About Grief

Grief is a natural response to loss. That loss can come from the death of a person, a pet, a relationship, and even such things as a dream. Grief is the anguish experienced in response to that loss, and it can include physiological distress and separation anxiety.

Grief happens with the awareness that what was is no more, and its intensity can consume us. The sudden absence slams against one’s heart and creates an ache that’s unbearable. The pain is felt deep within the soul. Grief makes life hurt.

Jesus himself wept at the passing of Lazarus as noted in John 11:35.

It’s a normal, healthy expression of emotional suffering. Without great love, there would not be great suffering. It’s a blessing to be able to feel so deeply.

But what’s the best way to manage it long-term?

My Story

The last essay I posted on my blog before my son’s sudden death was, “What Do You Do With Your Grief?”

That synchronicity led me to write this essay about what I did with all the grief. There was a lot of it, and it was heavy. It still is, but the load is getting lighter, even though it’s only been seven months. Really, though, the load isn’t getting lighter so much as I’m learning the best way to carry it.

In “What Do You do with your Grief” I talked about the value of tears, the sacredness of grief and lightening the load through sharing. I have done and still do all of those things. There is one thing, though, that one must do before all else, and that is to accept what has happened.

Six months to the day after my son died, I posted the essay, “It’s Been a While,” on my blog. It tells the story of his sudden and unimaginable death. For me, it wasn’t his death that was the hardest to accept as it was the way in which he died. I’ve had to accept a lot through the years because of his homelessness, addictions and refusals for help. Twenty-five years, to be exact, so I’ve had a lot of experience with acceptance. But this was almost too much to comprehend.

In sum, what happened that mid-summer, Texas day was that he was lying on a hot curb, seizing, with a body temperature of 108. The temperature was forecasted to be 109 degrees that day, and it was already over 100 at the time. He stopped breathing once, and upon arriving at the hospital went into cardiac arrest. He died about 30 minutes later at the age of 37, then an autopsy was done. For various reasons, I didn’t get notified until a week later when the medical examiner’s office left me a voicemail looking for family, friends or anyone that knew him.

The first thing I said to my husband after the phone call with the medical examiner’s investigator was, “It’s going to take me a long time to process this.”

That was a lot to accept.

Several weeks later when I obtained the autopsy/toxicology report, hospital report and the audio of the 911 call, I discovered that his dying experience was worse than I was originally told.

The additional details were yet another layer of grief that also took time to process.

***

The totality of my son’s life and death is a multi-layered journey of grief for me. Layers and layers of heavy grief. The worst, I thought, was when I attended seminary part time to earn a master’s degree in Theology when he was in high school. But I was wrong—it got worse year after year, then he died tragically.

With each layer of grief, though, I had a decision to make. What was I going to do with all that grief?

Concept of Acceptance

The concept of acceptance implies there’s a problem or lack of agreement pertaining to some issue or perspective. But when it comes to acceptance, there are really only two kinds of problems, and only two: those you can do something about and those you can’t.

You can’t do anything about the past and the future hasn’t happened yet, so you can’t do anything about those, for sure. That leaves you in the present, and it’s there that something can be done.

Apply this concept to grief from death. The problem is that someone or something we love has died, and it’s the kind of problem we can’t do anything about. Nothing we can do will bring them back or reverse the situation. It happened and it’s now in the past. And as far as the future goes, we will never be able to bring them back.

So here we are in the present with our loss and grief. As painful as it is to be here, this is where we can precipitate healing through what we do now.

The meaning of acceptance is best summed up as a person’s compliant reception of the reality of a situation or perspective. To accept is to recognize the condition. It is to “see” circumstances, situations or perspectives as they are.

To clarify, though, to accept doesn’t mean to agree or to compromise your beliefs. It just means that you see the situation for what it is, whether or not you like it or agree with it. Acceptance also means to recognize that others believe differently than you.

In applying acceptance to grief, my experience has been that acceptance is my strongest, most stabilizing tool. I recognize and acknowledge my son’s downward spiral and ultimate unimaginable death even though I raised him well as a child and later couldn’t save him from himself. I accept it—all the terrible layers of it. I don’t like it, it’s not ok, it will always be painful—but I accept what has happened.

Value of Acceptance

What, then, is the value of acceptance?

Acceptance provides the freedom to “be” without the heaviness by of negativity. Lack of acceptance can breed an endless spiral of such things as anger, what-ifs or unending depression. To accept doesn’t mean we don’t grieve, but that we move forward through our grief. To accept death means that even in our grief over something that we can’t change, we can focus on what we can change.

Accepting death and moving forward through our grief isn’t easy at first, but doing so can be beneficial to you, as well as others. Here are some examples:

1. Your loss creates a fresh perspective on how valuable life really is, or perhaps how fragile.
2. Acceptance frees us to have positive feelings and experiences as we move forward through the grief.
3. Perhaps you realize significant takeaways from the death that compel you to change actions in your own life. For example, for your good and the good of others, you stop drinking and driving or taking drugs because you now realize the fatality of their consequences. This positive choice in the present as a result of someone’s negative choice in the past will result in a positive future for you and others.

A Balanced Life

Grief throws us off balance mentally, physically and sometimes spiritually. Mourning hurts in every way and it seems as if we will never feel good again.

But we can regain our equilibrium. We can rebalance by living in the present because that is where you can accept the past, instigate change and hope for the future.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is attributed for writing the Serenity Prayer in the 1930s. Its current format is simple, yet powerful, and sums up what we need. It is the prayer for moving through our grief with serenity, acceptance, courage and change. I pray it every morning.