There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot.
a time to kill and a time to heal.
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was right. And she was wrong too.
Crying, doesn’t necessarily mean healing would occur. Vice versa. And tears, there can never be enough. They come from a well – no, a fresh spring within, so how can one cry till every last drop is wept? How can peace come, if peace is dependent on time, is dependent on going through some if not all of her named stages of grief, if peace is dependent on crying your heart out for someone, if peace is a dependent at all?
What is the point of writing a book about the 5 stages of grief, if all it does is to reassure its readers that these stages are normal, and that most people do experience them in varying degrees of severity, and that there is no one fixed time and that grief’s stages shouldn’t be rushed through? Perhaps it helps to know you’re normal, but that’s just it.
Her advice was basically to follow your gut instincts and do what you feel like doing to cope with your “loss”. That’s what I gathered.
So that means to some, isolation works well, and to others, extra social contact; some need a break whilst others need to busy themselves with every detail they can control; some need to cry for days and months, and others don’t even shed a tear. And the opposites go on in every imaginable manifestation of the word “emotion”.
And my interpretation of her book On Grief and Grieving – I may have come to the wrong conclusion – is one shouldn’t suppress one’s emotions, one should cry it all out, one should do whatever one thinks one needs to cope with the grief – and that includes indulging in all the aforementioned behaviours. Yes, and only stop until one feels well enough again to face the world, or ill enough of it to become clinically depressed/psychotic. She doesn’t judge, she simply makes observations, and in her supposed un-judging portrayal, one takes it to mean that one may continue as one pleases.
DABDA, and Acceptance of the death is not guaranteed. In (roughly) her own words, there are some people who “need denial” to the very end. Extrapolating that, we can reasonably expect others to “need” certain other named stages of grief to the very end as well.
I was confused. Many told me to “be strong”, like my aunt. “Being strong”, to them, probably meant not crying. It meant not to “break down”, and yes essentially, what Elisabeth wrote about on this aspect is quite true. People are just plain awkward around those who cry openly, they don’t know what to do and so they want you to stop. In a sense.
I think they do care, and that’s why if you cry by yourself in a corner, they will come over to interfere and tell you to stop (albeit nicely hidden under their self-deluded supposed words of comfort). They think that once you’ve stopped, everything’s fine, and that means you’re no longer as upset.
But we all do know that’s wrong. That’s absolutely false. Even though we may ourselves be guilty of doing so unwittingly. Anyway, back to the point about being confused. As I mentioned above, Elisabeth wrote that crying is part of the healing process in a way, and her main point was that one should be allowed to go experience one’s grief in full in order to be able to accept the death. She essentially meant, by stopping our tears ‘prematurely’, by spreading such ‘incorrect’ “be strong” messages, they may do more harm than good.
Maybe, maybe not. And when I felt the loss most acutely, people were by my side. People whom I appreciated but weren’t the ones I sought; people who could only say “be strong”, but couldn’t be a shoulder for me to cry on. And I thought to myself, if you don’t let us, would we suffer repercussions of repressed grief later on in life? That is what books do to my silly mind, which always believes them as if they were sacred decrees. And silly me was very worried, because the tears wouldn’t come.
But the last night came, and as I thought how I’d never see him again, I’d never ever be able to sit by his bedside and talk to him, I’d never be able to give him tea and my baking, never ever see his cheery smile and hear his concerned words.. as I thought about how he would soon literally become nothing.. I just didn’t want him to become nothing. I really didn’t want him to become nothing. And I felt incredibly alone in there, so incredibly alone.
It’s not something you talk about casually. It’s not something you’d really call people up just to talk to them about this. Not when what you want is a private place first, before you get that someone who is ready to give you her full attention 2 nights before Christmas.
But even as people swarmed me, and the stirring pool within me began to overflow; even as they tried their words on me and I tried to sweat those drops inwards, I heard a voice tell me
My God is big enough for you. He is big enough for your tears, shed inwardly or outwardly. He alone will give you peace, He alone can give you complete love and assurance of a future. Who said that you needed to cry to receive healing? Surely God is powerful enough to heal without you doing anything. And you will certainly see him again, for the body is but like shackles of earthly chain – shed away, the soul can fly free, fly unburdened, fly close to God in Heaven. And this body is temporal, it may have housed a man of God, but this man has returned home, he is happy, he is at peace, and he still loves you and cares for you. A thousand years on earth is like a twinkling of the eye.
And then, peace.
On a side note, just completely random, I’ve been thinking rather often lately with a tinge of regret,
why must I lose friends simply because they never meant to be friends in the first place?
I guess it’s just the selfish side of me acting up again.. and perhaps Christmas too.
but, Que sera sera.
