August Goforth is a licensed psychotherapist and author of several books that deal with grief and the afterlife. They have been among my short list of "go-to" books when I have been feeling sad and depressed during my grieving. You can learn about these books in more detail at https://therisenbooks.com/. August also has a website/blog where he posts regularly, which I have also found to be a very helpful resource: http://augustgoforth.blogspot.com/.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) was only in our world for 37 years, and yet the prolific Dutch artist created over 2000 works of art. Interestingly enough, most of his 800+ oil paintings were created during the last two years of his life. One of them, "Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate)", was painted in May of 1890:
Journalist and teacher Jozef P. Astley has a great article on the background and inspiration for this Van Gogh painting, and cites art historian Kathleen P. Erickson's analysis of this work:
“Bent over with his fists clenched against a face hidden in utter frustration, the subject appears engulfed in grief. Certainly, the work would convey an image of total despair had it not been for the English title van Gogh gave it, At Eternity’s Gate. It demonstrates that even in his deepest moments of sorrow and pain, van Gogh clung to a faith in God and eternity, which he tried to express in his work.”
Van Gogh would commit suicide a little over two months later.
Lately, I've been doing something that I hadn't done in a long time: go out into nature and just be. No agenda, no rush -- just find somewhere comfortable to sit and just watch everything going on around me. And preferably somewhere where there wasn't a ton of people around to distract me. Not that I don't enjoy being around people, mind you! It's just that I wanted my primary focus to be on nature and not on what the other people around me were or weren't doing.
.jpg)
Since my mom and the pets have transitioned, I've found it helpful for my grief and anxiety to sit on a bench along the riverfront and just watch the birds -- I think bird-watching is becoming my new hobby! Yet I also find it therapeutic to watch the squirrels, rabbits, and deer scurry by, and hear the rustling of leaves in the trees. Being out and about in the natural world has made me realize that life and love continue on in this world, and that none of us are ever truly alone.
Claire B. Willis and Marnie Crawford Samuelson wrote this wonderful article on how being in nature can help us deal with our grief.
It's so easy for us to forget, myself especially, that we are not the only ones who are dealing with pain in our everyday lives. All too often we fall into the trap in thinking that other people "have their lives together", when the reality might be that they just do a better job of masking their problems and hardships. The older I get, the more I realize that we are all tested by life, and that none of us are likely to leave our earthly life unscathed by what has happened to us.
That's why I love R.E.M.'s 1992 hit song "Everybody Hurts". It really makes you think about the multitude of issues that we are all facing in our individual lives, and yet we can be so unaware of what other people are dealing with -- that's why I believe we all need to work on being extra kind and understanding to one another -- because we are all dealing with various kinds of hurt in our lives. I always find this song comforting when I'm having a rough day.
A few days ago I was ruminating on the loss of my mother and our pets. It occurred to me that there was something almost inconsistent in the way I was processing my losses. When my mom and Carter and Milton were sick and not doing well, it usually did not stop me from getting a decent night's sleep. Now that they have all transitioned away from earthly life, getting rest is sometimes more difficult. Why is that? The easy answer is that I'm still grieving their loss of companionship, even though they have all more than likely been freed from all pain and suffering. Shouldn't I be celebrating, then? And shouldn't I have been MORE concerned and worried about their well-being when they were still around and in the pain and discomfort they were in? I almost feel like I'm a hypocrite, maybe even a bit inhuman. I'm beginning to realize that grief exposes a lot about who we are as individuals, and sometimes those traits are things that I never would have suspected before.
One of my late mother's favorite poems has also become a favorite of mine. Henry van Dyke Jr. (1852-1933) was an American author, poet, and minister in the Presbyterian Church. For many years, he served on the faculty of Princeton University as a professor of English literature. He also officiated at the funeral of Mark Twain in 1910. He wrote many poems, and there is some question as to whether he is the true author of "I Am Standing Upon the Seashore," although some literary scholars believe him to be it. Whoever DID write it has, in my humble opinion, composed a beautiful and hopeful ode to what awaits our deceased loves ones, and ultimately us as well.
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come
to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says;
"There, she is gone!"
"Gone where?"
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull
and spar as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear her
load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone
at my side says, "There, she is gone!"
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout;
"Here she comes!"
And that is dying.
Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) was an Indian Hindu monk, yogi, and guru. He immigrated to the United States in 1920. He is widely credited with increasing the popularity of the yoga and meditation movements here in the U.S. Yogananda combined many aspects of Western and Eastern belief into his theology; his Hindu background also incorporated much thought and discussion about Jesus and Christianity. Yogananda also spent a fair amount in his speeches talking about death and dying.
Some of the most reassuring words I came across after the death of my mother came from a Yogananda article over at the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India website: "Life After Death: What Happens After Death". The whole article is worth reading in its entirety, but here are a few excerpts that provided me with some solace during those really difficult days of grieving:
"Every one of us is going to die someday, so there is no use in being afraid of death. You don’t feel miserable at the prospect of losing consciousness of your body in sleep; you accept sleep as a state of freedom to look forward to. So is death; it is a state of rest, a pension from this life. There is nothing to fear. When death comes, laugh at it. Death is only an experience through which you are meant to learn a great lesson: you cannot die.
The body is only a garment. How many times you have changed your clothing in this life, yet because of this you would not say that you have changed. Similarly, when you give up this bodily dress at death you do not change. You are just the same, an immortal soul, a child of God.
Death is not the end: it is temporary emancipation, given to you when karma, the law of justice, determines that your present body and environment have served their purpose, or when you are too weary or exhausted by suffering to bear the burden of physical existence any longer. To those who are suffering, death is resurrection from the painful tortures of flesh into awakened peace and calmness. To the elderly, it is a pension earned by years of struggling through life. For all, it is a welcome rest."
The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates (circa 470 - 399 BCE) is often thought of as the founder of Western philosophy. He was also considered a highly controversial figure. Accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates was sentenced to death after a one day trial, for which he was made to drink from the poisonous hemlock plant.
Gregory Elder, a professor emeritus of history and a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, offers some fascinating insights into Socrates's views on death and dying:
"The body, [Socrates] asserted, was a messy pit of passions and rude cravings. The soul, rather than the flesh alone, was capable of seeing truth, and therefore death was the moment when the soul would be set free to find true virtue and happiness.
....
Socrates’ friends asked how he could be so sure the soul was immortal. What if it just died with the flesh? How does one know that the soul really exists at all?
What if men and women are in reality just talking meat machines?
....
First of all, he argued, the soul must be immortal because life always comes from the dead as we see in nature. In the decaying of organic matter, new life in the fields always emerges. As nature always seems to generate new life out of decay, so too the soul must emerge alive when the crumbling flesh perishes.
Death, he said, will be like waking up from a sleep."
Father Gregory's article, which is definitely worth reading in its entirety, can be found here.
One of my priorities at Living Alongside Grief is to identify various books that have helped me through the grieving process. I cannot promise or guarantee that any particular book will help you. We all grieve differently and we all find solace in different places and from different sources. But hopefully you will find something useful from the myriad of sources that have been helpful for me.
One particular book that has been helpful for me is the classic "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis. Written in 1961, Lewis originally wrote the book under the pseudonym of N.W. Clerk. It might be puzzling why Lewis decided to do this, until you start reading it. Lewis had just lost his wife, Joy Davidman, the previous year. Lewis refers to his wife pseudonymously as "H." throughout the book.
What I love about this book is the fact that Lewis does not come off as the confident, steadfast, never-doubting Christian theologian that some might imagine him to be. If anything, he invites us into his world of emptiness and misery and apathy, where even simple tasks are hard to accomplish:
"And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief....I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth?"
Even more insightful is his attitude towards God, which has shifted quite dramatically upon the death of his wife:
"Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy....you will be....welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become."
Lewis doesn't lose his faith in spite of his terrible loss, and the book is an intimate look into the mind of a great man who eventually comes to realize that we may never get the answers to the questions we seek, and he's okay with that:
"When I lay these questions before God, I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though he shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand!'"
At only 89 pages (some editions have an extended afterword by Chad Walsh, a professor at Beloit College who was personally acquainted with Lewis), "A Grief Observed" is a quick read, but one filled with numerous insights and wisdom about the struggles one endures while learning to live with loss.
Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is best known for his iconic work "The Scream", but for those of us who are struggling with grief, there's another one of his works that deserves mention: "Death in the Sickroom", painted sometime around 1896. Munch's inspiration for the painting was traced back to his sister Sophie, who died from tuberculosis in 1877 at the age of 15.
Munch was known to have struggled with depression and anxiety throughout his life. His depiction shows us that grief can be both a collective and, simultaneously, a profoundly individual, and even isolating experience.
American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote almost 1800 poems over the course of her earthly life. One that I find particularly appropriate in relation to dying and grief is one she wrote in 1860, supposedly for her younger cousins, Louise and Frances, in an effort to comfort them upon the death of their mother. Her cousins were only 18 and 12 years old at the time.
"Mama Never Forgets Her Birds" by Emily Dickinson
Mama never forgets her birds,
Though in another tree —
She looks down just as often
And just as tenderly
As when her little mortal nest
With cunning care she wove —
If either of her sparrows fall,
She notices, above.
I spend a fair amount of time on Reddit. While there's plenty there that can be depressing or discouraging, there's also a lot that can be helpful, educational, and/or inspiring, even for those of us who are trying to navigate our way through grief and loss. The original poster on this one particular thread, which unfortunately was recently deleted, was lamenting about how losing a close relative was so difficult, because each day that passed meant that the time when she last saw her now-deceased loved one was getting farther and farther away. User ditka529 commiserated with her:
"This resonates with me. One part of me is proud of myself for making it through nine months, and the other part is sad that the gap between the last time I saw my dad just gets bigger. I’m so sorry that you’re hurting."
And then user Kaykay987643 came up with this beautiful response:
"I don't know if this will help (and i guess it kind of depends on your belief system), but a lady in my grief group looks at it a different way. That every day that passes is one day closer to being with them again. I find this quite comforting."
Over on the website What's Your Grief, Litsa Williams wrote an excellent article: 64 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Grief. Some of these have been especially relevant to me in recent months, including:
5. A hospital death is not always a bad death.
6. A home death/hospice death is not always a good death.
17. There is no timeline for grieving. You can’t rush it. You will grieve, in some form, forever.
18. “There will always be regrets. No matter how much time you had, you’ll always want more”.
25. Grief can make you question your life, your purpose, and your goals. And that isn’t always a bad thing.
49. “Just because you feel pretty good one day it doesn’t mean you are cured of your grief”.
58. “You don’t get over it, you just get used to it”.
63. You will never go back to being your “old self”. Grief changes you and you are never the same.
The whole list is definitely worth a read. Maybe there are others that apply to your own situation, dear reader, as you struggle with grief and loss.
