Grief & mourning

In traditional cultures, the entire community joined in honoring the dead, and almost every culture created rituals to honor and acknowledge the power of death. These rituals allowed the bereaved to fully experience the depths of loss, and begin to heal.

Many factors have contributed to contemporary culture's discomfort with death. The process of dying occurs most ofen now in hopsitals, not in homes; thus, death has become a medical issue first and foremost, while the emotional and spiritual needs of both the dying person and the loved ones left behind are almost an afterthought. And in stripping away the "superstitions" of traditional grieving practices, we have lost many powerful tools for coping with our grief.

Elizaebth Kübler Ross, M.D., the noted comptemprary scholar of death and dying, identified five stages of grief that each person must move through in the return to wholeness. These Stages of Mourning, first published in 1969 in the seminal book On Death and Dying are mirrored in the art, stories, and rituals of cultures from around the world. They are:

• Denial
• Rage and anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

Ultimately, these stage of mourning are not simply ways to cope with death but, more importantly, ways to fully embrace living, because they help us face mortaility and embrace life in a deeper way.

There is no way to rush grief, as the ancients understood. In the Jewish tradition, a key part of the mourning ritual was the recitation of the Kaddish for at least seven days and somtimes for an entire year. For the first seven days after a death, mourners practice Sitting Shiva - they don't work, wash, or shave, but simply sit with their grief. It was only on the anniversary of the death that the mourner began to re-enter everyday life. In certain West African traditions, a second funeral was held a year after a death, when people had time to mourn and celebrate life again.

In cultures from Ireland to Greece, keening was a common practice. Women wailed over the body of the deceased, giving voice to grief that might otherwise be internalized and harm the mourner. These universal rituals of remembrance, with their emphasis on physically acting out the mourning process and publicly acknowledging the loss, allow mourners to experience grief and then move beyond it.

We have few cultural rituals of this nature in the contemporary world. However, those who have suffered a loss have created their own rituals, and have used tools such as drawing, journaling, writing, and singing to help themself come to terms with grief and eventually to re-enter daily life in a deep and engaged way, with a new outlook informed by the grieving process. We are not alone in our losses; may the laments recorded here be of comfort to you.

"In three words I can sum up everythingI've learned about life: it goes on."

--Robert Frost