Saying Goodbye and Formalizing our Losses
How to create a ritual to allow ourselves to process grief
This morning I wrote a piece about the first phase of the Transition process, which is critical to our being able to move through the effects of massive change. Far too many of us avoid the grief process entirely and rush toward remaking ourselves, which has the combined effect of sickening our bodies and minds as well as effectively launching a torpedo into our futures.
For background, here’s that piece:
In the interest of keeping things shorter (I am famously loquacious among my friends) I’m chopping these into more bite-sized pieces. This is damned difficult work, and it’s better if you and I walk through them bit by edible bit. It’s bitter fruit, dealing with this kind of pain.
To do it right, there is no way to handle it all at once in the interest of sparing us the heartache. It will come, one way or the other. These strategies are to help you best deal with the inevitable pain that this virus- and the vagaries of life- cause us.
In the previous article I wrote this sentence:
I have learned the rightness of things, how to release my attachments to shoulds, should-have-beens, entitlements, I-deserves, the lot.
This is the hardest part. Each of us right now is facing loss of income, work, forward progress, dreams, hopes, lifestyles, careers. Some of us are facing loss of loved ones, access to people we desperately care about in the worst possible moments. Some of us cannot hug or give comfort to the people who most need it. As Westerners, and I might add, especially as Americans, we grapple with what we might have come to expect as our Divine Right to live the way we want and have anything we want. Including a grief- and trouble-free existence.
We deeply dislike discomfort. Right now we are getting a terrible dose of just that. Discomfort, and much, much worse.
It would be fair to say that these assumptions about our Divine Right were never true to begin with, but we still assume them. Covid is forcing us to let go. I’m not going to tell you it’s easy, especially if you’ve never been through anything like this before. But you can learn how.
In the previous article, I talked about listing what has Ended. With respect to the very fast-moving world we are in right now, that’s what I know that has ended by today. Tomorrow may bring more endings- which is why it is so terribly important to learn how to deal with this kind of environment right now. Just an hour ago I learned that my neighborhood is on shut-down.
I also listed what I have lost, so far:
- No access to my beloved friends other than by phone.
- I can’t ride, play with horses, dogs or other animals.
- I can’t make a living doing what I most love right now: travel
- I can’t plan a trip overseas. I live for such things.
- I can’t work out my sadness and frustration at my gym. All my weights and gear but for very few pieces are packed up, leaving me with a bare bones collection of mixed gear to create a daily workout session. I have lost the familiarity and safety of my gym.
- I can’t get the important personal care that I need especially now: chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, shots for my arthritic hands, dental care. I am friends with those providers so it’s a double loss.
- My freedom. My precious, delicious, exquisite physical freedom to travel, ride, climb, kayak, adventure as I wish.
Again, this is just so far. There will be more. Guaranteed.
If that gives you pause, I don’t blame you. When I got back from Africa two weeks ago, without any notion of how things had been plunged into chaos, every single day marked a major ending. My gym closed, my favorite stores closed, I couldn’t put my house up for sale, I couldn’t get a riding lesson, the list is endless. My career took a nosedive, then face-planted. Each is a shock to the system. Some big, some small.
I felt like a punching bag. I’ll bet that’s familiar by now.
For many, the natural response is denial. We continue to operate as if nothing was wrong in that way that a dog or child who doesn’t look you in the eye honestly believes he’s invisible. Sadly in this case, that has made the virus far worse. While denial is a natural response to terrifying changes, it’s a bad one this time, especially if that denial means we continue to gather, play and act as though all is well.
Partying could well mean being party to someone else’s death. That person doesn’t care if you didn’t mean to. What matters is what you did. Mardi Gras, attended by more than a million people, may end up being a massive problem.
We want to avoid the pain of reality. Reality is that everything has changed. The endings and losses are real. While denial is a coping technique, in the case of what we’re dealing with today, it is a deeply dysfunctional one. It leads to dangerous behaviors that may impact innocent people who are putting their lives and their families’ health on the line for the rest of us.
I understand fear. I understand denial. We can afford neither right now. So please. Let’s talk.
Each loss that I have suffered (above) deserves its own time cupped in the folds of my heart. Recognized for how important it was to me. The joy I have taken in my hopes, dreams and aspirations.
So I put each item in my hands. Some people write it down on a small piece of paper. Others make a tiny coffin. Doesn’t matter. What we are doing is formalizing, ritualizing letting go.
This is a wake, in the wake of terrible loss.
A loving, caring, appreciative wake for something that defined us. That we strongly identified with, that we believed made us who were are and were going to be in the near future.
How you do this is up to you. Some will burn their item, and as the smoke rises, they allow themselves to feel the loss. Cry or feel pain as what they loved disappears.
Pray. Bury your tiny coffin. Have a ZOOM meeting of fellow employees or family members take part in your ceremony.
If you have the right kind of mindset, and the right kinds of friends, you can have an Irish wake for your losses. My circle of friends can do that. It’s immensely freeing to find humor in heartbreak, hope in our losses. Our laughter carries the echo of deep pain.
Letting go through ritual offers us a state of grace. We formally acknowledge a passage, a death, a moment for each loss. We offer thanks. We can stand in great and abiding gratitude for the life we have, the life we have lived to now, and whatever life chooses to present to us going forward.
Again, please let me emphasize. Whether your losses or mine are worse than someone else’s has no bearing. They are painful to US. The losses we incur are a big deal to each of us individually. How you process the loss of contact with your 92-year-old grammy in a nursing home with a virus problem, or how you deal with plummeting sales from your business, or how you work through the loss of a dream that you spent the last two decades slaving to create doesn’t matter.
Your life, your situation, your pain, your process.
Which is why we owe each other the grace to allow them to feel whatever they feel about their lives without making judgments about them.
I might draw the line at feeling sorry for the French in the city of Bordeaux who, as I found out from a friend of mine who is living there at the moment, are “righteously pissed off that they can’t choose from ten varieties of pasta.” But that’s just me. If limited pasta is painful to the French, so be it.
Letting go,how long it takes, how you do it, and how you process it are as individual as a fingerprint. Above all, forgive. Forgive whatever and whoever you need to forgive. For letting go means freeing all of our attachments, our feelings, our angers, frustrations, all the pieces of us that cried out that this should have happened, or this should have been ours. Our need to blame someone.
There is nobody and nothing to blame. Especially yourself.
Letting go of our losses is as powerful an act of self-care as you will ever perform.
Finally, when you are done with each item, each chapter, please find a way to be quiet, if you can. Contemplate. Watch your feelings rise, acknowledge them, and let them fall away. For with your permission, they will. Feelings are just feelings. They mean only what colors we paint them. They are real, but they don’t need to mean anything about us.
In the quiet snowbanks of our sadness, we rest. We take stock. We heal. We learn. And gather strength.
For what comes next will challenge us further.
But for now, if you can, simply be quiet.
Simply, Be.
