LECTURE 6
Rev Stephen van Schalkwyk
“The work of grieving is intended to accomplish several goals: admitting the reality of loss, creating a cherishable memory, beginning to make new investments and attachments, and reconstructing a faith significantly altered by loss.” (Mitchell and Anderson 1983:110). They go on to say that this requires intentional work and caring relationships.
I’d like to unpack that for just a moment. How many have ever thought of the grieving process as intentional? Perhaps I could invite you to remember a significant loss that you have worked through. While working through that loss, did you ever think the process was intentional? I would be willing to wager that even among those who have received healthy grief counselling, there are precious few people that have that understanding.
I think we all know that grieving is hard work – it certainly is not a pleasant thing, and frankly, if you are anything like me, there is an awful lot of other stuff one would rather do! Intuitively, I think most people realise that, “there is something I am supposed to be doing”, but few of us really understand what that something is. Often we use all sorts of things to avoid the hard work of grieving.
The ‘work’ of grieving, as Donna showed us last week, is “moving against a resistance”. I want to commend Donna for her insight on this: the resistance that we move against, emotionally, psychologically and even physically is the resistance of habitual thought, response and actions associated with the lost person or thing.
Donna did a magnificent job of showing how that movement of recognising, experiencing and then re-patterning those habits takes enormous energy. It is hard work – but for most of us it is haphazard, disorganised, and halting at best. Intentional is not a word that I would easily have associated with the process; and that is probably an indictment on my profession!
It also raises something else that has been at the back of my mind while reading this material, and that is that South Africans seem to be intensely private about their grief. At the very best, it is only very close family or in some cases a very close friend, that may be allowed to witness the strong emotions, or be allowed to help with significant things in the process.
Be that as it may, Mitchell and Anderson, believe that healthy grieving is intentional work, but it is work that is done in relationship with others.
The question that concerns us is: What do those “caring relationships look like?”
Let’s get to the practicalities of caring for someone who has experienced significant loss.
Mitchell and Anderson identify four “Modes of Helping”. They are roughly sequential and they could easily be markers along the journey of grieving.
Modes of Helping:
1st the griever often needs relief from the expectations of others, time & space to grieve. What is required from a carer is INTERVENTION.
2nd the need for recognition and rehearsal of one’s feelings. What is required is: SUPPORT.
3rd the need for remembering, thus creating a cherishable memory. The carer must offer INSISTENT ENCOURAGEMENT.
4th the need to ‘put back together again, reintegration. Need for CONVERSATION about SIGNIFICANT THEMES, and sometimes, GENTLE CONFRONTATION.
1. Intervention and Relief.
We have already seen that, immediately following significant loss, the initial feelings are often numbness, shock, and a profound sense of dislocation. These can lead to a kind of mental and emotional paralysis. You may have experienced it yourself, or seen it in others. A spouse will simply sit staring into space, a parent will weep inconsolably, an adult child who had just experienced the death of a parent will be talking and concentrating, and then suddenly stop and go blank for a second or two, and then return to the conversation having forgotten what it was that you were talking about.
Quite literally, people in this place will often require someone to step between them and some of the routine matters of life. Often the decisions that need to be made just following a major loss are almost never simple. Most carers will give the (correct) advice that, if it is at all possible, major decisions should be avoided for at least the first six months after a major loss. If at all possible, it is better to postpone emigrating, or selling the house, or moving to another city. Those things are probably quite self evident, but there are inevitably scores and scores of other more minor decisions that need to be made, arrangements that must be settled, expectations met.
Intervention, standing in, especially for the more mundane things can be a great help for someone reeling from the shock of loss. Of course, it must be done carefully and with a great deal of sensitivity. For issues that one is not sure of, you can always ask – it is a general rule of thumb that the wishes of the person experiencing the grief takes precedence.
The primary aim of this kind of intervention is to provide space and time for people to begin to do the work of grieving. This is very important- the intervention must constantly be measured against how effectively it facilitates the process of grieving.
Providing meals, fetching children from school, doing the shopping, arranging for help with housework etcetera all fit this category.
It is also important to remember that this is temporary. Depending on the nature of the loss, a week or two usually works, but it is important to gauge the situation – it is obviously not ideal for a team that has been doing meals, lifts, shopping, cleaning, laundry, and caring for the animals for two weeks to simply dump all of the responsibility back on the person over-night! Careful reintegration would be the key.
Bus accident – 10 days in hospital and couldn’t fully grasp what had happened.
Didn’t really care about favourite watch that’d gone missing or about my wallet, or even about the research paper that had consumed 4 months of my life!
Much longer to come to terms with the fact that a lady died… At the time I didn’t even realise that what I was experiencing was shock and grief – Although I was 22 years old and at the time I had already confronted my own mortality – I had to deal with the reality that it was 2 weeks before my wedding and 5 weeks before starting my career with the church. For 3 hours, lying on the side of the road, I truly believed that I was going to die, that I was never going to get married, never have children, never be a minister, never even graduate to honours’ level!
a. Practicalities: Doing Routine Tasks.
What I most needed just after the accident was people to take care of most of the practicalities of my life. As it turned out, I wasn’t mortally wounded, as I had first suspected, and there was a very real embarrassment that accompanied that realisation (what must the medical staff have thought!), but I was still stuck in a hospital bed.
The hospital attended to my injuries, they sheltered and fed me, but seeing Calista and my brother started the emotional support. My parents also arrived quickly and they made arrangements for my accommodation once I left hospital. They made sure that I received food, I even wore my brother’s clothes, because mine were back in my room at university.
These are the practical, routine tasks that needed doing. The key however is that the practical care must help focus the persons attention on the loss, it must not be an attempt to avoid the pain of loss.
Sometimes it can be helpful to make preparations before a major loss. This can be done by preparing for one’s funeral. Here at St. Columba’s we have a ‘memorial society’ form that helps with some of the decisions that may be very difficult during a time of grief. In my experience it is a great help to mourners to know that they are fulfilling the last wishes of the deceased. I do think that Mitchell and Anderson make a good point, though, by respecting the wishes of those who would prefer to leave arrangements for services and rituals up to those who will be doing the mourning. The rituals of loss and mourning are always for those actually experiencing the loss, and anything that will hinder the process of healthy grieving should be avoided, even if they happen to be the wish of the deceased.
This actually brings us to the second practicality: advocacy.
b. Practicalities: Advocacy.
The fact is that there are people and situations that, intentionally or not, threaten to derail the process of healthy grieving. There are also unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of people who are hurting. All too often the circumstances surrounding a major grief are alien. People are thrown “into the deep end” as it were, and they need someone to look after their best interests.
After the accident, I was taken into minor surgery, when I came round from the aesthetic, one of the first people I saw was a lawyer. I was groggy and alone and he said something about looking after my case and if I would please sign here and here…. Thankfully, I do remember something about, “if the claim is unsuccessful, you will not be liable for costs.”
The road vultures, some undertakers (or end of life practitioners), conmen and women, and of course the classical ‘tele-evangelist’ and snake-oil salesman all prey on emotionally vulnerable people.
I remember stumbling back to the wreckage of the bus and seeing people on the opposite side of the highway stop their vehicles. They popped up their bonnets, as if their vehicle had broken down, and instead of coming over to help the injured, they started sifting through the things lying on the roadside. It was only when the police arrived, about 2 hours later that they moved off!
People need to know what their options are, and they need someone they can trust to stand up for them.
Advocacy is often necessary when managing the people who want desperately to care for the griever. This is especially the case when there are a large crowd of people that are associated with either the deceased or the griever.
The carer needs to be critically aware of the boundaries of their own grief and that of those around. Unfortunately the need to be needed can interfere with appropriate boundaries. Sometimes well-intentioned actions are not the most appropriate and it is then the carer’s function to gently, but firmly ensure that proper care is offered and received. It can be most awkward, but it is important to ensure that the best is done for the people in most need of care.
And so we come to the third practicality, that of treading softly.
c. Practicalities: Treading Softly.
The impulse to take over completely can be very strong indeed, especially when one sees someone they love in pain or distress … it is very important to keep the goals of grieving in sharp focus- “…admitting the reality of loss, creating a cherishable memory, beginning to make new investments and attachments, and starting to reconstruct a faith significantly altered by loss…”
This particular aspect is really the tone with which the whole of the helping process should proceed.
Intervention is the first, short term, part of caring for a person who has experienced intense loss. Its goal is to carry the person through the initial, bewildering and overwhelming phase of grieving.
Should the carer suspect that there exist problems larger than they are able to properly cope with, they should not hesitate to refer.
2. Support for the Recognition and Rehearsal of Feelings.
a. A listening Presence.
My parents got to the hospital the day after the accident, but the embarrassment was kicking in, along with quite a bit of physical pain, and I was intent on dealing with it myself than you very much! I was quite fine until my father and I were alone (I only later discovered that he orchestrated this).
I remember him saying how frightened they had been, how death terrified them. I was ok at that point, but then he said, “you must be pretty angry at God”. It was so unexpected. I hadn’t even really thought about it consciously, but my reaction was an uncontrollable rage – I wept with my teeth grinding, I was so angry!
It is terribly uncomfortable to be exposed to another’s intense emotion. It is probably even more uncomfortable to sit through silence. We tend to want to fix the person, to cure their pain and remove them from the intensity of their feelings, but that is about us and our emotions. The reality is that, at the beginning of the grieving process, people need space to simply vent, they need to be encouraged to share and express the strong feelings without fear of judgement or recrimination.
Repressing those strong feelings is always a bad thing and leads to all sorts of problems. Expressing and getting it out is part of dissipating the emotional and psychological energy associated with loss of control and dislocation.
“Our being is validated in being heard”, someone needs to understand the enormity of the loss and the grief; and expressing something like loss cannot be done in mute, dulled tones – it is explosive, passionate, raw, and unrestrained. Those can be scary for both the griever and the listener. Often it is this part of the process that people fear the most, because it is uncontrolled and uncontrollable.
b. Empathy.
“The ability to enter into another’s awareness without taking on the responsibility.” There is a responsibility that goes along with empathy – hallowing the person’s experience, taking it seriously, but allowing THEM to experience it in such a way that THEY deal with the possible consequences. It is not the listener’s responsibility to deal with the consequences.
Empathy is critical because it links understanding with acceptance.
Acceptance of the person despite the scary actions and reactions is very important first step in letting the mourner know that they remain part of a community of people – it will be critical if the final step of ‘reintegration’ is to be achieved.
• Blocked ear.
c. Lending Strength.
Emptiness arises from the reality that loss depletes the self
- need to borrow strength (Ruth De Bruin)
- People feel like they could be blown over, whisked away…
- Helper can never do enough to fill the emptiness (time does not heal all things)
- Limits need to be set – emptiness is part of feeling and coming to terms with the loss. We all want to shield others from that feeling, but that, again is about our needs, not the grievers’. Important to allow the person grieving to deal with the realities, part of empathy.
d. Danger of Premature Comfort.
Pie in the sky when you die – particularly unhelpful:
God needed another flower/star/angel in heaven.
Only the good die young … God only take the very best …
C.S. Lewis, “Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly … But don’t come talking to me about the consolation of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.”
Understanding – permission to be, Being is permission in relationship, relationship necessary connection to deal properly with the dislocation of loss.
Simone de Beauvoir: “For those who love life, immortality is no consolation in death”.
- can’t answer the “why?” questions too quickly.
- Why? Is usually the expression of emotion rather than a seeking after answers.
- Usually ends up in intellectualising the process instead of feeling the realities of the pain.
- Religious resources are more appropriate for the expression of the pain rather than the spiritualising or intellectualising of the reality
3. Insistent Encouragement: The need to remember.
The process thus far has begun with intervention for the tasks that may distract the griever from the process of grieving healthily, at the same time, space needs to be opened up for the expression of emotion, the recognition of and rehearsal of feelings, and all the while the carer needs to be aware of the appropriate boundaries necessary to encourage the most healthy acknowledgement of the loss, and the beginning of creating a cherishible memory. Now comes the hard part
a. Initiating Remembering.
Most people refrain from using the name of someone who has died. We have already heard how people are afraid of opening up the wounds, or offending the person who is grieving.
It is in fact appropriate after the initial bewilderment and rush of emotion, to speak of the death or traumatic incident. In fact, a major part of dealing with trauma is the retelling of the story. Telling the story in colour, feeling and smell is very important because it helps to build up a memory, and it is only by making the memory that we find emotional release from what is lost.
NB. This takes time, it takes practice, it takes patience. There needs to be sensitivity here and openness to reminiscing.
Please feel free to comment on this Lecture. You will see Hansie’s email address in the right hand column.
