The Lessons I Learned When Mourning
Weeping may endure
“A person isn’t who they are during the last conversation you had with them — they’re who they’ve been throughout your whole relationship.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke
Death teaches as it takes. As a professor, it is patient and exacting — demanding much of us with lessons we can delay but never escape. Death is also pretty inconsiderate. I’ve never been where I wanted to be when death took those I loved most. I was always still travelling towards them. Never with them. Never home.
Whenever someone I know suffers a grave loss, I find myself overflowing with a desire to wrap them in love and protect them from all the hurt I know is already present and all the future hurts I know are coming. I want to tell them everything I’ve learned and guide them away from the traps and pits I fell into, but I know I can’t. I try (I try) not to give too much unsolicited advice. And so, I write. I write in the hopes that those who need to read this will find it — the lessons my encounters with death and loss have taught me.
One lesson loss has taught me (and still teaches me) is that I must separate my mourning from my guilt. After my mother died, I berated myself for not being there — even though she died unexpectedly and without warning. After my grandmother died, I wished I’d spoken to her the day before. I was in the habit of calling her weekly, but sometimes I’d put it off. And the last few times I called her phone just rang and rang. She was staying with relatives, but I didn’t know. I regretted that I hadn’t worked harder to speak to her — hadn’t called more people to figure out why she wasn’t answering her phone. It was energy I could have better expended elsewhere.
Guilt has a way of intruding on mourning — at least in my experience. And it is as unwelcome a companion as that funeral guest whose actions make everyone uncomfortable.
I suspect only sociopaths are immune to guilt. If you care, if you love, guilt comes whenever you feel you’ve fallen short. But that’s perception more than reality. The dead hold no grudges. We cannot fail them or betray them. Our actions no longer affect them — no longer make them proud, sad, or angry. All we can do is remember — and honor their memory.
I loved my mother, and my mother loved me. I know both those things unequivocally. I can regret that I wasn’t there when she died. I can regret that before my maternal grandmother passed, I didn’t speak to her one more time. But I can’t let that guilt outweigh or obscure all the occasions I was there or did reach her on the phone. My relationship with my mother (or my grandmother) is not defined by the end of her life or the aftermath of her passing. It is the sum of all our shared memories — not the death but the life.
Learning that lesson and getting through the heaviest of the mourning seasons takes time. The happiest days will be the hardest days for a while. There will be a shadow (sometimes a full eclipse) darkening holidays and special occasions. There will be progress and relapses. You will take two steps forward and eighteen steps back. Mourning is a long-lived process — confusing, depressing, fatiguing, daunting.
Here’s something else I’ve learned while mourning. No one can grieve for you, and you can’t fast forward, though you do sometimes get to press pause. It simply sucks until it doesn’t, and even then the loss never diminishes or disappears, it just feels less foreign.
When mourning, you are the infant struggling to stand. Falling. God isn’t far. He’s just not picking you up right now. It’s hard and it hurts, but it’s the only way to relearn how to walk through the world.
When mourning, you’ll be confused. There are no easy answers. Acceptance takes a tremendous amount of toil and time. You’ll wonder why. What purpose does all this pain have? What lies ahead that you’re being prepared for? Life — life lies ahead — and all the people you’ll encounter and be better equipped to empathize with and/or counsel on a deeper level with your hard-earned knowledge.
Many of us who have suffered great loss or despair are asked how we manage to keep living our lives. But that’s really the only option if you’re not one for suicide. You either assume the loss or divest your stock in reality. You either choose to go on or you choose to quit. And what you choose may change from one day to the next or at any particular moment. However, “going on” and “being okay” look much different than they feel.
A person can be shattered and still manage to smile. A heart can be broken without falling behind. Going back to work doesn’t mean that all is well. Sadness can coexist with laughter — just as tears with happiness.
I have experienced many of the relative levels of “being okay.” And I’ve learned that “being okay” is a spectrum. Some days it means that life is comfortable, and I am content: I am not overly concerned about anything. I am not full of anxiety or ambivalence. Some days it means I did the bare minimum: I got up and participated in the world (perhaps against my will). I acted like a responsible adult and met all my obligations. However, I may have done so with a deficit of motivation. Some days “okay” is an act, and other days I can’t even fake it.
Mourning has taught me that loss is too personalized to be homogenized. The same person dies, but one has lost a parent, another a sibling, and another a spouse. Each cannot possibly feel the exact same sadness or take precisely the same path through his or her hurt.
Some of us bear up under the weight of our losses, and some of us break. No path through loss or despair is perfect or straight. Each response to mourning is unique. Death might make you lose your appetite; I’m rarely unable to eat. Stress brings out the fixer in some while causing others to freeze or retreat.
Mourning has taught me that when life asks us to keep calm and carry on — to endure the unbearable — there are no shortcuts through sorrow. Anything you attempt to skip today will find you tomorrow.
No one can do it for you, but you also don’t have to grieve on your own. Hopefully you find someone to talk to while you labor on. Mourning is a heavy burden. So, seek out companions in your grief — people who are safe, loving, and wise. They can be friends, family members, or someone with professional credentials. They are the ones who know how to push you when you’re stuck or give you a safe space to fall apart.
Through my experiences with life and death and mourning and depression, I’ve learned it’s okay to not be okay. There is too much imperfect humanity in this world for everything to be love and light and laughter at all times. And even if we were all always kind to one another, there would still be the occasional illness, accident, or natural disaster.
This world has pain to mete out, and we will all get a share. But no evil is eternal, and no hurt lasts forever.
Weeping may endure for the night, and the night might be long and hard. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morn (Psalm 30:5b).” Weeping may endure with such strength that you feel your heart won’t mend, but as deeply lost as you may get in your hurt, you will find your mourning’s end.
More by Aabye-Gayle:
