We lose touch with the wisdom of our ancestors. They learnt much about living and coping with the ups and downs of life. We need to reclaim their wisdom learnt through the rough and tumble of life. This article explores “what did Grandma know that we do not know about dying and grief?”
In the life of every person, we gain by the new births of people we love, and we lose by the people who die. The longer you live, the more loved ones you will lose.
Our ancestors (who learnt what to do by living through death) knew that you can never grieve alone. When the loved one dies we all lose; we all had a relationship with her/him. We all suffer the loss (each in a different degree).
Experience teaches us that if you do not grieve at the proper time, you will grieve somewhere along the line. No one can just deny that the death (the ending) did not happen. Death means that everything has changed.
People will often say, “I don’t know what to say.”
Say nothing. Be the silent support that listens with your heart. May your hug be communication that you care and will be with you in your suffering, confusion and your loss. I will stand with you in this meaningless moments of all of this tragedy. I will embrace your emptiness, your anger, your confusion and your resentment that life is not fair.
Too many do not know what to do. If they had been born two generations ago they would have had memory of their own parents dealing with the loss of loved ones.
We need each other to help us embrace the pain and the loss. You need your friend to listen to you as you describe how you are cleaning out the drawers of your twenty-one year old son who died of an overdose. You need the patience of siblings who listen to you go through the old photos and the stories of your past holidays.
You need to prepare some of the deceased favourite foods and tell stories how much your eighty-seven year old grandmother loved making donuts for the grandchildren.
One of the unfortunate things that happens because we are so scattered throughout this country is that the siblings will rush in, spend two days with the funeral activities and then get on the plane and fly back to their home. Did they actually hear the pain and suffering of their sister and brother? Have they had time to shed tears together?
Families that are relatively healthy are surprised at the amount of laugher they share when they tell stories of their departed father. Most often, they will speak of his adventures and his quirks. There is much laughter because there was much living!
Before we move on into the more formal part of grieving, we need to help today’s generation put in the time and the energy into grieving. And we must teach them that grieving the loss of a loved one, takes time; maybe a long time.
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