Mourning Ends, Grief Need Not (Ed Batista)

Grief by Andrew Choy andrewchoy 9218794953 EDIT

Grief can be the path to grace if that is what we choose.

~Sage Cohen [1]

Nearly a decade ago two people who were important to me died suddenly: Richard Wright, my father-in-law, and Roanak Desai, an MBA student who I was coaching and came to know well. They were both profoundly vital human beings, and I felt their absence keenly, and their deaths were all the more emotional because they were so unexpected--Rich had been initially diagnosed with cancer just 12 weeks earlier, and Roanak contracted malaria while traveling and succumbed to it a few days later while returning to Stanford. [2,3,4]

Keia Cole, another student I knew, wrote to me at the time to share some advice that she had received upon the passing of her own father. Keia put it into her own words, and I'll do the same here, but I want to honor her as the source of wisdom that continues to hold meaning for me years later:

There's a difference between mourning and grief. Mourning ends, because we have to return to the world, but grief need not, and we can return to our grieving to honor our feeling and our memories of the person we lost at any time.

Mourning serves a necessary purpose by creating some distance between us and the rest of the world. A consequence of trauma is that our world stops, but for those close to us it merely slows down, and for everyone else it just keeps spinning. This is inevitable, but intolerable--we can't operate at the same speed as the rest of the world, and we may not be able to function at all. Mourning provides the buffer that allows us to re-engage with the world at our own pace, taking the time we need to acknowledge and work through the complex emotions evoked and to truly integrate the lessons that are uniquely available to us at a time of loss.

Mourning enables the process of returning to the world--but we don't return to "normal." In the wake of a profound loss, we're changed, and our perspective on the world has changed as well. After Rich and Roanak's deaths, it occurred to me that I was also going to die. This may sound absurd--I was 42 at the time, and I had already lost a number of people in my life--but until that point mortality had remained an abstraction. It was an experience that happened to other people, and so it was easy to keep it at arm's length.

But something about Rich and Roanak's deaths changed that. Perhaps it was because they occurred in such quick succession, or because they were so unexpected—whatever the cause, it changed me. One change, although I wouldn't realize it for a number of years, is that I became much more grateful for all the things I had been given in this life, and grateful for life itself.

This was my "new normal," and it had to incorporate not only the newfound joy and appreciation I felt for life, but also the heartbreak I felt in the absence of Rich and Roanak, and the fear that accompanied this deeper awareness of my own mortality. And this is where another piece of advice I received in 2010 made a powerful difference. Bonnie Wentworth, who was then a fellow member of the Stanford coaching staff and remains a friend and colleague, said something very simple that made it possible for me to accept this new reality: "Grief is non-linear."

In the aftermath of a severe trauma, we don't feel at our absolute worst the following day, and a little better the day after, and a little better the day after that, ad infinitum until we've regained our equilibrium. There are no algorithms to recovery--it is an inherently unpredictable process. In the weeks immediately after Rich and Roanak's death, I experienced a tremendous burst of energy and productivity, writing dozens of essays on a wide range of topics--and then I stopped writing completely for more than four months, exhausted and grief-stricken.

In the years since, Keia's distinction between mourning and grief has enabled me to truly understand and make use of Bonnie's concise advice. Nearly ten years later, I don't think about Rich and Roanak every day, but I think about them regularly, and I can readily recall what I loved about them and what I miss about them. I can grieve them in ways that honor my memories and my feelings for them, and this essay is a part of that process.

Nor am I fixated on my own mortality, but I can think about it regularly, and it serves a fruitful purpose--I can begin to grieve my own impending loss. As psychoanalyst Elliot Jacques has written, once we accept our mortality, "The last half of life can be lived with conscious knowledge of eventual death, and acceptance of this knowledge, as an integral part of living. Mourning for the dead self can begin." [5] And as in my grieving for Rich and Roanak, this can be a fulfilling experience, not a traumatizing one, something I discovered a few years ago:

The thought of leaving this place, of the end of this existence, was just too much to take. But far from being morbid or gloomy, the experience was deeply life-affirming. I was as sad as I've ever been, and as happy as I could hope to be. Even as I strive to face the end of this life with equanimity, I find myself appreciating it more and more. [6]

Thank you, Keia and Bonnie. I remain grateful to you not only for your advice, but also for the act of reaching out, and today your gestures inspire me to do the same, even when I'm not sure how it will be received. Better to make the effort, than to fail someone who could use the support because I'm afraid of a little awkwardness.

Footnotes

[1] @sagecohen

[2] Richard Wright, RIP

[3] Viktor Frankl on Love, Suffering and the Meaning of Life

[4] Journey, Connections and Learning (Goodbye, Roanak)

[5] "Death and the Mid-Life Crisis," page 162 (Elliott Jacques, 1965, in Death: Interpretations, Hendrik Ruitenbeek, editor, 1969)

[6] Gualala (On Mortality and Gratitude)

For Further Reading

BOOKS AND ESSAYS

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Atul Gawande)

The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker)

Dying: A Memoir (Cory Taylor)