Our friendly neighbors (the ones on our left) just returned from New York where they attended the funeral of their younger son – he had an inoperable brain tumor for quite a while, somewhat like Senator John McCain’s. I want to commiserate with them, to tell them that we shouldn’t have to bury our children, but I can’t, so just handshakes (he doesn’t mind but she is more formal and seems to resist them or any contact right now).

I don’t think that grief can really be shared but has to be dealt with personally – knowing that friends are there for you is important but that’s the extent of it. I suspect Jenise isn’t so sure that’s right – she could be right about that. But I’m not made like that; I’m more of a passive helper than active. Fortunately there is Jenise and others like her in the world to do what some of us cannot handle.

So I grieve for Stan and Maureen, for their pain in having to bury their son. I do understand their pain, at least in the externals, but I cannot comprehend the full range of emotion they are undergoing. No “theory of mind” should attempt to bridge that gulf.

 

(Written in November 2018.)

Grief is intensely personal. You cannot define grief, compare grief, feel another’s grief. Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” is bullshit because he cannot do that, cannot feel the pain of loss by another. Grief counseling cannot remove the grief but can help accept it – or confuse it. Finding words to express any emotion is difficult but for grief, impossible.

Death of a loved one creates grief that cannot be removed. I will not again see my Dad, not in heaven or any other place. I will not again see my little sister running down the road to the barn again – she is older now and will not regress, but that very memory, enhanced by my photograph, will remain as my baby sister. She will not see me beyond death but she will have memories that will be me for her and they will be part of the grief – positive elements, I hope. And I will remember my Dad as he was at his best, at his worst, and as just my Dad, but I do grieve.

Grieving over a lost home, as in the fires that burn down forests and houses and towns, is very real and can be shared by empathy, by analogy, but not with the same feelings. The losses are not the same, the reactions to similar losses are not the same, and no one can remove the resulting feelings of loss.

Grief can be softened by time, by interaction with family and friends and counsellors, by artistic expression, but it remains as a kernel of emotion that affects the soul, our core essence.

Anecdotes can identify the sources of grief for me, but they cannot explain it. Stories and novels can evoke feelings that remind me of my own, but they do not explain them.

Group sessions might help me understand the scope of grief but will not remove my sense of loss or my unique reactions and understanding of those feelings.

Grief is frequently mimicked by other emotions, by remembering fondly a friend or relative, or even someone never known but seen or heard. Did I grieve when my friends at work died from cancer at an all-too-young age? Their spouses and families certainly did, but what I felt was sadness and empathy with those family members. On the other hand, did I grieve when a close friend, one of three or four ‘best friends’, passed recently? Yes, deeply; I think of him almost daily as I read and study and contemplate the issues on which we disagreed but nonetheless debated civilly and which each of us
acknowledged as influential.

Louis l’Amour’s book “Ride the Dark Trail” has a number of perceptive lines. Here’s an excerpt and my overly wordy comment:

“… here and there just plain looking and seeing what you look at has taught me something. Also, whilst never much of a hand to go to the mat with a book, I’m a good listener.”

To me, this is a brilliant comment on sensation (looking, hearing) and perception (seeing what you look at, good listener) – about paying attention, somewhere between general alertness and zen-type focus. It is something learned or absorbed when spending time alone – sometimes forgotten but later remembered. True even for short periods, something nearly impossible (for me) in the city or near busy roads. Growing up where I did, paying attention, whether to what I was “supposed to” or to what I actually found more interesting, was just the point of being out there. For many of Louis l’Amour’s characters, certainly most if not all of the Sacketts from the mountains of Tennessee, it came naturally.

His novels are far deeper than a lot of people seem to recognize – good stories, pretty good moralizing for the times covered and for now, sure – but a whole lot about a way of living that is slip-sliding away but was and to some extent is still intensely important, vital to meaningful thought. Without connection to things as they are, thinking easily goes astray. It could easily be said (by me) that much of what we call ‘philosophy’ comes under that latter description.