Downstream in Grief; Upstream in Time

Summary

The web content reflects on the author's experience with anticipatory grief over a five-year period due to a loved one's protracted illness, leading to a complex mix of emotions and the eventual wholehearted engagement in the work of mourning.

Abstract

The author describes the prolonged nature of grief when a loved one suffers from a long-term illness, detailing the emotional turmoil of witnessing a gradual decline in health and personhood. This anticipatory grief is characterized by a sense of helplessness and hopelessness as the individual watches their loved one's suffering, which in this case spanned over five years. The death of the author's mother, which occurred a few weeks prior, has prompted a shift in memory towards her healthier times. The author is now fully immersed in the mourning process. The article draws a parallel to the transformation of King Caspian in C.S. Lewis's 'The Silver Chair,' where the character's death is followed by a rejuvenation, symbolizing the cyclical nature of life and death and the enduring impact of loss.

Opinions

The author views death as a potential relief from the suffering caused by prolonged illness.
There is an acknowledgment of the ambivalence and longing that comes with the slow loss of a loved one's roles and personhood.
The author expresses a sense of helplessness and hopelessness in the face of their mother's illness and decline.
The act of remembering the loved one in their prime is a part of the grieving process.
The author suggests that grief work is an earnest and wholehearted endeavor that begins anew after the loved one's passing.
The reference to 'The Silver Chair' implies a belief in the transformative and healing aspects of grief and the possibility of renewal after loss.

Downstream in Grief; Upstream in Time

With protracted illness grief can begin insidiously years in advance of the passing of a loved one. Loss of roles and distortion of personhood invites death as a reliever of suffering, ambivalence and longing. I was helpless and hopeless witnessing her diminishment spanning 5 years.

My mother holding me as an infant. Photo by the kindness of my father

My mother died only several weeks ago yet my memories are already turning themselves back to her prime, before she was lost to the ravages of illness. And now the grief work for me begins wholeheartedly and in earnest.

Author’s photo of Seymour River near Vancouver BC Canada

Excerpt from ‘The Silver Chair’ by C.S. Lewis

King Caspian dies and all of Narnia mourns. Even Aslan the Great Lion mourns. The children (who thru time travel) knew the king when he was a youth looked into the stream. And there, on the golden gravel bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great Lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond.

At that same moment the doleful music stopped. And the dead King began to be changed. His white beard turned to gray, and from gray to yellow, and got shorter and vanished altogether; and his sunken cheeks grew round and fresh, and the wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and his eyes and lips both laughed, and suddenly he leaped and stood before them – a very young man.