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.

Improvisation and Loss Part One

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“What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.” - Bill Bryson

"Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive."— Haruki Murakami

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One of the most fascinating yet challenging things about life is that we have an unlimited ability to learn and renew.

Yet, in contrast, most people tend to gravitate toward a daily choosing what is familiar and select to recreate what is customary to them. This is understandable. But one can consider the possibility that there can be other ways to approach such moments.


Nothing will upset "normal" like the unwelcome experience of losing someone or something precious to us. This is "an experience with impermanence." It may be catastrophic or relatively calm. But when this type of chain of events begins... our way of being "normal" ceases.


The subsequent grief might be described as being involuntarily strapped into a roller coaster ride and being forced to ride until it comes to it's own end. Like at no other moment in our lives - these are the moments that offer the greatest opportunity to allow a major reviewing of our assumptions, to learn and renew... to decide what to keep and what to leave behind. We could think of it as a moment that is navigated by flow.


A few assumptions that we might hold could include:
-- I have control over much of my life
-- I will have a life-long relationship
-- Good things happen to good people
-- God loves me and I know this by the good things that happen
-- Everyone I care about should never die
-- I need to be partnered
-- I need to be a mother or father

I am certain we can all add more to this list. Our collective culture feeds these to us, and we participate in their creation.

Many grieving people, upon first being strapped onto the roller coaster, will want to get off the ride, grasp and cling to all of their favorite assumptions - and frantically try to recreate the former set of conditions while on the roller coaster ride. Depending on the circumstances - one may be able to shut ones eyes and hold ones breath to try mentally to avoid the ride. This is understandable. Yet in the passing of time after the initial loss, one can start to move with the ride, and with each movement comes an opportunity.

Introducing the Idea Of Improvisation

"Improvisation is the art of being completely O.K. with not knowing what the f-- you're doing." - Mick Napier.

In more polite terms, the best improvisers can accept the reality of change even when they have no idea what's going on.

Improvisation is the act of making and creating in response to one's immediate environment and feeling. The invention of new thoughts, practices, methods and things can develop and manifest. New assumptions can be formed. This typically has a function within the creative arts - to acting, music, dance, art... but for our discussion, we will look at improv as a method of dealing with the impermanence in our lives.

Improvisation stands in contrast to those things predetermined, conventional, permanent.
When faced with the work of facing impermanence, improvisation is a great tool to us weather the involuntary cycle after cycle of repeated suffering on the roller coaster.

With insight into impermanence and improvisation, the unchanging self and all it's variant assumptions will begin shift. If all is flow and change, then this might apply to our understanding of our “self” too. Much of our suffering is a result of thirsting after and clinging to bits of the world that disappear - things that we believe will give us "lasting" happiness.

Impermanence is not just about death. Impermanence is every moment. It’s a fundamental understanding from the beginning of the spiritual path all the way to the end. When we see that the nature of all things is impermanence, our attachment to the things around us will modify, and amazingly - our compassion for others will steadily increase. If anything unites us on this planet, it is our collective state of impermanence.

As we grow in loving, we learn to hold that which we love not like a closed fist, but like a relaxed, open hand.

What Might Improv Teach Us About Impermanence?

Forget that most people think of improv performance as comedy. For the purpose of our discussion humor is a mute point. As well, it is not a performance that we are examining either.

What is of interest is to observe that, in the world of improvisational acting or music (such as jazz), creative people are thrust onto stage without a pre-determined script or sheet music. No one knows where the song or story is going or how it will end. This is very similar to our lives.

Improv actors will often employ a set of rules that the team agrees upon to guide them in order to create, in situ, a cohesive narrative. These rules vary in their origin and number. I have selected a few to reflect on here.

Rule of Improv: Say "Yes... and"

Immediately after a loss, it is common for all of us to yell a resounding "NO!" at the situation. This is a normal and common reaction.

Yet, if we stay in this state for an extended time, we miss an opportunity to grow and we continue to suffer with prolonged clinging and anguish.

No one can tell anyone when it is time to move from "NO!" to "Yes... and." But, if you sense in yourself a prolonged suffering and desperation, you might ask yourself if you are still grasping and resisting. If you feel compelled to swiftly replace the lost object of your affection with another, you might ask yourself if you are still grasping and resisting. The choice is yours to make. It is just a thought to consider.

The "Yes" is the acceptance of the reality. We may stay in just "yes" for a good long while. "Yes, he is gone."... "Yes, it is over."... "Yes, I have lost ____."

Eventually, we can move to the "Yes... and". This presents the opportunity to add altogether new information.

An improvised scene or piece of music can't move forward or advance unless we add something new. Something new following a loss can begin with a small new commitment we make - like to a group, or an act of service, or finding ways to honor that which we have lost. For instance, it may start with "Yes, my beloved has died... and... I will go online today and donate $5 to a charity in their name." Because you never donated money to this charity before, you are starting to add something new. The beginnings can be so simple and humble. It may start with "Yes, my beloved has died... and... I will write a little bit about our story." Because you never wrote this story before, you are starting to add something new.

The beginnings can be so simple and humble.

Those that progress over time to "Yes... and" already are manifesting the beginning of an improvised response. They are beginning to move the narrative of their life along.

"Yes... and" will begin to work with our assumptions might begin to look like:

-- "Yes... _______ happened and"... I realize that we have little control over much of our lives
-- "Yes... _______ happened and" ... I had a beautiful relationship. I remain open for other kinds of relationships in my life.
-- "Yes... _______ happened and" ... I know that bad things happen to good people
-- "Yes... _______ happened and" ... I know that God loves me nevertheless

The next entry will cover more rules of improv and how they can help you deal this the impermanence in your life... I want this to be a helpful tool, in no way crippling or judging... let me know your wisdom!!

Love,