go on journeys, be altered by revelations, experience the ramifications of their choices and be moved by emotional moments. Improv music needs to move, to ebb and flow to be more than a static, droning sound.

I used to say, "The world belongs to people who can change." I never knew how much I would live into that particular phrase, my friends. My list of losses are pretty profound when you put them on paper, but I have found that this is not the end of the scene. We are alive and mortal. We have a chance to befriend impermanence and truly be present to life and death. And if we can improvise with the story that surrounds us, we can find a new level of peace.