"Blessings Upon You as You Walk the Uneven Path of Grief and Loss"

I am frequently teased or queried about what has become a common phrase that I use to say grace over people who are grieving. That phrase, "Blessings over you and those you love as you walk the uneven path of grief and loss." As a therapist and as a professor, I have been familiar with processes of grief from personal and from academic perspectives. It was publication or maybe a professional presentation by an old friend, Dr. Terry Hargrave, who gave me information and perspective on loss. The grief we experienced is shaped by the degree of closeness to the person who has passed, the degree to which we anticipated the passing, and whether or not the one who has died has fulfilled his/her obligations.

Given those factors, as I have said in several eulogies, "There are as many faces of grief as there are people here in the sanctuary this afternoon." I remember saying those words at my mother's memorial service and again several years later at the memorial service for our old friend, Dr. Robert Hobbs.

It was in a conversation with a niece, my oldest brother's daughter, as we sat in her mom and dad's kitchen talking there in their communal space one afternoon. Everyone knew that her step-mother, her mother, was soon to pass as cancer was seen throughout her body on the latest scan. We were all sad and living in that anticipatory grief space.

As we sat across the table from each other, that phrase, "Blessings over you as you walk the uneven path of grief and loss," just rolled off my tongue. She was caught by surprise and asked what I meant. I don't remember exactly what I told her that day, but surely it was about dynamics of grief and all, those three things noted above, and that life as we live it is sort of a "path" and along that "path" we experience the ebbs and flows of grief. It's not a linear process by any means. On some occasions we are knocked to our knees by a memory or moment of intense grief, and then on another occasion we can be kneeling over in laughter at something funny our loved one said or did.

Some of us have a keen sense that our time on earth is nearing an end. Naturally, none of us know when or how. Frequently, the young die too soon and some of us pass having done what we were born to do. 

This notion captured my attention yesterday when a long time friend called. We had a friendly chat and as the conversation was ending, his comment to me was that "we needed to get together one last time." The comment was especially poignant as both us realized that our time on earth is coming to an end. To provide more "texture" to the conversation, he has been a friend and mentor and as close as brothers in the fight for justice for Black farmers. I am not prepared to say goodbye to him. We both agreed as we laughed, that "we are the aging of America." 

Dealing with death is quite a common phenomenon these days. Farmers we have met through the years were middle aged when we met them. We now call them legacy farmers. Middle aged men and women grow old and pass on to their ancestors. Names come to mind: Dorothy and Eddie Wise, Matthew and Florenza Grant, Richard Grant, and Harry Young just to name a few. Yesterday I got word that two men I have respected for decades have recently experienced strokes. 

Farming is no doubt a hard business, but it should not be harder for Black farmers. 

So, today, I am feeling the words of Isaiah the prophet as he described the "suffering servant," as a "man of sorrow and acquainted with grief." I feel terribly acquainted with grief today, as do many of you my readers. 

This was compounded by Representative Pearson from Tennessee as he is grieving the death of his brother by suicide. What a tragedy that is and how deep must be that pain. 

So, as life and death are realities of life, "Blessings upon all of us as we walk the uneven path of grief and loss."

Living With An Ongoing Grief

It occurs to me that we are a country and a people in the midst of grief. All of the emotions and cognitive responses of grief hang around with what is going on these days.  Unlike grief when a loved one passes, we cannot so easily resolve this grief because it is indeed ongoing and will stay with us for a while. For how long, nobody knows. Likely longer than we expect or would wish.

How long have you been in quarantine, in that "sheltering in place" mode, doing the "social distancing" thing? For me, other than an event or two, it has been 29 days.  That's a lot of days, 29 of them, consecutive, stacked end to end. Disease is all around us.  Maybe we know somebody, or we know somebody who knows somebody. Maybe we're vigilant with the news and are aware of the number of infected people and the number of deaths in our counties, state, and even nation and world.

Our grief is unresolved. We live in our grief. We cannot move on. We are stuck. Really stuck.

A colleague back in the day made a presentation at a TAMFT conference and then later published his ideas about grief in a journal. That journal is over there on the shelf.  The ideas are very familiar. I have used them to make sense of my own grief and that of others with whom I have grieved. This morning it dawned on me that those ideas might be useful constructs for what is going on now.

There are many faces of grief.  Our unique "face" of grief is shaped by three things:  1) did we anticipate the death of the loved one? 2) how attached were we to the loved one? 3) did the loved one fulfill her or his obligations toward us and others, such that "they lived a long and useful life," versus a child who died so young, with so much life yet to live.

These days, I think, we are grieving many things, large and small. We are grieving the loss of familiar routines. We may be grieving the loss of income or care about someone who has lost income. We are grieving the freedom to move about and to hang with whomever for as long as they or we wish. Rituals are important to us, and when they go by the wayside, we can be disoriented and lose our way. If we are a graduating senior in high school or college, we may be grieving all of the celebrations and activities. If our kids or grandkids are in sports or choirs or bands, we and they may be grieving the incompleteness of district or regional competition in sports, or choir, or band. That incompleteness lingers. It is not what we expected to be doing right about now.

We grief the contact with those people who love us, and people we love dearly. Maybe we grieve the loss of economic stability as we see our investments dropping off the table. Maybe we grieve because we need someone to lead us through the collective grief that we feel and the guy at the top is primarily concerned about economics and getting things opened again. We see that person railing against people who are doing their jobs by asking hard questions.

I would suspect that those who have had their routines more severely disrupted might experience a deeper set of griefs.  For some of us, the routines may not have been challenged much at all. As a retired person working at my desk here at the house, and as one who experienced a medical-imposed slow-down back after June, 2019 up until a few months ago, this routine is fairly normal, except for going wherever I want to go, spending time with the grandchildren, and going to church and the coffee shops. My routine has changed little by comparison to some.

I cannot wrap my head around the notion that some of our loved ones die alone. I cannot comprehend being unable to attend a loved one's wake, funeral, and fellowship meal following. I grieve for those who grieve in those unspeakable, incomprehensible ways.

So, did we see this pandemic coming? I didn't, but some did.  Some in our country have known about it since November. For you and me, and since we are not epidemiologists, we did not see it coming.

How attached were we to routines, activities, rituals, people, places? Very, very attached.

Are there things still left to do and to be done in terms of jobs, church, family, friends, and other things? Absolutely, yes, those things and people have not "fulfilled their obligations," and there is much to do.

We generally know Kubler-Ross's stages of grief:  shock, anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those emotions and all of the heavy thoughts within each phase or stage hang with us. At a larger level, those three shaping questions I mentioned up above help me to make sense of things. Within those things I experience a wide range of emotions.

So, what to do with all of that? Grieve and grieve well and fully, practice patience with yourself and others with whom you live, use the telephone and Skype or Zoom to stay connected with others, and if you are a person of faith, practice the practices of your faith. Read things that give you meaning and purpose. Exercise. Eat well. Go to bed and sleep in your routinized way. Enjoy distractions such as sports on tv, or reading a book, or walking in the park, or whatever takes you out and away. Avoid living in television or computer land for much of the day.