Getting on with the blues

If grief is a wound, then healing occurs when there is personal growth around it and we learn to live again

We have always known that death is a part of life because it is death that gives meaning to existence, reminding us how precious life is. Though rationally one understands death as a reminder of our mortality, our emotions swell as we face the terrible burden of loss that comes with the passing of life.

The word “grief” comes from the old French word grever meaning burden or oppression. The conventional way of working through grief is to pass through stages of denial, anger, bargaining and depression. Depression lasts longest and comes before acceptance. A 100 years ago, Freud proposed that “mourning comes to a decisive end when the bereaved severs its emotional attachment to the one lost and reinvest energy in a new object”. Grief is the internal experience of loss, while mourning is the external expression of grief.

The fabled story of Kafka and the travelling doll is said to have originated when a year before his death, the writer encountered a heartbroken little girl as he walked through Stieglitz Park, Berlin. The little girl was inconsolable because she had lost her doll. Having helped look for the lost doll, Kafka declared that she should not worry because her doll had gone on a trip and he being a postman, had a letter from the doll which he would bring the next day. Kafka met the child the following day at the same spot and read out a letter that he had composed in which the doll asked, “Please don’t mourn me; I have gone on a trip to see the world. I will write to you of my adventures.” That was the start of many carefully composed letters about imagined adventures of the beloved doll that Kafka handed to the girl each day over three weeks. When these meetings came to an end, Kafka presented the child a doll which obviously looked different from the original but came attached with a note, “My travels have changed me … everything you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

This little story illustrates how we tend to hold on to some things tightly for too long and focus so intensely on its loss that we don’t notice all the other wonderful aspects of life still there within our grasp. Change is often hard at first, messy in the middle but gorgeous in the end. Grief over loss is an inescapable part of being human and the way towards healing is to look out for how love comes back in another form.

There are times in life when it is normal to feel sad and we shouldn’t talk ourselves out of it. Loss of a loved one is perhaps the most profound manifestation of such losses, but all kinds of losses including divorce, relationship break-up, loss of job, miscarriage, children leaving home or suffering adverse life events produce pretty much the same feelings. Acknowledging the universality of loss helps us cope with associated guilt, shame and loneliness while the loss itself become a transformative experience.

If grief is a wound, then healing occurs when there is personal growth around that wound and we learn to live again. Rarely, grief is prolonged and the bereavement remains unbearable producing complicated behavioural and emotional responses.

Unlike the deaths portrayed on TV, the experience of dying may not always provide a spiritually meaningful closure. Death may well be banal and anticlimactic. There will always be regrets no matter how long we have had to prepare for the loss and guilt and anger is normal. Death brings out the best and the worst in families and people may say hurtful things without even realising it. It is important to remember that there is no timeline for grieving. Some will grieve in some form forever but the pain of loss is a reflection of love.