How We Mourn.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Of all the threads I’d dare never hijack, surely JillGat’s is at the top of the list. Like so many of us, I’m deeply moved by her words- and all of our words. I feel the need to write this, and so started this thread instead.

We’re a community of thoughtful people, but respect runs deep as well. Instead of tainting Jill’s thread, I need to ask here…how do we mourn?

I’m not a religious man at all, if I had any real faith it failed me years ago at the hands of violent deaths to loved ones and family. How does one mourn properly? How do I determine what is proper? By association?

I brought a woman back from the dead with my hands once. She died a day later, but the astonishing deed was done by myself, and one other man. It was a frightening feeling, to be honest. When she died a day later, it seemed awfully right to me. And yet, she was a stranger.

I can’t figure out how to mourn, for myself. I’d rather not make myself feel things because I’m supposed to appease my parents, or fulfill a religious indoctrination. Emotional as I am so much of the time, I always suspect myself of short-changing when I lose someone close to me.

How do we mourn?

I beg a thousand times to not get flamed for starting this thread on the heels of Jill’s postings. It has made me think SO hard about this, and so I turn to the community whose thoughts make ME think so very hard. In asking this I mean zero, and I do mean ZERO disrespect for JillGat and her family.

Cartooniverse

2

No offense to JillGat, but I’m not going near her thread; the subject matter is just too … fresh :frowning:

My uncle died, suddenly and at a rather young (2 weeks shy of 50) age, the weekend before Thanksgiving. I am not done mourning him yet. Not because we were particularly close (because, really, we weren’t), but because of the sheer “Whaddaya mean he’s dead???” feeling. He wasn’t done yet, if that makes any sense. Then there was the long period between his death and the internment (10 days, due to Thanksgiving weekend)- which we couldn’t even see because of the restrictions at Camp Ripley. Monday, Memorial Day, we’re going up to the grave site, to remember, I suppose. So with him I’m not yet done. There are too many things I wanted to say to him - things I was saving because I knew I’d seem him Thanksgiving Day.

My grandmother, on the other hand …

She had been in ill health for so long it’s hard for me to remember a time when she wasn’t sick. Despite her physical ailments, however, her mind was still sharp - and witty, and generous, and forgiving, and kind …

The difficult part for me was her ups and downs in the Cardiac Care Unit - bad one day, worse the next, fine the following day. Then there came a point when her mind just left; the lady in bed wasn’t gramma anymore - just a body kept alive by feeding tubes and the ventilator.

For me, mourning gramma was remembering all her ‘Ruthisms’. And cleaning out her stuff was, believe it or not, so … HEALING. She was such a pack rat - going through all the closets was FUNNY: “She kept THAT?!?”

This past weekend was my aunt’s - gramma’s daughter’s - 25th anniversary. Gramma kept every last stinking piece of schlock from her 25th anniversary. Guess who got it? :smiley: We’re already making fun of how my sister (married for only five years) is going to get all that junk 20 years from now :slight_smile:

Now that I’m previewing I realize that this is kind of long, and I apologize. But I think … a lot depends on who died, and how. Mel is still painful. Gramma hurts in that “Remember that old friend you had so much fun with but lost touch with”, nostalgic kind of way.

3

Mourning is a purely personal experience. There is no right or wrong, proper or improper way to do it. The Victorians had strict protocol for mourning (wear black for such-and such a length of time, then you may wear dove gray; use black borders around your stationery, etc.) but even then, true mourning took place in the heart where no social propriety can reach.

And you should never feel compelled to do so. Grief exists as a step in healing the individual who grieves. Grief itself is composed of different stages, but each person passes through them at a different rate or perhaps skips one stage or more. Denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance. Each person travels a lonely road through these.

Who do you feel you are short-changing? Others? If so, you’re not. Your emotions are your own. Shortchanging yourself? I don’t think so.

Here’s a clue. When a person loses a loved one to violence (and it’s compounded if it happens more than once), you must necessarily build walls to protect yourself from that pain. From then on, every time you encounter a loss through death, you’ll be reconnected to that unbearably painful time. It’s natural that you should view and experience grief in an “atypical” way- but that way isn’t wrong. It is what’s right and good for you, and perhaps the way you grieve (or don’t grieve) is what preserves your sanity.

It may be worth it, even though it may be painful, to examine those walls and determine if they are still protecting you, or if they are now keeping you a prisoner.

4

My father and grandfather both ducked out of Mother’s Day - used the fields as an excuse. Have never heard of either of them using the excuse of corn to duck out of a party before.

And the only reason my father did not leave Mel’s funeral was because mom held on to his arm. Tightly.

So there’s a couple more methods of mourning, yes?

And my method, right now, is avoiding all threads, newspaper articles, and books that have death as a central theme.

And one more thing …

I don’t approach religious, but gramma was - extremely so. when it was finished I said a few word to god on her behalf; not so much for me but for her.

5

Mourning is such an intensely personal and individual thing I’m almost loathe to touch this thread.

However rigid the Victorian protocols for mourning were (and many ethnic groups still follow similar ones), they granted people time and space in which to adjust without the pressure to “get over it and get on with life”.

My partner died over 6 years ago, and even though I’d done a lot of my mourning prior to his death, I still went through the inevitable sadness of facing “significant” occasions over the following couple of years without his presence. Eventually, you develop new rituals for Christmas, birthdays, Father’s Day etc to replace the old, but it takes time.

Even today, there are occasions which come up where I sorely feel his absence - times I expected him to be here to share. My son gaining his entry into university a couple of years ago was one of those times, and no doubt my son’s 21st birthday next month will bring its own special poignance.

Mourning is a process, and it’s one we each confront in our own way and our own time.

For our family, Christmas Eve changed radically 6 years ago. It was the night my partner and I used to sit up with champagne wrapping the presents until the wee hours of Christmas Day. His death on Christmas Eve forever changed that ritual, and while we don’t acknowledge the date of his death in anyway, nor do I wrap presents on Christmas Eve anymore.

6

In my experience, mourning is such an intensely personal thing.

Up until fairly recently, I was very fortunate to have all four of my grandparents, most of my cousins, both my parents, my brother, the family dog, and so on. I had not been exposed to nearly as much loss as others my age had.

The first person close to me who died was my son. For the first two years or so, I was a basket case. There are points during that time where I probably should have been in a psychiatric hospital.

In 1996, I had the good fortune to get hooked up with a really good counselor (he was an intern through a master’s program at the local university) who helped me get over most of the acute trauma. Now, I do get depressed on occasion (usually Thanksgiving and Mother’s Day), but the depressions aren’t nearly as bad and they don’t last as long, and it’s much easier to talk about than it was.

I’ve gotten fairly used to “suggestions” that others offer. According to these people, I should have another baby, not have any kids at all and just get a dog, that I should attend a support group, and so on. I’ve learned to take what I need, and to filter out the rest of it.

Last year, I read about two cancer survivors who collected all the idiotic things other people say to them. I’m thinking about doing that for child loss. I’m betting it’ll sell a zillion.

Robin

7

I agree with opinions above: grief is personal, individual, and there is no manual or “how-to” about it. You experience it. Hopefully, you learn to cope, and use the experience to heal. Hopefully, everyone else around you shuts up about their “helpful suggestions on how your life should run now x is dead”.

My grandmother died in 1973, when I was 9. I was not allowed to attend her funeral, and was made to go to school that day. That still hurts, but I did a lot of the worst grieving some 20 years ago.

My mum died in 1997. I think I have my life fairly well on track, but I’m prone to depression and anxiety problems. I’ll feel a lot better once I’ve ticked off stuff I promised Mum I’d do.

My cats. Three out of the four died horribly. It’s been a while, but I’m still grieving over them too (cat people out there will understand this. I hope.) Over 6 years, I lost five members of my family, human and feline, and I’m still mourning them. I had LOTS of people say “Get another cat!” “You’ll get one in 6 months, just see!” Wrong, wrong. I don’t want to open my life up again just yet, and right now I’m out of the house too much to take on a kitten.

I post to threads like Jillgat’s because, well we’re a community here. It’s just tacking up a small note saying, “Hey. Thinking of you. You’re not alone.” The over-riding mesasage to all this, I think, is – we’ll get through the hurt. It takes time (man, does it ever!), but we do get through. And we are all stronger for it, and love those who have died all the more.

Ah, enough of my blather.

8

When I was 14 my dad, the sexton at a town’s Catholic cemetery, put a shovel in my hand and I became a gravedigger until I left for college. During that time I was able to observe that of which you ask - but from a polite distance.

I always thought we were keeping out of sight from the graveside service to protect the feelings of the “be-he-reaved,” as we called them, as if we should have been hunkered down under that tarp of fake grass that also covered the pile of dirt next to the grave-hole. But small-town life is such a study in class-warfare, that, standing behind the shed waiting for everyone living to go away, I couldn’t help wonder if it was me personally they didn’t want to see. “My husband managed the biggest used car lot in southwestern Wisconsin, and these dirtbags are going to profit from his death!?” as if gravediggers should wear bellhop uniforms. Plenty of people bitched at us accordingly - and my dad philosophically pointed out that people who felt guilty about how they’d treated their loved ones in life made up for it by expecting them to be treated like royalty after death. But nobody ever thanked us - even though burying the dead, unlike selling used cards, is one of the seven corporal acts of mercy.

So much for Marx; then there was Freud: just like at weddings, the younger set would sneak off and engage in soothing, life-affirming coitus (rounding the corner hand-in-hand, they didn’t expect to find the hired help behind that shed).

We’d bury kids we knew who’d wiped out on drugs or suicide and road-drinking cruises gone bad. the administration would let the whole school out for the funerals and I’d come back to class a little bit after everyone else (except for those who skipped the whole affair to go road-drinking themselves)and get the nastiest looks from the other kids. I’d bite my tounge to keep from saying “hey - I just buried him - I didn’t eat his dead flesh!” Again, my dad proved philosophical in the event - these were emotionally uncharitable small town people and I had that much more incentive to not settle for a working-class position among them, but rather to leave for college.

There was one gal we were all friends with - the only woman in 1975 rural Wisconsin with enough fashion guts to wear a crew cut - who was impregnated and then dumped. Fuckwad didn’t even show for the funeral. She had four older brother whose mouring process, exhibiting capital “A” in Kubler-Ross’ “DABDA,” consisted of beating this joker into damp cinders - except for her oldest brother in the county jail whose work-release was deliberately revoked by the judge to keep him from coming back before the bench on a homocide charge.

There was the girlfriend who came by every day after school and sat on her boyfriend’s headstone. Again, we kept our distance even though we had work to do in the vicinity. After a while she had company in the person of the dead boyfriend’s best friend, and eventualy they left together in his big blue GTO for the last time, him sparaying gravel among the headstones in a soothing, life-affirming peal-out.

So, I’d say from my experience that people mourn the same as they live in general: kind fucked-up. Some variations are apparent: us Irish view the dead with some envy: “you luck bastard - you’re out of your troubles now,” it seems the Poles can’t help touching their dead - pinching and kissing it in the coffin. As for the actual people I buried - that was different. I did the right thing by them and they in turn held theri regards appropriately. I was one of the last people to talk to Mike H- the night before he killed himself in his parents garage. He must have known I’d be the one who’d bury him a few days later, but he didn’t seem to bear me any fore-grudge. At the time he had bigger issues to confront, and afterwards, like everyone else, he was free and clear of all this shit.

9

Me, I mostly miss my dad like crazy. This thread caught my attention because he died eight years ago this month, on the fourth to be precise. It was completely out of nowhere and a huge shock to all of us. (They never did pin down exactly what he died from. Something about “seizures” but personally I think sleep apnea had something to do with it.) My parents had divorced some years before that but had remained friendly, so Mom was in almost the same state I was.

I was seventeen, and my dad and I were really close, even living in different states.

But the amazing thing is how I picked up and went on. I mean, we had to go to Ohio for the funeral, then to Texas to pack up his stuff, and drive back to California. I missed nearly three weeks of school. My brother, who was nine, did go to the funeral but was flown home early because we just couldn’t handle his behavior. Poor kid, he was hurting badly, we knew it, but it was just impossible. Going through my dad’s stuff was interesting; he’s the one who introduced me to the Straight Dope in the first place, so let’s give credit where credit is due. I rescued a bunch of stuff like his old report cards, and occasionally go through them laughing that my college GPA is higher than his was. :slight_smile:

I went back to school after we got back home and got lots of support from friends and teachers. It hurt like hell, quite honestly, and I think I wasn’t quite connected with the real world for months.

I still break down when I think of the awesome stuff that happened in my life the next year, stuff that I would have given an arm and a leg for to have him back while I experienced. 1994 was a most intense year, and I couldn’t call my dad and tell him about it. I mean, EVERYTHING happened…

I’ve been having a difficult time this month because of this. At least, I think that’s why. I’ve had two or three really weird dreams with him; in the last one he told me that he had to go take care of his mother, who had died six months before him. Strange. I can’t decide whether it was my own mind or if I was visited; I don’t know about an afterlife, but I also know that if there were one and my dad thought I’d feel better if he dropped by, he would do so. I, of course, still would give an arm and a leg to have him back.

It took me a couple of years to get to where I could do it, but I now have a nice picture of him in my living room, and for Christmas my aunt (mother’s side) gave me one of those multi-picture frames with pictures of him and me and some with my mom, mostly from when I was a baby or just a bit older. Nobody has too many pictures of him because he was usually the one behind the camera. I’m a pretty good photographer myself, though I don’t do it much.

So I just keep on going. Most of the time I’m okay, but May really sucks. At least nobody offered me suggestions. I mean, what would they say, “Get another father?” Ha! I’m on perfectly friendly terms with my mother’s husband but by no means is he my father.

This went on longer than I planned, and I’ve got to go get dressed for class. To sum it up: I don’t think I’ll ever completely quit grieving, though it’s not nearly as intense as it was early on, but I’m doing pretty well overall. Mostly I just miss my dad. A lot. And I tend to get jealous when I see people my age with their fathers, so sue me. They don’t know how lucky they are!

10

Holly, you wrote this:

Thank you for putting yourself on the line to me, a near-total stranger and asking me to do something that painful. I don’t know anything about you-except now I know you’re remarkable.

I too have rituals for mourning, as I re-read my O.P. this morning I realised that I was seemingly asking for help on HOW to mourn. It wasn’t the only intent, although that was part of it. I was asking how we mourn. The collective we, and from what I am reading, it is as varied as everything else in the human experience.

Perhaps this sums up how I feel about it right now. It is maddening to mourn deeply, but only a madman mourns alone.

JillGat isn’t alone in her real life, and surely not here. None of us are. It is a source of immense solace.

A friend of mine was murdered about 6 years ago in Philadelphia. Shot in the face, his spirit fled immediately, but his body churned on. He lay there, brain-dead for 12 days. I went and said my goodbye to him. I stood there, alone in the room thinking that I was supposed to do it for him, to show my love and respect for him ( both of which were monumental ). But that’s not really it, is it? I did it for myself, so I’d feel as though I had done SOMETHING.

It’s the inability to DO something that seems to be at the root of the pain of the loss. I guess sometimes the need to do something isn’t present at the end- as Jill stated so beautifully in her thread. Lacking that urge, the death becomes a sweet gentle departure.

Slithy Tove, I can’t even figure out what to write in response to your tales of witness. You learned more about the human condition doing that than any other profession could have offered a person of your age when you started.

I don’t know what else to say. Holly’s really floored me. Keep writing, people. I plan to. It is of great comfort to read the thoughts of others right now.

Cartooniverse

11

Cartooniverse:

This is, I think, an insightful point. So often now, the manner in which a person dies leaves the family and friends feeling helpless and frightened: surrounded by equipment and strangers, in an unfamiliar and scary place. The medical staff do all the ‘doing’, so the family feels too much like bystanders.

I believe that people need to be involved in their loved one’s death. Sharing that most important event somehow makes it easier to bear, though the pain of watching someone you love die is great. Death, like birth, should never be done in solitude. Of course, when death is sudden and unexpected, this isn’t possible.

I was an ICU nurse, and I tried very hard to help both my patients and their families when death was close. I encouraged the family to touch their loved one (so often people are afraid to touch an ICU patient, because there are scary wires and tubes everywhere). I explained just what was happening so they could understand: “his heart rate is slowing down now. It will get slower and slower, and then it will stop”. I reassured them that it was painless. I explained that when a person dies, the sense of hearing fades last, and encouraged them to stay close and talk to the dying person, tell him what they want to say, and let him know they are with him.

Most of all, I cried with them and hugged them (if hugging was what they needed). I always cried when a patient of mine died, but those tears were for the living. As I’d tell them, “I’m crying for you because this is so painful. I wish I could take away your pain, but I can’t. All I can do is make sure he feels no pain. What you’re doing is much more important, because you’re surrounding him with love and comfort.”

When a person is brain dead but his body still lives, I think it confuses the grieving process. How can he be dead? His body is warm, he has a pulse. Knowing the person is essentially gone from that shell, though, the usual good-byes and reassurances are useless. The person you love is still gone. You know that anything you say is said either because it’s expected of you, or it’s said for yourself.

There’s nothing selfish about grieving for yourself, admitting that the loss of someone you love hurts you. It’s okay to grieve in your own way, because the pain is your own.

12

Mourning is very personal.

My older brother died less than six months ago on December 7- four days after turning 48. He died at home after a brief battle with cancer.

Since his death, it seems that my life has become a series of anniversaries of the seventh of the month. Each month on the 7th, I wake up and think, I was doing this at this time on the day my brother died. This ritutal may loose it’s significance some day, but for now it is part of my healing process.

This weekend, my sister-in-law, my sister and I are going on a memorial Memorial Day bike ride. It is our 5th annual memorial day bike ride and our first without my brother. My brother who always was the last cyclist, wiping up the rear as we would say, ensuring that everyone was riding as a group. We will wear our matching bike riding t-shirts, look for pot among the other weeds along the bike path and drink a bottle of my brother’s favorite wine. We will laugh and cry and miss him a lot. This too is part of the greiving process.

But I ramble. Things like this forum are also part of the mourning process-thank you for listening.

I’m gonna close my office door and cry now.

13

Slithy Tove:

Thank you for teaching me something so very important and in such a beautiful way. God go with you.

14

This is a beautiful and interesting thread, Cartooniverse. Gratefully, it seems to have been taken in the spirit with which you meant it.

I personally learned a lot about mourning when my grandmother died six years ago. I was in high school at the time, and she was the second person in my immediate family to face and die of cancer. Looking back, I think I was kept awfully out of the loop about her condition.
That summer, six years ago, I went to a pre-college journalism program for a month. During that time, my grandmother became more ill and required more and more care. My mother practically moved in with her to provide her with care and company. I never knew this. I would speak to my mother on the phone about once a week, and we sent letters and cards back and forth…all the while, she was omitting details of my grandmother’s illness. My grandmother died, after losing most of her senses and cognition to brain cancer, the week before I was supposed to go home. My mother and stepfather picked me up from the airport at the end of the week and kept me talking until I was about three blocks from home. “How’s Grandma?” I blurted out.
It was then that I learned that she had died.
Reflecting back, I think much of what should have been my time for mourning was instead congested with guilt and resentment toward my family for not telling me what was going on. Much of the guilt came from the dichotomy of having fun, meeting new people and doing crazy college things…and never knowing that, three states away, my grandmother had died. My mother was preparing her funeral arrangements while sending me cards–“We miss you so much!” “Hope you’re having fun!”
Also, as a granddaughter, I felt that my loss was completely overshadowed by my mother’s loss as a daughter. My mother was already going through a rough time in her marriage; I had come out of the closet earlier that summer; and, in a year, I would be going to college for real. In retrospect, my grandmother’s death wasn’t something I experienced…it was something that was flung at me: “In one year,” my mother would say, “I have lost both my mother and my daughter.” I didn’t lose a grandmother; it felt like I had joined a conspiracy.
gulp
I think it’s only in doing things like this or in remembering my grandmother with other, neutral folx that I truly mourn her. I talked about her the other day to my roommates about camping. “It was like sharing a tent with Sophia Loren,” I said. And I missed her.

15

Personally, I mourn by myself. I skip funerals (funerals aren’t for friends.) I find a time to head out for a field or the woods or a lake and sit and think and spend some time loving and honoring the one I have lost. If they were adventourous and wild I might find a party or try something new. If they were quiet I might write some poetry or paint. But that’s me.

Mourning is personal, a time and way to re knit yourself to go on living well. I view it as time to find ways to live to honor people who aren’t around anymore. I would never want my death to negitivly affect someone I love, so I try not to let other people’s deaths pull me down.

16

moi:

Wow. That hurts.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer the day after I moved to Texas from Chicago. My mother also withheld details from me; I think she did so to protect me. I was so far away, I couldn’t come home, and why should she upset me unnecessarily? Everytime I asked, mom would tell me dad was doing great.

One day, a few months later, my mom told me that she and dad were coming to visit. (Thinking about it now, I bet this was my dad’s idea. He knew all along that he was dying, and I think he wanted to see me one last time.) When they got off the plane, I was shocked. My dad had lost at least a hundred pounds, he had no hair at all, and he was so weak that the flight attendant had to take him off the plane in a wheelchair. I was unprepared for any of this. I knew he was sick, but I didn’t realize he was so close to death.

I was at my dad’s bedside when he died less than a month later. He was still conscious when I arrived. The last words he said to me were, “What the hell are you doing here?” :slight_smile:

My dad left behind five children, a wife, a brother and sister, and his mom (aside from many less-close relatives and many, many friends). Each one of us grieved (and still grieve) differently.

17

If the most important thing is to be with a loved one when they die, what kind of person are you if you run away? I went to see my Aunt in the hospital the day before she died and no sooner than I had gone into her room I panicked majorly and ran out. This was 1991 and only in the past couple of years have I gotten over the guilt. (Mostly) I was angry that I couldn’t stay, couldn’t do my duty. But I came to realize that she wouldn’t have blamed me.

My father died last October. Mourning him has been kind of hard. He left us over 25 years ago so it’s not like I miss him. Anymore than I did anyway. Last time I saw him was back in 1989 but I’ll never forget what he said. I’d gone to see Grandmother, her I really missed, and he opened the door and said “You’re too late. She died 2 months ago.” He hadn’t bothered to tell us.

Now I’m left with a warehouse full of his stuff to dispose of and a lot of confusing feelings. My brothers and sister are similarly at a loss I think.

No matter how you do it, mourn I mean, it’s not easy is it?

18

I think that posting about it is one way of dealing with it. When I’m posting my secrets here, I feel safe. I don’t really know you people, although I have a high respect for you. It’s the fact that I’m still anonymous hiding behind the internet, and that you don’t know me, and you couldn’t hurt me by knowing this information. I take comfort in having what is essentially an experience like a psychiatrist. I can tell you my problems, and you listen. Whether you feel sympathy or apathy is all up to you, but we nonetheless thank you people for sitting down and reading our threads of unhappiness. Thank you.

19

dwyr:

You’re the kind of person who was not able, at that time, to deal with your feelings of fear and grief. There’s no shame in that; you needn’t feel guilty. It doesn’t mean you’re a coward or that you didn’t love your aunt; it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person in any way.

One way that some people grieve is by running away from it.

For example, my grandmother loved her husband very, very much. When he died, she was not there with him. She did not attend his funeral. She could not bear to talk about him or see a picture of him for twenty years. She never shed a single tear over him.

Yet, it was clear to everyone that she grieved terribly. A year before she died, twenty five years after grandpa’s death, she confided to me that she felt guilty that he had died and she had lived; she said, “he was such a good man. It wasn’t fair that he died. I should have been the one to die.”

It’s okay to have conflicting feelings like this: on the one hand, he was your father. On the other, I would think you still hold some resentment against him. It’s possible to love someone and hate him at the same time. It’s possible to be both sorry and glad that someone is dead. Again, if you feel this way or anything like it, this does not mean your feelings are ‘wrong’ or that you’re a bad person. From what very little I know of you, I can tell that you’re a caring, loving person.

20

I guess that would be me then. I hate going to funerals because I don’t see that they accomplish much. I go because it’s expected. At my Aunt’s funeral it was obvious that the minister didn’t know much about her. Not like we did. We remember her every day in our own way.
As to my father, I think there’s a lot of resentment there but not as much as there used to be. It is finally and truly in the past now.

I just want to say that I read this board nearly every day and I think it great that people feel secure enough here to post matters like this. I didn’t post to Jill’s thread because I’m never sure what to say in those situations. But I’m here wishing people good things.

Just silently.