(Excerpt from book due to be published in late 2016)

What to do upon hearing of the death?

Someone has died. They were a friend, fellow worker, neighbor, someone from your community or place of worship. You knew the deceased or you didn’t know them at all, but you are close to one of their family members. The question is: how are you going to be present for the bereaved?

John Bowlby, the British psychologist and pioneer in the field of loss said, “The loss of a loved one is the most intensely painful experience any human can suffer, and not only is it painful to experience, but also painful to witness, if only because we’re so impotent to help.”

Death is not contagious nor is grief, but many of us can’t cope with being around death. In general we don’t practice feeling helpless—enough–to understand there is value in feeling impotent. That said each time you confront and overrule the desire to flee you build the emotional muscle necessary to accept what you can’t control or fix in your own life.

I often listen to grief support group members express their surprise, disappointment and  anger over how many of the friends they thought would be there for them, weren’t—and how people they didn’t expect to showed up, did, and continued to support them in their mourning.

With that in mind don’t be the friend who runs.

If you are honest, you know what to do, first

In your heart of hearts, you know what to do when a friend, extended family member or fellow employee has died—or one of their loved ones has passed away.

• If you were close to the deceased or their survivor, you know to call them immediately and offer concrete help.
• At the very least you know to find out the date, time and venue of the visitation, funeral or memorial service—and show up.
• If 1 & 2 aren’t possible, you know to write a note to the bereaved explaining why you weren’t available.
• And lastly, you know the worst thing you can do is nothing.

The bereaved and emotional shock

The mind cannot easily grasp that a person can be alive yesterday and dead today, even if there has been a prolonged illness.  Shock is common and it serves to prevent emotional flooding and overwhelm. As a result the bereaved usually remain functional and emotionally stable in the weeks following the death. This doesn’t mean they don’t need help. The number of calls and decisions that must be made immediately after a death is overwhelming.

(Excerpt from book due to be published in late 2016)

As a child I said the following prayer with whoever was putting me to bed:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Amen.

The prayer was followed by a kiss on my forehead. Having turned my body and soul over to God, my parent would turn out my bedroom light and leave the room.

The common prayer came into being when childhood mortality was high, and it was likely more for the parents’ peace of mind than the child’s. With the advent of penicillin death due to infection plummeted.

But we rural kids continued to witness the life cycle in various ways.

Crops were sown in spring, harvested in summer and mowed flat in the fall. In winter the dead fields lay fallow under snow and ice.

Livestock died.

People died from farm accidents, stubborn infection and disease.

And when someone died, everyone rallied to support the family.

Death was a community affair

Eunice from Burkhardt’s grocery had the only phone close to our house, and it was usually Eunice who would knock on our door to tell us someone died. Within hours our kitchen would fill with people preparing food to take to the family for the two evenings of visitation.

I did not read the 2011 Salon article “My Stillborn’s Life After Death” until recently. Initially I wondered if the author, Elizabeth Heineman, had written a macabre spoof on the funeral industry.

She hadn’t.

It is a true story about a “straight-talking-why-not” funeral director who went off-script and made a difference in this young couple’s experience of burying their infant son, Thor. It is a sweet and redeeming story.

To the chaplains reading this blog post: you not only work with couples who enter the hospital with a dream and leave with a nightmare, you also work within a network of support providers who might be better at what they do, if they read this.

So pass this excerpt on. OK?

Thanks!

A new book, Grief is a Mess, is a short illustrated book for those

• who don’t know much about grief even if they think they do; and those
• who are in the middle of learning more about it than they ever wanted to know.

The book is particularly valuable considering what I have gleaned from my clients after years of grief counseling. Allow me to explain.

WHEN I’M ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

I am good at offering condolences when your 95 year old parent dies, but when a young parent, spouse, sibling or child dies, I often head for the sidelines—after I write a note of condolence, attend the service and drop off some food.

Why do I do this?

The truth: “I forget to remember you because I don’t know what to do with you!”

Actually I don’t forget or when I see you I wouldn’t hide behind a rack of clothes in Macy’s, move to another grocery aisle at Whole Foods, or pretend I don’t see you when in a crowd. “You have to understand, I just can’t say ‘I haven’t called or emailed because I don’t know what to do with you.’”

There is a beginning, middle and an end to every day. And that includes Christmas.

Christmas day is one of those days of the year when many of us don’t care what we do as long as we are not alone. The day has that much power. Whether we are religious or secular “Joy to the World” is the theme of the season. And we often feel we have failed others or ourselves if we don’t feel the joy.

That said the consumer market does nothing to help keep our expectations in check.

Christmas commercials of happy actors with beautiful faces and bodies, beautiful white teeth and beautiful smiles run through dry white snow, shop, gaze into each others’ eyes – or sit around a white clothed table overflowing with food… and they are happy!

But let’s be realistic. These people are acting to sell you something!

Reality: the not uncommon grin-and-bear-it holiday

Yes, some families share a pleasant holiday year after year after year. And they are blessed.

Then there are those who pile together year after year after year for a “grin-and-bear” Christmas. By this I mean they gather and pretend there is no other place they would rather be—while counting the hours until they can hug and say goodbye.

A client of mine recently emailed me to say that “the person who dreamed up ‘this is the most wonderful time of the year’ should be punched!”

Bottom line I beg you to consider that I am being honest rather than cynical. Things can go right and things can go wrong, and in certain families holidays are consistently tedious.

Holidays are often difficult, but they can be unbearable when you are coping with the absence of a loved one. You have likely been told (or read) that it is healthy to start a few new holiday traditions of your own as you rebuild your life after loss.

That said you may think I am stretching the idea with what I am about to propose—but don’t automatically dismiss what will take your mind away from the worst of it and help you face the coming new year.

Tackle a hard-to-face job by making it part of a larger one

I doubt that sorting your deceased loved one’s belongings is on your holiday to-do list.  But if you are 9-12 months post-loss, I suggest you roll the small but difficult task into a larger project. So what is the larger project? Declutter your entire home.

Don’t stop reading yet. The December project I am proposing will

• help you shift your focus away from the holidays;
• provide those less fortunate with holiday gifts (Goodwill, etc); and
• move you into the grey weather of January/February feeling lighter and more organized.

Author and grief counselor Francis Weller says “to work thru grief you must engage it, sit with it, and mull it over.” Unfortunately you know this all too well. So why not engage, sit with and mull over what your house or apartment holds as part of your overall process.