Since 2014, when my mother's mother as well as my father died between Palm Sunday and Thanksgiving Day, I've been having to face this theme more often in my life. Normally I focus on other topics for my posts, but I also recognize that every day it could be someone's first time dealing with the passing away of a loved one or at least familiar person. I also recognize that even for people who have been through this any number of times it's never easy. So I wanted to share a few comments about death, funerals, and mourning.
Between 2014 and 2022, I must have learned a thing or two regarding death and how we handle it. Have I learned the right lessons? I want to think so, but that's not for me to say.
The rest of this post will be about observations and lessons I thought I should share. If you find them useful, I did my job. If not, then I don't know what else I need to learn before I can help or assist anyone.
About Death
We Don't Have To Think about It-- But We Must Acknowledge It
Intellectually, we all know that death is something we have to deal with sooner or later. No amount of preparation can get us ready for then time when we're faced with it. While we're not required to think about it-- that's left for philosophers and religious scholars-- we're not allowed to act as if it doesn't exist. It's OK for us to feel nervous about it, but we have to know that we can get past that nervousness in order to get back to living our lives.
We just have to acknowledge it and then move forward with living life as best as we can. If anything, knowing about death should make us focus on life more. We may still not have a direction, but we will at least have more clarity. If that helps bring us to the moment when our lives change for the better, that's a good thing.
Against Regular People, Death Is Undefeated-- But We Must Make It Work For Its Wins
"Death comes for us all...."
Splinter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
During 2014, I was reminded of those words I had heard long ago when I had seen that movie on VHS. Those words are just as true whether they are said by our local clerics, professional mentors, role models, or-- in this case-- Splinter.
Without getting into religion or metaphysics, it's one thing to know that our moment will come, and once again Death will win. However, that doesn't mean that we just give up or roll over.
Make Death work for that victory over us! We can:
- replace bad habits with good habits.
- transform negative people into left-handed zeroes to break their hold over us.
- revise our internal conversations with ourselves to minimize negativity and attract maximum rewards.
- question routines to make sure they work in our favor.
- smile more to trigger a cascade of good feelings.
- laugh more to help humor drive away sadness or ennui.
- build up other people so they can become better themselves.
- discover new ways to express love to the people we encounter (even at the post office or passport bureau).
Death will take us eventually, but until that moment arrives we control how he live and how we treat the people in our lives.
Death Is To Be Acknowledged, Not Feared
"Fear is the path to the dark side.
Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hate leads to suffering."
Jedi Master Yoda, The Phantom Menace (1999)
Yes, Death exists. Yes, Death is undefeated against regular people (which would include anyone reading this).
No, Death should not dominate how we live. No, Death should not reduce us to helpless beings.
It's OK not to want to face topics like this, and it's OK to be confused when it makes a visit to those near us. However we feel is how we feel, and there's no wrong or right way to handle this. We just have to put Death in proper perspective as we try to figure out where we go from there, as we figure out how we can keep moving forward.
None of us has all the answers when it comes to how we deal with death, and as the years pass we'll be dealing with it more and more. The best we can do is find ways to deal with it while we try to stay sane. One way is to find answers to whatever questions we have. We each have our answers, and some people can benefit from learning what answers we have and how we arrived at them.
One Part of the Answer
No matter what we think about this topic, we cannot live in fear of it. If anything, we should keep it in the back of our minds as we try our best to get out of life as much as we can while we improve the lives of those we encounter. If people can say about us that we made their lives better, then we did what we had to do in this life.
After Peak Life, Thinking Changes
Death Moves from the Academic to the Real World
For a while, death feels like an abstraction, like Euclidean Geometry or object-oriented programming. Because of the average human life span, there comes an age when we wonder what we did with the time which passed and we wrack our brains trying to figure out what we're going to do for the next N or X years (we think) we have left. This is the point when we are more conscious of our own mortality.
Death Provides Opportunities To Reinvent Ourselves
In a way, this is good. It forces us to be brutally honest with ourselves as we chart out path forward. It also helps us determine what's really important for us so that we can leave behind the trivial and keep the essential.
This can mean being less diplomatic in our language. This can mean being more forthright with others as we discuss whatever we discuss with them. This can even mean being more willing to be "the bad guy/gal," the villain, or the heel; not that we're turning into evil people or characters such as Goldfinger or Blofeld or Thanos, but the truth can hurt and we're more willing to tell that truth when we're 50 or 60 than when we're 20 or 30.
When Death closes one door, Life opens another door. We just have to walk through that open door.
About Funerals
The funerals aren't so much for the dearly departed but for us. It's never fun to be reminded of death, but we need to be reminded of the blessings we have in life. When others present are having a more difficult time of it than we are, it's a chance for us to be the high point of their day even on a day like that. After all, even a smile tinged with sadness can serve as a bright candle in a dark place for someone who needs that light.
Few if any of us like attending funerals even if our connections to the deceased are minimal or non-existent. In many cases, we don't need to attend them:
- they're too far away;
- we're not required to attend;
- we're not wanted there.
In a few cases, we have no choice but to attend:
- The deceased was a major influence in our professional growth and development.
- We had a deep personal connection to the deceased.
- We simply wanted to pay our respects as we represented our family or team.
It Can Be Surprising Who We Find at Funerals
Besides the expected family members or professional associates, there can be some unexpected relatives or workplace acquaintances:
- People we had low opinion of before make the effort to attend the funeral for whatever reason; then we remember those people going forward as people who showed up in a time of need.
- People who feuded with the deceased may appear; they could make a scene because they can't let go the feud, or they could honor and recognize the deceased as a worthy adversary, or they could just keep a low profile.
When we see people we expect to see, it reinforces our impressions of them as quality people.
Each funeral situation is unique, and we make our observations based on what we see or don't see.
The Immediate Family Is Grateful to Those Who Attend
People attending funerals are there for a a couple or hours or a few hours, then they leave. Immediate family, on the other hand, has to deal with 168 hours-- one week-- of everything concerning the funeral:
- Payment for services-- these are not free.
- Dealing with local and state authorities for related paperwork.
- Making arrangements for the wake, the funeral, and the burial.
- Tying up loose ends with creditors.
Even the sleep hours (what few there are) end up being stressful.
After dealing with the mundane yet vital activities revolving around the funeral, the immediate family members (however we define the term) are happy to have a few moments during the funeral when they can be human beings and exchange kind words with whoever wants to give a few words of comfort and solace.
Even if a scene is made and devolves into a viral video for classless socia media (so this excludes us), that scene offers a moment of emotional release of pent up stress. It had to be relieved one way or another, so it may as well be accepted.
About Mourning
Different cultures have different traditions and customs when it comes to mourning the dearly departed.
I'm not writing about mourning from that perspective.
Hard People Cry Hard
No one escapes grief. People normally known to be hard-core, or emotionless, or (at best) stoic, will reach the point where they will cry and cry hard. There's just too much emotion needing to be released after such an extended period of looking like flint or a block of granite.
What Do We Do next?
After that initial overflow of grief, what do we do next?
Do we keep the grief going because people expect us to grieve for some set period of time?
It's one thing to be grieving during the 168 hours where we're dealing the preparations for the funeral and burial. People understand that.
It's even understandable to be grieving for weeks or months afterward. If the grief is genuine, why not grieve?
Along the way we think about things we said we wish we hadn't said, or things we hadn't said but wish we said. It can be enough to drive one crazy if we take it too far. What's been said or done is in the past, and no amount of second-guessing we do can change that fact. It may be too late to change our word choices for the deceased while they were alive, but for everyone else we can avoid that mistake by ending each day on good terms with them.
We will never know when we will last see someone (or when someone will see us for the final time). It's easier to tell ourselves that our last words to someone were "I love you" rather than some heated argument or disrespectful comment; this I can say from personal experience. If we can say "I love you" more often than birthdays and anniversaries, that will make a difference to everyone.
Sorrow and grief have their place and time, but we aren't trained in how to handle them. That doesn't mean we aren't allowed to handle them in our own way. It's just that many people end up drawing them out for far longer than they are needed or required. Then they wonder why the last few months or years have been miserable; it's because they kept the suffering and grief going beyond their expiration date. That's not healthy for body, mind, and soul.
When is the right time to stop grieving? When you no longer feel the need to grieve. When does that time arrive? For each of us, the answer is unique to each us.
Some people conflate the need to grieve with the need to remember. Once the genuine grieving is done, it's OK to get back to life as it was or to begin a new phase of life. That's not the same as forgetting about our loved ones. Our loved ones live on as long as we remember them.
Perhaps the best way we can show the loved ones who went to another world how much we love them is to live our lives in a way which reflects our love for them. This means sharing that love with others in as many ways as we can-- a smile, a kind word, a good deed, a good-natured laugh, even spirited competition where all players give 100%. We want people to say of us that we are truly like our late loved one. In this way, our memories will live on with more people.
What Else Do I Have To Say? Truly, I Don't Know.
The thoughts just came out. I needed to record them before I got them muddles or confused or forgotten.
For someone I know personally and in the flesh, my advice or thoughts would have been tailor-made for that person. I could have been serious, or humorous, but definitely concerned.
Since I wrote this post for others to consider, I wanted to be as thoughtful as possible without being miserable or syrupy. There's the death and the immediate hours after learning ot if. Then there's the funeral period and how we observe it (even if we aren't present for the event). Then there is the mourning period, and this will vary in length with each of us. There's no right or wrong time to be in mourning, but the time to end the mourning is when it is time to end the mourning. It has to come naturally; it cannot be forced.
There's more I could have said, but I'm not sure what else I could have said. I hope I was able to provide some useful advice or points of consideration with this post. Thank you for your time.