Comforting Those Who Grieve, Part V: Survival is Victory

[Vincent Van Gogh, Landscape]

I don’t know if there is anything worse in life than grief.  Because it is so painful, we assume we just want it to end.

But not really.  Grief is our response to loss, and loss is our response to what we love that is no longer present.  Is there anything we want more in life than to love deeply?  Even eternally?  The deeper the love, the deeper the loss, the deeper and more long-lasting the grief.

This is the paradox of grief.  It is so painful—we want it to be over—but what we fear even more is what would happen to us if we no longer cared about or were bothered by what we have lost.

Now, I have already talked about the ways in which we get stuck.  We idealize, or even idolize, the one who has died.  We have experiences where we make ourselves vulnerable and share the deep sorrow we are experiencing, and our sharing is rejected by another, which we experience as a violation of what is sacred to us, which may lead us to close ourselves off even more from those around us, including those we love most.  And then there is this:  we know that the only way to quit grieving is to quit caring about (loving) the one who is gone.

When I worked with Widow and Widower Groups, I could quickly sense this despair.  Because those closest to them kept indicating in one way or another that the bereaved was not doing as well as they should, they began to believe that about themselves.  They were not only grieving deeply, they were also down on themselves, assuming they should be doing better “by now.”

This is when I would step in with a firm word of grace.  I would quietly say, “You know, words have been said to you that have led you to believe that you are not doing as well as you should.  And so your deep grief and sense of loss have been compounded by a feeling of rejection, even by some of your family and best friends.  I am here to tell you something important, something you likely do not realize.  And that is this:  Survival is victory.  Grief can lead people to debilitating anger, to lifeless cynicism, to no-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-feeling-sorry-for-yourself, to broken relationships with those you love most, to alcoholism, to drug addiction, to poverty, to suicide.  So don’t set your goals too high for yourself.  Make your goal simply to survive a day at a time, without falling into self-destructive behavior.”

Our tendency is always to make the spiritual journey too grandiose.  We think that if we are deeply spiritual people we will be able to handle “well” anything that comes to us in life.

Grief is often a firm “no” to such grandiosity.  It is the in-your-face reminder that if we are willing to risk love, we make ourselves vulnerable to loss beyond what words can describe.

In those moments of the “dark night of the soul,” as St. John of the Cross put it, we ask not to be conquerors, not to be outstanding examples of people who suffer loss well, but we ask simply for one thing:  just to survive.

That is the first task.  It is the only important task.  It is a task too great for so many suffering souls, whom we do not judge—we simply join our tears with theirs as the pain of life engulfs them.

In grief, if we set our goals too high, we risk losing ourselves, and life itself.  The goal is just to survive, and, if we can do that, to trust that one day new life will be ours.

No one can say how long that new life will take to blossom.  We will know it when it happens.  But it can’ t happen if we are not there to experience it.