Thinking about Grief

I'm posting my newsletter contribution this week, mostly because I wanted to open it up to comment. I was mostly thinking aloud on paper for this contribution and would appreciate your thoughts and comments about grief and the process of grieving and anything else that you'd like to add:

The air from near and far in recent days has been filled with words of tragedy and deep sadness. The images whether received as a live feed from a news service or still photographs published in the black and white of a newspaper cause us to pause and wonder what in the world is going on and how in the world can things like this happen – again and again – as they do.

Every form of media seems to be locked in on the tragic shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech as well as any and all potential threads of related stories. All of it is there for our watching and absorption. Krista Tippett, host of National Public Radio program "Speaking of Faith", comments on our watching these news reports unfold, “As perpetually horrified as we are of terror and violence, we are riveted by them and we let them define our take on reality. The communications miracles of the 21st century make wondrous connections possible, and yet they also bring us images of horror with an immediacy and vividness that are debilitating. Violent images seem altogether more solid and substantial, more decisive and telling, somehow, than kindness, goodness, and lived peace. It is easy to bow down before these images and give in to the despair they preach (“Wrenching Light Out of the Darkness,” Speaking of Faith Newsletter, April 19, 2007. speakingoffaith.publicradio.org).

Maybe Tippett is correct in suggesting that the images are just more solid and substantial and that is why we are so hooked by them. Or perhaps, she gets only half of it correct. Her response doesn’t account for what’s behind our desire for such solid and substantial images. Please note that I am not suggesting anything about the motivations of the news reporters and media outlets but rather am wondering about what hooks others and us into watching endless hours of stories in and around this tragedy as well as others like it.

As I think about why we’re hooked, I wonder if the encounter with such events doesn’t stir some of our own grief from other parts of our lives. I know that has been part of my own response to the shootings at Virginia Tech. I served as an interim minister with a congregation in Metropolis, Illinois, not too long after the shootings at the high school in Paducah, Kentucky. Metropolis is just across the Ohio River from Paducah. Not even that great flow of water could separate these communities and the aftermath of that shooting.

In response to personal loss or communal tragedy, we may often hear or even say, “Everything will be okay.” That’s not the case nor is it the natural flow of grief and maybe not even a helpful way to grieve. Grief is our response to loss of any kind and includes an emotional dimension as well as physical, cognitive, social, behavioral, and theological dimensions. Moving through the grief process is not a return to normalcy or to a place where everything is okay. Rather it is the process of acknowledging and coming to terms with the loss and moving towards a new way of being or living in the face of loss. This process is sometimes enumerated in terms of stages including a stage of initial shock and even denial or the loss. This point is when the pain of loss first touches us and may include a response or feeling of un-realness. This first stage is followed by the second that maybe characterized by anger, frustration, a sense of helplessness, and other emotions. It as well maybe characterized not only by feelings but action or behavior rooted in those emotions. The anger and frustration can be difficult to acknowledge and it may make others around us feel uncomfortable to the point of them suggesting that we shouldn’t be angry. It is not wrong to be angry. Instead, what we have to understand and seek to make sense of is why we are angry and frustrated and examine how that anger and frustration are finding expression. Sometimes our anger and frustration about one issue come out in relation to another unrelated issue. Being aware of our feelings and their connections can help us process the anger in constructive ways while discouraging our expression of it aimed at unrelated and undeserving issues. From this stage, we often move into a period when we feel the full weight of the loss, which may stir feelings of great pain and despair. Here may wish the pain of loss would just go away. But it will not and ultimately it cannot if we are to move towards finding a new way of living in the face of our loss, which is the last of the stages of grief. In this last stage we re-organize life by assimilating the loss into our lives and redefining our lives and the meaning of life without the person or other thing lost.

Grief is the natural response to loss in our lives. These losses may come as the death of another or the loss of a relationship or the loss of a career or job. In other words, grief is the natural response to change. For whenever there is change, something is lost and we must find a way to reorganize life. Therefore, we grieve. We may or may not be aware of stages of grief that psychiatry and pastoral theology enumerate to describe the process but they can be helpful for understanding our own losses and our own grief. Understanding and processing our grief in turn helps us step into life – to step into the resurrection of Jesus Christ.