These may sound like unusual themes for a New Year’s reflection, but every beginning is preceded by some sort of ending. So that’s where we begin…
Support for those Grieving a Death
Death touches every life, in one form or another – the death of someone we know and love, someone we know and don’t love, someone we don’t know but know about, ourselves. Death is an ending (of this life as we know it – leaving room for a continuing existence here), and an absence. When a client experiences the death of a loved one, either during the course of ongoing therapy or as the reason for seeking help, we need to watch and listen for what most needs attention at any given moment. It may be the raw grief of “gone.” It may be an intricate mix of feelings: overwhelming sadness at the loss, anger at circumstances or doctors, distressing memories of a painful dying, shock and numbness, confusion.
I’d like to focus on the role of helpers here – counselors, therapists, spiritual directors. They may or may not know much about the client’s spiritual or religious perspective. But I suggest that this is not the time to ask “what do you believe?” It might give us some relief if the client “believes” in an afterlife and finds consolation in the feeling that the one they love is “in a better place.” But if that is part of the experience, it needs to emerge on its own. I suggest that we can find valuable – and less challenging – alternatives to questions about beliefs. We can ask about daily experience in the wake of the death, about the most difficult times of day, especially going to sleep, sleeping/dreaming, and waking up. Are there particular places which plunge them into memories? We may ask if there are any dreams, and listen to whatever is shared. As much as possible, we stay close to the felt sense in the moment.
Listening for whatever may serve as a resource to help clients navigate this painful time, we pay special attention to experiences of comfort, no matter how small and tenuous. We encourage self-care in a variety of forms: a walk, a friend, music, massage, a warm bath. Sometimes we hear a story about an unusual experience: a sense of presence, a whisper, a synchronicity. Then it is important that we listen with an open mind and heart – noticing if our own memories, feelings, or beliefs get engaged in the process. If the client has a strong religious orientation, we make space for that. If there is more of a spiritual-but-not-religious orientation, then that is where we follow them. If they are wondering and full of questions, we accompany them in that journey.
Religious Beliefs, Forgiveness, Guilt
I remember one client whose husband had died unexpectedly in his mid-50’s. At some point she shared that she wanted to take her own life in order to join him. So many profound and agonizing questions came up for her, growing out of early religious teachings. I listened and acknowledged her deep love. But I also engaged more proactively: considering all the unknown “risks” and mysteries, with no guarantees of reconnecting immediately, might it not be wiser to live out her life, honoring his memory, waiting to find him at the natural time. As she reflected on this for a week, she then began to feel some wisdom in that perspective: it might be wise to wait. She went on to create a memorial fund for him and find her own life path.
Other dynamics may come into play. If the person who died was someone who hurt the client in some way – an abuser, neglectful parent, cheating partner, vindictive business partner – then there is often a more complicated process of making room for darker emotions, sorting out mixed feelings. A particular challenge arises when the client is part of a religious tradition – present or past – that emphasizes the necessity of forgiveness. While I fully realize the beauty and power of forgiveness, I am careful not to suggest it too soon. The pressure – “I should forgive and I’m bad if I don’t” –is not helpful.
One of my favorite adages is “the way out is the way through.” In my experience, time is needed in order to explore and feel the range of present feelings, to allow them to arise and be felt in the body, not just mentally. When they are witnessed in the body, that already allows a little bit of space between the witness and the felt experience, allowing the eventual movement from “I am my rage” to “I feel rage in my gut.”
This witnessing is not about a strategy of detaching or bypassing, but offers a pathway through. In order to allow for this space, especially if the client’s religious tradition has a strong position regarding forgiveness, we may suggest that we can find our way to meaningful forgiveness through a longer path, by taking one step at a time. And if forgiveness doesn’t emerge as hoped, we need to support the client in being present to their own truth, in the moment. We may also encourage them, if they choose, to find a respected religious or spiritual figure who could help them to explore forgiveness more deeply, without pressure.
A word about guilt. This can be a profound challenge – a difficult knot to unravel. The client may feel guilt around the circumstances of the death, or around actions taken or not taken prior to the death. This is often the case with suicide. It is usually helpful to begin by reality-testing the guilt: from an outside perspective, what could you have done differently? What might have made a difference? What was possible? What other factors were at play that you couldn’t influence? Eventually, it may come down to finding a larger perspective, including the other person’s history and choices. Sometimes the only way through may be a journey towards self-forgiveness, which may in turn be made more possible if there is a religious or spiritual perspective that is large and compassionate enough.
I am thinking of a parent whose child died in a backyard pool…. A young woman who became an “accidental killer” when her car struck a pedestrian walking by the road in the dark…. A man who didn’t check on his aging mother for a few days because he was “too busy” and she died in the wake of a fall. These are agonizing losses. Often the bereaved seeks some act of atonement – setting up a memorial fund, becoming active in an organization ( MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, comes to mind as an example), or directly reaching out to help the family of someone else who died.
Endings, Absence, and the Search for Meaning
Of course, endings come in many forms, may of which involve some form of loss and grief. The end of a relationship, retirement, aging parents needing to leave their home and move into a place that provides more care. These are all significant life transitions. The year’s ending may bring sorrow about goals unmet, hopes dashed. The overarching theme is meaning: what meaning does an ending have for a particular person? And meaning grows out of a sense, implicit or explicit, of “who I am” and “what life is about.” So we can support clients/seekers in finding their way through these endings – immediately through attending to the emotions that accompany them, the history, and the unfulfilled hopes, and eventually, perhaps, through a deeper dive into their sense of what gives life meaning.
Finally, a word about absence. Feeling an absence is a direct experience of having undergone a loss or an ending. What was here is here no longer. Or perhaps what was needed or hoped for is not here. There can be lifelong reverberations from a childhood in which the absence of love, care, and safety was predominant. Adverse Childhood Experiences, as they are now sometimes known, influence the course of many lives. In the course of therapy these deep experiences of early absence are often revealed in the wake of current deaths and endings, as an underlying and often unrecognized emptiness. Absence is multi-layered: a primal absence of safety, love and care; an absence of meaning; an absence of purpose. Something unnamed, of ultimate importance, is missing.
When we approach the territory of absence, I suggest that we are moving into spiritual space, existential space, which calls for the utmost respect, sensitivity, open-heartedness, and careful listening. From a deeper perspective, any loss usually leads to a search for meaning – and the search for meaning is ultimately, I would say, a spiritual journey.
Spiritual Openings
Finally, for those who experience loss (which is all of us), it may be helpful to remember that endings have the power to create space for new beginnings. When a griever has a strong experience of feeling the presence of the lost beloved, this may initiate a spiritual opening. Dark nights of the soul may be preparing the way for a deeper exploration of what gives life meaning. And with some grace, the loss that breaks our hearts sometimes breaks the heart wide open and we are surprised to discover new depths and dimensions of love.
I’d like to end with a poem, and invite you to approach it as an expression of possibility –
The Unbroken
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.
by Ria Rashani