Articles Worth Reading: Grief as Shattered Glass

Over at Pscyhe, Joshua Thomas, who is an associate philosophy professor at St John’s University in Queens, New York, published a thought-provoking article last month: "Grief is Not a Process with Five Stages. It is Shattered Glass."  Thomas describes in detail how his mother died at age 75 from pancreatic cancer, in spite of a promising early diagnosis.  A few months later, while preparing dinner, Thomas drops a drinking glass on the floor, shattering it.  He breaks down sobbing as he gets a broom to clean up the mess.  Money quote:

"Puzzled and decentred by this bizarre flare of emotion, I redirected my attention to the task of cleaning the mess so I could resume cooking. A few minutes of focused effort and the broken glass was satisfactorily cleaned – ‘but not completely’, I thought to myself. Can you ever clean up broken glass completely? Spiky slivers that dashed across the countertop may be lurking unobserved, waiting to stab someone innocently setting down the mail or picking up their keys... As the thought crossed my mind, I considered: had my grief taken the same shape as the glass shards?"

Thomas then goes on to use the metaphor of broken glass as how we experience grief: the broken glass scatters everywhere, spilling into multiple areas of our lives.  It can come back and hurt us in times and places when we don't expect it. Like our grief, we wonder if we can ever completely clean up the mess and move on from it. It's a very well-written piece. You can read the full article here.

Living, Dying, and Playing

Leo Flowers is a TEDx speaker, counselor, and stand-up comedian.  He's also the host of "Before You Kill Yourself", a suicide prevention podcast. 

 

In one of his recent episodes, "Play: Reduce pain, pressure and build belonging and purpose," Leo utilizes a quote by Benjamin Franklin:  "We don't stop playing because we grow old.  We grow old because we stop playing."  Leo uses Franklin's saying as a springboard to talk about how so many of us take things in life way too seriously.  He then references Joseph Cambell's book "Myths to Live By", and at one point quotes extensively from the book: 

"There's a curious extremely interesting term in Japanese that refers to a very special manner of polite, aristocratic speech known as 'play language'.....whereby instead of saying to a person, for example, 'I see that you have come to Tokyo', one would express the observation by saying, 'I see that you are playing at being in Tokyo.'  The idea being that the person addressed is in such control of his life and his powers that for him everything is a play, a game.  He is able to enter into life as one would enter into a game, freely and with ease.  And this idea is carried even so far that instead of saying to a person: 'I hear that your father has died', you would say rather: 'I hear that your father has played at dying.'"

Leo then talks about he loves this idea that "we are playing in everything that we do" and offers some of his own insights:

"For so many of us, we struggle with grief, belonging, pain, purpose, pressure, and when we use this type of play language, when we realize that our loved ones are 'playing at dying' or that we are 'playing at traveling' or 'playing at work', it allows us to be a bit more detached, because we are re-framing everything in a playful manner, instead of a high-stakes, all-or-nothing, black or white, world-is-coming-to-an-end kind of language.  This gives us a more resilient attitude..."

All in all, a very wonderful and insightful podcast.  You can listen to the full episode here. The episode is from January 30, 2024.

And if you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, here is a link to national suicide hotlines from around the world.  You do not have to suffer alone!

Personal Musings: Grief and the Passage of Time

It's hard to believe it's been almost 2 1/2 years since my mother passed away. A few days ago I had to convert it into days and discovered that it had been 892 days.  892 days!  That really puts things into perspective. There were countless times I thought I wouldn't be able to make it through another day, let alone nearly 900 days.  There were days when everything felt like a dream, and days when everything felt like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. Days when I was terribly restless, and days when I didn't want to get out of bed at all.  Days when I couldn't stop ruminating over what I had lost, and days when I was grateful for what I still had.  Days when God felt especially close, and many other days when God seemed nowhere to be found.  And yet, here I am.  Whether it's for the better or for the worse, I'm still standing.  

I feel like I've been through as much change in my life since the start of COVID than in the 43+ years before the pandemic started.  I'm sure many other people feel the same way, even if it might feel a little exaggerated. Time feels like it has accelerated. Many of us are no longer the same people we were before this all started.  It reminds me of a joke someone posted:  "Can we all admit that in 2019, when we were asked the question: 'Where do you see yourself in 5 years?' that we all got the wrong answer?"  How many of us thought we would be where we are today?  Many of us have endured horrible losses and trials over these last few years. So much of what gave our lives some sense of stability and predictability has been yanked away from us.  It's a good reminder to all of us to not take anything in our lives for granted.  At the same time, it's so important to remember that none of us can predict the future.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring?  With that, we all need to be focused on the day we have before us.

Personal Musings: Reunions and Death

Jeff Mara interviewed author and spiritual mystic Hans Wilhelm on his podcast, and Wilhelm had this to say:

"If you have a wonderful pet [like a] dog...and you love that dog more than anything else, you cannot take that dog to college, even if it would be a comfort dog.  So, no, there is a reason why you suddenly go to college away from the comfort of your family, and suddenly facing all the new life totally on your own.  To grow, we have to be away on our own here, because the path is a path within..."

I think I might have mentioned in a previous post -- when our loved ones leave this world, it's almost like they're "graduating" from this earthly life.  I think of how parents sometimes cry when their children graduate from school, because it's the end of a major life chapter for everyone involved.  And I think of how we cannot join our loved ones after they've died, at least not for a while, anyway.  And it can be really hard.

But I think how I've reunited with friends from school -- some of whom I hadn't been in contact with for many years after graduation.  And when we do meet again, it feels like we "picked up right where we left off,"  in spite of the passage of time.  I wonder if it will feel that way again when we leave this world to join our loved ones who have gone on before us...