Grief as a Route to Healing

Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, November 9, 1997

A few Sunday evenings ago we hosted, here in our sanctuary, a service of memorializing and healing. It was sponsored by the Nashua Interfaith Council, the Chaplaincy at the Southern Regional New Hampshire Medical Center (which many of us still call Nashua Memorial), and by the Davis Funeral Home. The service was primarily directed at mothers and families--or close friends of the families--who had lost a child at childbirth or in the first few days of life or through a late term miscarriage. The planning for this memorial was done while I was on sabbatical, but two of our members were a part of the group that organized it, and two of our other members, Ed Stauff and Mary Ellen Wessels, contributed a beautiful gift in song. My role was to offer some words of welcome along with a call to worship.

It was an "interfaith service" in that it drew upon Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Unitarian Universalist sources and participation. There are certainly many other faith traditions and spiritual traditions that have their gifts to offer when it comes to loss, grief, and healing; but what we had here did speak well to the range of faiths represented by those in attendance. I found myself moved by the service in a variety of ways. Some very painful, and yet still affirming, stories were told. I was reminded again of the universality of the experiences of loss and grief and the seeking of the road back to wholeness; and of how practically all religious traditions--each in their own way--seek address this process. However much or little I related to what was actually being said at any one time in the service, including the Hebrew of which I understood very little, I also heard a universal message beyond all particularities of language. That message was that one's life is never completely the same after a profound loss; but some measure of personal peace is still possible in its wake.

I'm glad we were able to host that service. I received many words of appreciation during a reception time afterwards. In seeing the various faiths represented that evening I recalled some words from the late Rev. Deane Starr which I'd used in a sermon a few Sundays earlier. Deane had spoken them while recounting his dealings with the loss of his son some five or six years ago: "The real question in any religious orientation is not what to do with joy but what to do with grief." I'll be returning to Deane's very pointed observation a little later.

Grief is one of those subjects about which volumes of material has been written and about which countless discourses, lectures, and sermons have been spoken. But it is also such an intensely personal and individual phenomenon that I find it difficult to address in any generalized kind of way. Grief is not abstract; it is something that only becomes "real" when you experience it yourself; or when someone who is in grief, and often shock, reaches out to you for solace and support--or when you reach out to offer solace and support. Everything else "about" grief is really so much talk or so many words. When I heard from the Standbridges a few days ago as they were reeling from the news about how their close friend had been killed in an episode of domestic violence--and asking me to place one of the candles of concern for them on this Sunday--the very last thing they needed from me, or anybody else, right then was a discourse "about" grief. In that moment they knew far more about it than I could ever tell them--or needed to tell them about grief. And yet, it is when we have the opportunity and the space to be some steps removed from the immediate, sometimes white-hot reality of a situation--that we then have a chance to learn and grow from it. This is when words "about" something can be meaningful. Among the many reasons that we come together into this place, and gather as we do on a Sunday morning, is to reflect upon the nature of our lives, and upon the sometimes baffling and trying world in which we live them; and be able to do so when we are not--at least for the moments we spend here--flat up against some of life's many challenges.

In gathering my thoughts on the subject of grief I did look over at least some of the voluminous literature on the subject. One book I especially appreciated, especially its opening chapters, was called Giving Sorrow Words. Its author is Candace, or "Candy" Lightner. She founded the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving after her 13 year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. In the opening paragraph of a chapter entitled "The Cycle of Sorrow" she writes:

"The price of life is loss. From the moment of birth when we leave the womb forever, we face loss in many ways. We move and never see our childhood home again; friendships fade; we may lose money, possessions, hope; we change jobs; we graduate; we marry and divorce. Every change, desired or not, large or small, involves loss. Losses shape our lives."

She puts it very well. But to view one's life as only a series of losses can be a pretty depressing perspective: Why live at all if its simply one loss after another? My own answer to that question is that loss is also a prelude to transformation. If life is a series of losses, then it is also a series of transformations that come out of those losses; and we each have some choices as to what kind of transformations they will be. If it is true, as Ms. Lightner says, that "losses shape our lives" the affirmative part of that truth is that we have some say-so as to what that shape will be. I'll return to this point in a few minutes.

Lightner gets to where she's really going with this paragraph as she continues on:

"Losses shape our lives. And of these, the most universal, inevitable, and serious loss is the death of someone we love (and) it is the loss for which most of us are least prepared."

This is true universally? Yes, I would say so. The anticipated death of an elderly relative or loved one is probably not going to be as singularly devastating and painful as the unexpected death of one's child--or niece or nephew or grandchild; but all such losses take something away from the sum total of our lives.

I knew for 2 or 3 months, back in 1979, that my father's death was approaching, but getting the actual news of it still left me stunned for a time so that I literally could not move other than to sit down on a couch. In my case the "hit with a stun gun" phase didn't last long; but I still needed some time to take in the news, with all my accompanying feelings that went with it, even knowing it was news I'd be soon receiving. When death is unexpected, or completely unanticipated, that shock/stun time is certainly going to last considerably longer. However long or short its duration this initial shock or stunning time is usually the first part of a grieving process.

I use the phrase "grieving process", however, with no small amount of trepidation and with far more caveats than certainties. Simply put, there is no such thing as a grieving process; there are a myriad of grieving processes that persons in grief pass through in their own way and at their own pace. In doing just a quick scan on some of the literature on grief, death, and dying over the past couple of weeks I must have come across at least half a dozen different listing of "grief process stages" that were being presented as the path one walks in eventually coming to a healed state. These listings had their similarities, the themes often overlapped, and a lot of the information was helpful. But the best take came again from Candace Lightner:

"The truth is, grief is messy. One phase overlaps another; emotions we thought were gone for good can reappear for no apparent reason. Some people are overwhelmed by emotions other people barely notice. The concept of grieving in phases is not [emphasis added] an accurate one, (but) it does provide a way to think about (it)."

Then she adds:

"In my view the simplest division is the best: the beginning, the middle, and the rest of your life."

That's as good a way of putting it as any. If, as I'm suggesting, grief is a route to healing it is anything but a straight road. There are twists and turns; it occasionally loops back on itself. And you never completely stop traveling it.

I've already spoken to that first part of being shocked, stunned, and on some level even denying that the loss has happened. Denial is not altogether wrong or bad at the very onset of grief. In getting together with families in the aftermath of a death to plan a service, for example, I'm often quite aware that they are putting aside--as best they can--their feelings in order to just take care of what has to be done right then.

As the shock part wears off there is a middle phase which is usually a hodgepodge of anger, depression, guilt, and maybe even fear--fear, that is that the world is not as safe a place as you'd felt it was before. I remember Forrester Church once saying in a sermon that as long as you have at least one parent alive, up there on the rung of the ladder above you, you feel somehow protected in a way. (That's not terribly rational, but its not an uncommon sense or feeling either.) When they're gone, you suddenly realize that you're the one at the top of the ladder now; there's no "protection" left.

The anger and guilt often have to do with unfinished business you may have with the one who has died; with things you didn't get resolved, or at least resolved to the extent that they might have been. I still regret that I didn't try at least a little harder to share with my father why my own religious path had taken such a different direction than the one he'd striven so hard to raise me in. He wasn't able to see my liberal religious ways, and my eventually becoming a Unitarian Universalist, as just a series of choices I was making. He took it as a personal rejection. Trying to get him to see otherwise might not have made any difference, but I could have put forth a little more effort.

When the death occurs in a family where the atmosphere was largely a fearful or threatening or abusive one the anger and depression and grief can be for a happy childhood that never was. Where it was a healthy and nurturing family or close personal relationship the depression is over the loss itself and is quite natural up to a point. The time involved in this middle phase, with all that goes with it, will vary greatly from person to person. Some will want and need the company of friends and loved ones for help and support, while others will need time away, and to themselves, to work things through.

In describing her own journey through this phase Ms. Lightner says that all the time, energy, and great effort she put into launching and then directing MADD was really a channeling of her anger over the senseless death of her daughter. It was a very productive channeling of her anger in that it raised the consciousness of the nation about the horrible dangers of drunk driving, and changed the way we deal with drunk drivers who kill innocent people. But Lightner goes on to say that it wasn't until she'd stepped down from the Directorship of MADD, some 2-3 years after she'd started it, that she realized that staying with her anger for the time she did, had kept her from really feeling the pain of her actual loss, and that she still had a lot of this "middle stage" grieving to do. She is very proud, and quite rightly so, of her accomplishments with respect to the organization she founded; but she also sees in retrospect how it extended her time of grief.

So there are very few "oughts" to be invoked in this middle phase, as in "you really ought to be over this by now" or "you really ought to be getting out and mixing a little more." Granted, a gentle push in these directions may need to be lovingly offered in the case of a really prolonged bereavement, but I'm convinced that most grieving persons instinctively know when its time to start taking up the rest of their lives.

Then there's the rest of your life. The best description I've found of how one who is bereaved knows that he or she is largely into this phase is when they recognize that they are becoming more focused on the future than on the past; and when certain new possibilities for life and living begin to present themselves. Some of that middle phase stuff will come back now and then. As I said; its a looping path. When I sat down to write this I really hadn't planned on using any personal matters about my father, but things I'd long set aside still managed to come back. It happens. Just one more take: Many of you've heard me say he was a house painter, and he did most of his work when oil based house paint was the norm. Although a stickler for cleanliness, Dad could never completely get the oil paint smell out of his hands because of all the years of using his brushes. To this day, nearly 20 years after his death, if my mother gets a certain whiff of oil based paint it brings him back to her, and she has to momentarily stop whatever she's doing while some sadness passes. Its a moment that comes and goes very quickly since my mother is very much in the "rest of her life" mode, but its still a reminder of how her life was touched for many years, as well as changed and transformed in many ways by the relationship she and my father had. So the road never completely ends, but the driving can become largely enjoyable again at some point.

This brings me back to what I said earlier, that while life may be a series of losses in many ways--including, but hardly limited to the loss of a loved one--loss can also be a prelude to transformation. To move into that "rest of your life" phase is to look at the possibilities of transformation, of personal change. A loss that wounds can also make one strong in the broken places. Roseanne Lurie observes:

"Grief is a cyclic thing. It goes off by itself, the way earthquakes do. (Earthquakes) need to happen to keep the earth stable but they are still overwhelming. Yet afterward you feel calmer."

When one's personal earth, or one's personal landscape, has become stabler the challenge to then put to yourself go something like this: What do I take from this loss; what "gifts" (if you're able to see it that way) are left to me in the wake of this loss that can point my life in some new directions? I believe this is how we find meaning in loss. Its a finding that usually comes when the intensity of the grief has lessened. Then, this becomes the message we can give ourselves: The personal challenge is that I still have to choose life and how I'm going to live it. Because of the way in which a particular person, now gone, touched me; or because of the way in which particular set of events or circumstances, difficult as they may have been, presented themselves to me, I now have an understanding of myself that I didn't have before, and I have some things to offer to others that I didn't have before. I know that within this congregation there are persons whose encounters with loss of one kind or another, have later opened them up to being available to other members and friends in ways that have greatly strengthened the overall ministry we have with one another. One of the more gratifying aspects of my ministry here is hearing about some the ways in which you take care of one another, especially in times of personal grief or personal difficulty.

To move now to a final consideration, lets recall Deane Starr's words again: "The real question in a religious orientation is not what to do with joy but what to do with grief." I think the thing that hooked me on Candy Lightner's book, to which I've been referring off and on this morning, was in the opening pages when she was telling about having to arrange the memorial service for her daughter who was killed by the drunk driver. She wrote that since she was not strongly identified with any one religious tradition a friend referred her to the local Unitarian Universalist minister who helped her plan and work out the service. She went onto say how accommodating the UU minister was when it come to using what she wanted--and not using what she didn't want--in the service. Having been in that position a few times myself I decided, "I'm going to read this woman's book."

There is no question that many persons in grief find strength, support, and consolation from their religion--whatever it may be, and that it does help usher them out of their immediate grief and into the "rest of their life". This was ably demonstrated at the service held here a few weeks ago, and I certainly respect and honor that. I also think it demeans a religion if it is used as a way of explaining the unexplainable when it comes to an untimely death brought on by an accident or by the act of one human being upon another or others. It is a natural, human response to want an explanation for deaths like these, but to attribute them to the intentional workings of a Supreme Being--workings that we are supposedly not permitted to understand--borders, I feel, on the blasphemous. Whatever ways of understand God I have come to, they do not include a Being who allows some lives to go on while choosing to extinguish others. That idea is as absurd as the untimely death itself. The very hard and sometimes painful truth, again as I see it, is that we live in a world and universe that oftentimes behaves toward us in capricious, arbitrary, and indifferent ways. The challenge and task of a religious community to offer a loving and caring human response to those who are bereaved by a death, instead of trying to find an explanation for it.

I also well understand and respect how the idea of a continuing existence, in some form, beyond physical death is a source of comfort and healing for those most affected by the loss. There is only one way for me to know whether or not there is such an continuing, conscious existence, and I'm not quite ready just yet to find out. For what its worth, I'm a confirmed skeptic when it come to the idea of a continuing, conscious existence after death. But I'm not skeptical at all about the continuing embodiment of a deceased person's life in the lives of others who are still living. Think of it this way: Some of the stars you see on a clear night no longer exist; some of them died before our earth even took shape. But standing on this earth you still see their light; and that light can touch you and bless you and sustain you in some mysterious but meaningful ways. The light the star sent out, while it was living, still allows it to live for you, and for any others who catch its light. In a similar way, our lives are a part of a larger Chain of Life, that has long preceded us and which will far outdistance us. Part of the meaning of our lives lies in what we give to that Chain of Life--and how we partake from what others have given. However painful or inexplicable a particular loss of life within that Chain of Life may be--it is still a life whose continuing light can bless and heal.

May our community here, then, ever be a source of peace and strength and hope for who are in need of these things--as we each and all are at one time or another. May the losses we have each and all known become, in time, part of a larger "yes" we say to Life Itself.

Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua

Grief as a Route to Healing