6.1 Mourning
One evening before turning in, I went online to watch an ordinary newscast—a bit of war here, a bit of war there, three murders, a Congressional scandal—nothing unusual, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Suddenly a light flashed in my imagination, then went out and left a darkling imp, a diminutive sorcerer, standing at my feet staring up at me. He knocked his wand twice against my right hand and chanted…
“Raise it high, let it float, bring it down as sharp as sharp, all gone, all gone.”
Riddling words, but I understood what he meant. He had granted me a special power. If I raised my hand high above my head then slashed it down like the checkered flag at the finish of a race, I could make all humans disappear in the instant.
I thought of the Christian Rapture, God’s chosen ones leaving us nonbelievers behind as they stream up into heaven, gleeful that not only have they been saved but the rest of us have been damned, and maybe they like the damning part better than the saving part, but that’s not what this was.
This was Deliverance…
We’d all go together, no one abandoned.
And it would be accomplished with hushed decorum, no sounding trumpets, no angel choirs, no warning, no time for distress, just a sucking sound then a quiet pop, and off we’d go, all of us absorbed back into the stuff of the universe from which we came.
In the moment when the imp made me this offer, I was feeling such disgust at the night’s news that I thought…
“Yes, let’s be gone, this species, my species, so helplessly evil.”
I looked for my hand and there it was, already down at the bottom of its wave, sharp as sharp. I had done that terrible thing, I had disappeared us, and would have been horrified, except that if a final bloody apocalypse is ahead for us then I would want to spare us, every one of us, and yes, oh yes, especially the children. And if we were delivered, all of us together and all at once…
Then not one more day of evil would be added to the burden of our collective human soul.
But Deliverance is only a fantasy and, besides, it would be bailing out when what we need to do is stand and fight.
We humans are in terminal trouble. We’re not fighting for ourselves like we need to. We’ve tried figuring out what’s blocking us. We’ve tried talking ourselves into better behavior. We’ve made earnest resolutions. But nothing is working. We’re being impossible. We’re a dead–end species.
And how do we, each of us, relate to this fact? Personally, I get a little crazy. In the morning, I might watch the depressing news reports about the state of humankind and wander around my apartment saying,
“Poor babies, poor, poor babies.”
Crooning it like a lullaby, taking pity on us.
Then that night I watch the news again, and get so distressed I pace in circles and sputter…
“Stupid humans, stupid, stupid humans.”
But what I need to do is mourn for us. Except I’m really bad with loss and I don’t do mourning well. I’d rather not do it at all.
Which makes me think about those TV programs where the homicide detective tells the family of the victim, “I’m sorry for your loss.” One short sentence and that’s enough of that. Of course I understand how a murder drama works. The mystery has to get solved and the criminal has to be caught and there have to be a lot of plot twists before the climax so there’s no time for extended mourning.
And I understand that a detective can’t feel deeply for all the victims and loved ones he encounters because he couldn’t do his job if he took it all personally.
And I understand that those of us at home, witnessing three or four murders in an evening, can’t afford to feel for all those victims and loved ones, either. It would be too much. I get the appeal of that ritual sentence. It lets us skip across the surface of tragedy like a stone instead of sinking into it. But night after night, as we’re learning so much about murder, we’re learning next to nothing about mourning.
And what are we supposed to do about the bigger picture of us as a species? Say…
“Sorry, Homo sapiens, for your loss. The loss of you.”
And then move on?
We’re told that the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—are the answer. They’re supposed to guide us through wrenching feelings.
But when I read On Death and Dying, the Kübler-Ross book, I repurposed it. I decided maybe I could use those stages to control mourning so it wouldn’t really get to me. Maybe I could hopscotch quickly from one stage to the next until I got to acceptance, and once there, I’d graduate from grief.
In reality, though, I take losses hard. Eventually they catch up with me and then I crash down into some place deeper than where the stages can go.
There are therapists who push people to get over a loss quickly and move on. They insist that mourning should be time–limited. They want to give it an expiration date, and if you go beyond that date, they get to diagnose you.
I understand mourning can go wrong, sometimes really wrong. Freud said melancholia, in contrast to mourning, is when you let yourself die inside in response to the death of a loved one. And certainly it’s not a good thing when people freeze into grief and shut their lives down. Nothing to argue with there.
But…
Aren’t there people you want to keep in your heart forever?
Aren’t there losses you learn to live with but never really get over and don’t want to?
And doesn’t holding onto someone in this way honor how much that person meant to you, how deeply they were, and still are, woven into your life?
So even though they’ve passed on, you’re keeping your relationship with them alive, even deepening it. And maybe we could call this…
Generative mourning.
And who says that acceptance is the ultimate in grief anyway? Doesn’t it depend? And what exactly are we supposed to accept?
When my dad died, people commiserated, telling me, “You must be so sad to lose him. You must be going through such a hard time.”
But it wasn’t a hard time. Sad, yes, but not hard. My dad lived to eighty–nine and twice in the two years before he died he told me in a mood of contentment, “I’ve had a good life and a long life.”
Since he was at peace, I could accept his passing. I didn’t mourn his death. But…
I did mourn his life.
And still do. When he was eighty–seven, we had a conversation about belly laughs. He wanted more of those. I wish he could have had them. I wish he could have had more fun. And maybe a wild streak. And a bigger measure of passion. Certainly a stronger sense of himself. And I wish we could have been best friends.
After his death, I thought he’d fade into a receding memory, light and easy to carry. But he was my father and he remains a very real presence in my life, and I’m still working out my relationship with him, so I keep him in my heart, wrapped in sadness.
When I think about us humans as a species, when I think back over everything I know about our past, when I look around the world and everything I know about our present…
I feel so much sadder about our life than I do about our coming death.
And it seems to me, if we are in the final chapter of our story, that along with upgrading love, we need to upgrade mourning. And…
We need it to be an intensely nurturing kind of mourning.
And…
We need it to become our way of life.
So it can see us through the hard times that are coming.
And if it’s true, as I believe, that our future is foreclosed, and that we have to live out the rest of our lives as losers in a losing game, then…
I want us to be kick-butt losers.
