What I Am Learning About Grief

This past Christmas, I experienced the loss of two family members.  My stepfather and my brother died on Christmas Eve.  Their deaths were sudden, violent, and tragic.  My stepfather was murdered by my brother who was later shot dead by police.  Immediate contributing factors were, we believe, my brother’s manic depressiveness and abuse of alcohol and methamphetamines, all of which doubtlessly exacerbated his reaction to criticism of his cooking skills: (it was an squabble over burnt “tater tots” which precipitated the “family dispute” which rapidly escalated, first to Mike’s physical assault of my mother, then of my stepfather, and finally to his resorting to the use of a gun as a final solution to the quarrel).   Events from Mike’s early childhood, the divorce of his parents, for example, and some of his experiences in day care, may have distantly or indirectly influenced his mindset and behavior.  Exactly what led him to react so violently and to murder his adopted father, whom he loved, and to resist police intervention by the extreme measure of firing at them, we may never fully comprehend.  In the wake of these two deaths, as word spread and as the family gathered, I heard mentioned several times about this thing called grief and the “grieving process.” 

Something more easily felt than explained, grief was in the air.  One could literally feel it. It was on the lips of family members.  It was the topic of pastoral counseling.  We all felt it, we still feel it, and probably will continue to feel it for quite some time.  Now that the funeral has passed, my thoughts have turned to examining just what it is, this grief.

The very first thing I’ve noticed about how people describe grief is that it is something that tends to be described as a “process.”  But while some see five distinct stages of the grief process, some see seven, and others see nine.  There is similarity in professionals’ descriptions of each stage but enough disparity—between published points of view and between those and my own thoughts on the subject—to suggest to me that grief is a complicated emotion and that no one really understands it, at least not completely.

Here are the broadly recognized stages of grief, first the five more common stages, then the expanded lists of seven and nine.

1. Denial and Isolation.

2. Anger.

3. Bargaining.

4. Depression.

5. Acceptance.

1. Shock and denial

2. Pain and guilt

3. Anger and bargaining

4. Depression, reflection, and loneliness

5. The upward turn

6. Reconstruction and working through

7. Acceptance and hope

1. Shock

2. Emotional release

3. Preoccupation with the deceased or the crisis

4. Symptoms of some physical and emotional distress

5. Hostile reactions

6. Guilt

7. Depression.

8. Withdrawal.

9.  Resolution and readjustment.

As you can see, the three lists are similar.  The same words are used.  The same general progression is noted.  The differences are probably attributable to differences in clinical observation and differing religious points of view, the latter of which is, I think, the source of the preponderance of my own attitudes toward grief.  I certainly haven’t the benefit of detached clinical observation, though I have experienced death in the family before, and have close friends and acquaintances who have dealt with the same, whom I’ve tried to comfort and console.  My thoughts and general reflections about grief spring more so from what I believe—religiously and through my own spiritual understanding and experiences—than from academic study or scientific observation.  This is probably no different than how most people view something like grief; and, since there is such a broad spectrum human experience and people’s understanding of spiritual things, this seems a logical, general explanation for the manifold differences in people’s reactions to death, especially to the death of a loved one; for even the professionals acknowledge that grief affects individuals differently.

Note that two of the lists name “shock” as the common first reaction.  The third uses the terms “denial” and “isolation.”  All of these are totally incongruent with my own experience.  I could not “deny” the fact that my brother and stepfather were dead, when another brother called to tell me the news.  Nor was I “shocked,” as that term is often described; I experienced disbelief, but not in the sense that I wanted to believe the truth was something else (for the truth seemed, even at first, undeniable), but simply because the events themselves were so unbelievable, so out of the ordinary.  They were the type of thing one reads about in the newspaper or hears about happening to someone else’s family.  One never imagines that tragedies like this can happen on one’s own household.               

My first reaction was not of shock or denial but of simple brokenheartedness, (something I think that is beyond the comprehension of clinical psychology).  To me, anyone who experiences the death of a loved one—be it sudden, like my experience, or gradual, and not feel absolutely brokenhearted or devastated, that is what is incomprehensible.  Being brokenhearted was my first and continues to be my overwhelming emotional response to the whole ordeal.  And so that you may better understand where I am going with this, let me tell you that my understanding of brokenheartedness is that this is a spiritual malady that can only be healed by the One who knows all hearts, that it is not something that can be set right by going through a succession of steps or a process of grieving. 

I do not deny that some acceptable level of comfort has been obtained by many who are guided through this “grieving process,” else this whole idea of grief counseling would have no merit at all.  That is not what I am saying.  What I am saying is that such help is, not altogether unintentionally, more psychological than spiritual and that it is therefore superficial, not as apt to satisfy, and something that cannot endure (things like the assaults of doubt, anger, denial, feelings of isolation and of wanting to bargain with God; in short, the assault of all those things that are postulated in “the grieving process” as normal).  The whole discussion of the several stages of the grieving process, however many steps there may be, is, in my opinion, nothing but an educated supposition that these things apply, more or less, and generally so, to everybody.  We are to be comforted, it seems, by the idea that grief elicits these same sorts of emotions in every person’s bosom.  You feel angry or shocked about what has happened?  Well, then, be of good cheer, for everyone else who has ever lost a loved one has felt that same shock and anger.  But what real comfort is that?  It brings, at best, only a slight healing, whereas when God puts a heart right, it is completely right; not superficially, but totally sound all the way to its core; and not temporarily, but everlastingly so.

I was not angry, therefore—not at the fact that both John and Mike were dead; that fact was indisputable, so anger seemed an incongruent response.  I was angry at Mike for the recent trend of his behavior and especially for him killing John, but that anger was mixed with other emotions:   sadness, a sense of loss, and brokenheartedness over the fact that my brother, too, had died.  My anger, such that I had, was too narrowly focused on things that I had no power to prevent for that emotion to assume a discernable “stage of grief” for me.  Moreover, the anger that I felt was counterbalanced by the understanding I have always had that Mike had had problems all his life, problems which all of us as a family—but John in particular—had tried, though unsuccessfully, to help him overcome.  I think we all felt that Mike’s issues with bipolar disorder (manic depression), and the behaviors that seem naturally to accrue to such an affected person, were too great for us to overcome.  We all just learned (as Mike apparently did not) to live with them just as one learns to live with so many other things in life.  None of us ever dreamed that something like what happened Christmas Eve might be the ultimate result of these kinds of problems.  So anger—at least to me—seemed a totally inappropriate response. 

(Helplessness is what I really felt:  a sudden weakness; a total inadequacy, in the face of the family’s situation with Mike, to say or do something that might have prevented the unspeakable tragedy from happening in the first place.  While I saw anger as an inappropriate response to the event itself, it seemed an unavoidable response to any conscious examination of my own character, which I saw as weak and timid and having no power at all to influence my brother’s life in a positive way.  Yes, I was angry at myself and toward my own despicable helplessness.  I cannot deny that.)

Likewise, I experienced no “pain” or “guilt” (unless these are taken to mean what I’ve just described).  What I felt was sadness and sadness is a symptom of a broken heart.  I can understand how pain and guilt might be initial reactions to what happened.  I believe my mother, and perhaps my other brothers, experienced these emotions.  But they seemed inapplicable to me.  Sure, there is more I could have done—I could have been a better brother, I could have taken greater interest, I could have written more letters and made more phone calls or spent more money.  But even if all of these things were done, not just by me, but by each and every member of our family, and done to the maximum extent possible, Mike would still have been Mike.  The things going on inside his head would still have been there.  We all might have felt better about ourselves, but that would not have changed anything.  So pain and guilt (except as already described) were completely outside my frame of reference.  It was sadness that I felt because I know that neither alcohol, nor drugs, nor psychological disorders are the root cause for horrific tragedies such as this.  The root cause is always sin and sin is something that none of us are capable of effectively dealing with by ourselves.  Alcoholism and drug addiction and even physical and psychological afflictions are but symptoms and visible manifestations of a much more malignant disease—sin.

(Now, sin is a concept that is completely outside the frame of reference of a great many people [I think this is obvious].  But I am thankful to God, with all my heart, that He put Light on this subject for me and showed me the only remedy possible for it.)

Isolation, mentioned in the list of five above, was also the opposite of my first reactions to hearing the news of what happened in my family on Christmas Eve.  An early desire that welled up within me was a longing to be with my family.  In fact, my wife and I drove through a serious snowstorm to be with them on the very same day we learned of the situation.  Though I returned to Augusta the next day, my heart remained in Mount Airy and with my family.  I found no rest until I could be with them again.  Isolation therefore, in this case and in other cases where I have experienced the death of a loved one (or even a friend’s experience of the same) was 180 degrees out of phase with the attitude of my own heart.  I wanted to be with them because I loved them.  I think that is only natural.  Isolation then, a craving to be alone, is, to me, an irrational and unnatural response to an event like this, (except it be an honest desire to be, for a time, alone with God; but who that does not know God would ever want to be alone with Him?).

In the same vein, this idea of “bargaining,” of being desirous of wanting to make a deal (one assumes with God) is, to me, a strange way of handling grief—though totally understandable.  There is the story of David grieving over the death of his son, Absalom, and also over the death of his child by Bathsheba, (pleading with God that God would take him and spare these).  There is the story also of Hezekiah making a promise to God, upon his being told that he would soon die, if God would see fit to spare him.  So this concept of making a bargain is something to be expected, I assume, even in those who have a real, spiritual relationship to God.  But, as we have already noted, grief affects different people in different ways.  In my own case, there was no thought of bargaining with God, only a heartbroken (but not bitter) acceptance of what His Providence had dispensed (for He knows best).

Suffice it to say that the “grieving process” especially as denoted by the above lists is an idea that I find almost completely inadequate in terms of real and lasting comfort.  It is a balm that can ease one’s hurt only slightly.  It is a medicine that may make us feel better for a time but cannot ultimately cure the disease.  Any legitimate merit that it has stems, in my opinion, from the fact that so many people have no (the old theologians called it a filial) relationship with God.  That is, they have no relationship to God—as a son or daughter to him as their Father.   Inevitably, people mistakenly assume that the slight comfort obtained through something like grief counseling or other kinds of help is all there is.  Thank God that is not all there is!  For these are but a thimbleful next to the ocean of comfort available to the broken of heart through the infallible remedy that God the Father has provided man in and through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  (Which comfort, I feel constrained to say again, because it is so great and so satisfying, I am so thankful that, though more undeserving than any, I have nevertheless obtained).

That is not to say that I am at perfect peace with all that has happened, (but I attribute that to my own slowness of heart to completely trust God).  I’ve experienced trouble sleeping, especially at first.  I found also that I would cry, especially when I did not want to, and, whenever I wanted to, I could not.  I’m still puzzled by that.  I find it remarkable, too, that so many of my thoughts are about John, and about Mike, and about what happened.  Though I only know what I’ve been told, and what is deducible from certain pieces of evidence, I find my restless imagination constantly engaged in reviewing and reviewing again the tragic events of the night of December 24^th.  If I am not thinking about that, I find myself thinking about my mother, what she must have experienced, her health, her welfare.  I think of John and previous conversations and experiences with him.  It is the same with respect to Mike.  I am definitely not thinking about my job, or my friends, or my house, or my belongings, or the news of the day.  My entire life up to this point, it seems, keeps replaying itself, but in an abridged form so that the scenes are always about John and Mike and times that we shared together—and now the hardships that must be endured because they are no longer here.

If this is grief, it is something that I’ve never heard explained.  Though it is mentioned in the list of nine above, it seems divorced from the overall context of the list.  Perhaps this is but yet another subtle indication that grief affects everyone differently.

That their remains were cremated, and thus that at their funerals there were no bodies to view, I have also found to be an unsettling experience.  Now, I’ve known for years that, at their deaths, it was the desire of both my parents that their remains be cremated.  I know about cremation as an alternative to traditional burial.  And I thought that, after all this time, I would not find any objection to the practice.  I imagined that whatever disinclination I had about it had to stem from my own prejudices.  I’m not entirely sure that that is not still the case, but it seems to me that not seeing John and Mike lying in repose was a gap in my anticipation of what I thought would be the natural order of things.  I had not seen John face to face, before he died, in almost a year.  It was even longer than that since I last saw Mike.  I know that both men are dead now; but, having not seen them dead, it is more difficult than I expected to accept cremation as a favored course of action.

But let us end here.  It was not my intent, when I started this, to have written at this length.  I only wanted to explain how it has been with me as I’ve experienced these things; and, as I have already said, I was just a bit puzzled by what I understood to be other people’s concept of grief and this thing called the grieving process; so I was attempting to explore that and weigh it against my own understanding. 

Now you know my heart, or at least a part of it, concerning my grief over the passing of my stepfather, John, and my brother, Mike.  It is a sad story, and one that needn’t have happened, but happened it did.  But just as when a corn of wheat falls to the ground, and dies, much fruit is brought forth; so too, I believe, will be the case in our family, as time passes, in the ensuing days and months and years after the deaths of John and Mike.  For now, though, it is enough just to look forward to that.