Good Grief

Not long after I got my learner's permit, my father tossed me the keys and told me that I would be driving the family to the mall that afternoon. I made a beeline for the car - a 1973 maroon Chevrolet that looked more like something that belonged on water than on any highway - and started the engine. My dad took the passenger seat and my brother reluctantly climbed into the back. As we made our way up the hill that led out of our neighborhood another car came tearing around the corner headed straight for us - and as I swerved to the right - narrowly missing the neighbor's mailbox and thankfully the oncoming car as well - my brother let out a scream from the backseat - "we're all going to die" he yelled!

Safely parked on the side of the road moments later - with relief and amazement coursing through our bodies - the teasing, and the tormenting began. We're all going to die - became the hallmark phrase of every hysterical moment from that time forward - and whenever a helpful, calming suggestion might do the trick we would turn to one another instead and yell at the top of our lungs, We're all going to die! And burst into peels of laughter - In the wake of that harrowing experience, when two teenagers came face to face for just a second with their own mortality - my brother and I turned to laughter - a way to diffuse our fear, a way to cling together in joy even in the face of a near accident, even in the face of the terrifying truth he had yelled from the backseat of the car - that we're all going to die.

We are all going to die.

Even the people I love most, even the people I cannot imagine life without, even me. I know this intellectually, of course. I have read books, watched movies, studied hard in science class. I know that life is, in fact, a terminal condition. But on most days I am still holding out hope for a miracle, for a mistake, for the possibility that the experience of death will pass me by. Like all of the things that make us human - death and grief are inescapable parts of our common experience - and we can choose either to run from them in fear or to turn into them for growth.

My first encounter with death and grief came one clear, cold, February morning. The guidance counselor appeared in the doorway of my 7th grade geometry classroom. He spoke in whispers to the teacher and she called me forward. On the long walk to the front office, the counselor explained that my parents were coming to pick me up, that I was to wait quietly in the lobby for them.

I knew why my parents were coming. Just a few nights before I had gone with them to the hospital. My grandmother was there - there with a sign on her door that looked like some symbol for a nuclear fall out shelter - there lying unconscious, silent, and frightening. My parents told me that night that she was dying, they told me that I needed to say goodbye to her - but I couldn't do it. I couldn't say the words - not with everyone standing around her bed - not with the communion wafer delivered hours before still lying visible on her tongue - not with all of the fear and sadness that rose up inside each time I imagined her death. I lingered by her bedside for as long as I could - hoping for the courage to say the words aloud, hoping that everyone would leave and let me be alone with her. At the end of the night, I kissed my grandmother's forehead and whispered in her ear that I loved her. I turned and walked down the long hallway of the hospital shaking in disbelief.

This couldn't be happening, I thought. She was fine just a week ago - just a week ago I walked into her house like usual, picked up a piece of hard candy - a starlight mint - from the dish under my favorite lamp with the crystal light catchers and bent over to kiss her sitting in her recliner - was it really just a week ago that I noticed the color of her legs -the jaundice she had been trying to hide peeking out from the top of her knee-high stockings? Could it really be just a week ago when everything changed and the world as I knew it went careening out of control?

Some days I still can't believe that it's real - that she's gone and I won't see her again - that we won't cook fried chicken together for the next summer picnic or kneel down beside my bed together at the end of the night and send our hopes and our fears off in prayer. The shock and pain of my grandmother's death took my breath away for months. I cried myself to sleep at night, I lost concentration in almost everything I did, and my anger at God and at the world coursed through me spinning out at anyone who was unlucky enough to be in my path. My grief was hard - hard because the reality of death was such a shock, hard because my Grandmother died in a hospital separated from us by rules and regulations and tubes and monitors, hard because so many things were left unsaid, hard because I loved her so much.

Death is not an easy subject - and grief is not an easy experience. For most of us, living in this culture as we do, death is shut away behind closed doors in institutions - removed from our homes and our thoughts as much as possible. As Virginia Morris, author of Talking About Death, tells us - "Throughout history, death has loomed over life, shaping religions, philosophies, cultures, and everyday practices. But today, it doesn't loom. We don't ruminate over death and the meaning of life. Instead, we talk almost incessantly about how to prolong a youthful and energetic life."[1]

All of the things that once prepared us for death - things like public grief and mourning, interaction with the elderly, the visibility of our own aging, as well as regular experience with illness and death - have diminished in such a way that death and dying have been effectively quarantined - whisked away and secluded into a corner of society, leaving only a handful of experts with the knowledge and experience of what it is like to die.[2] This quarantining of death, I believe, has not done us any favors. While the intention may have been to make the experience of death more manageable, I believe that it has in fact made death more difficult.

In becoming an unseen, unknown, even taboo subject - the power of death is magnified in our culture and in our lives - magnified by secrecy, by shame, by surprise. When we avoid looking at death, when we push the experience and our fears of it away in a corner, it, like any fear, gains in power. The trick with fear though - the trick to making the boogey-man in the closet disappear or to making the person chasing you in your dreams stop dead in their tracks - the trick is always to turn around and walk right into whatever it is that is scaring you - to take a deep breath, turn on the light, and open your eyes wide.

What we see when we take a look at death may in fact be frightening - the inevitability of our own mortality, of our own death and of the death of our loved ones - is no easy thought to consider, no easy thing to imagine. But I wonder if our lack of preparation for death - if our denial of its inevitability for each of us - isn't a primary factor in the difficult nature of our grief. I wonder if we chose to allow death a little more into our lives, if we let ourselves learn about it and come into contact with it, if we might also "find that our loved ones die a little better and that we grieve a little easier."[3]

When our loved ones die and when we face death ourselves, many of us are filled not only with sadness and loss, but also with regret, guilt, anger, and bewilderment. The rabbi and family therapist, Edwin Friedman, writes that our "grief is always proportional to the un-worked-out residue of the relationship that was lost."[4] - our grief is always proportional to the un-worked-out residue of the relationship that was lost...

That un-worked-out residue can take many forms - from unspoken thoughts and feelings, to anger at being left behind, to disappointments and unfulfilled hopes and expectations. When we are not prepared for death, for our own or for others, this un-worked-out residue in our relationships can haunt us, contributing to the intensity of our grief after someone we love dies.

This un-worked-out residue in our relationships can cause us an immense amount of suffering - but I have to admit that I do not agree with Rabbi Friedman that it is the only thing that causes our grief when someone dies. I believe that we grieve because we love, too. That we miss the beauty, the wonder, the presence of the person and of the relationship as it was.

Death and grief have lessons to teach us not only in urging us to say what we need to say and to forgive what we need to forgive - but in awareness and gratitude while we are alive too. In speaking with people who had recently received a diagnosis of a terminal illness, author Virginia Morris found that "there is no longer any pretense that life is limitless, no time for trivial undertakings or superficial relationships. In confronting death, these people embrace life and gain extraordinary strength, clarity, and artistry. They are like the leaves that dangle green all summer long and then take on brilliant, fiery hues just before they drop from the branches and float gently to the ground."[5]

People who are living with the presence of death often achieve that elusive spiritual discipline of living in the moment, existing fully in the present - working when they are working, eating when they are eating, enjoying and noticing the smallest detail and the brightest sunset. People who know that they are dying do this for many reasons, of course, one of which may be that knowing they are going to die puts an acknowledged limit on their lives - offering a special intensity and poignancy to the remaining time they have to live and to love.

We do not need to know that we are on the verge of death ourselves to live awake like this. Recognizing our own mortality over and over again offers us the opportunity to practice living with the difficult reality that there is very little that we can control - that all of our illusions - our achievements, our financial status, our carefully constructed identities and egos - cannot protect us and do not matter in the face of death.

We are all going to die.

This reality has been around forever - and because death and grief are the most universal of human conditions - religion has been trying to address these issues for centuries. One of our most prominent ministers, The Reverend Forest Church is often quoted as saying that "Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die."[6]

This past Thursday I made my way over to the campus of RIT and found the Interfaith Center there. I had been invited to give a presentation on Unitarian Universalism as a part of the Center for Religious Life's Coat of Many Colors series. The group gathered in the basement of the chapel was small - just 6 or so faculty and staff, and shortly after noon I began by offering a brief history of our faith along with some examples of what Unitarian Universalism is like now. Not long into the question and answer period of my presentation a woman to my left tentatively raised her hand. "What do Unitarian Universalists believe about the afterlife?" she asked.

An excellent question, I thought to myself. I took a deep breath and described some of the variety of beliefs held among us - the emphasis on living well in the here and now and creating a beloved community here on earth - the belief that many of us here share that "To live in hearts that love is not to die" - the idea that in death we return to the earth and our bodies become part of the larger body that makes up the world...as I made my way through the list of possibilities a man at the end of the table spoke up - "That doesn't sound very comforting," he said. "Tell me, when you go to visit people in the hospital over at Strong, what do you say to them?"

Another good question, I thought, and another question with no easy answer. It's different every time, I said. I let the people present lead the way - showing me through their questions and their stories what remains unresolved, what they feel they need to accomplish or feel or say. Sometimes there simply are no words, sometimes I just listen and sometimes we sit together holding hands, brushing hair, reciting poetry.

As in questions of living, Unitarian Universalism does not always offer easy answers to the questions of death. We trust that our own individual experiences along with our conscience and the still small voice inside will lead the way when it comes to grieving and when it comes to dying. We trust that in looking squarely at reality - rather than hiding behind illusions of security and control - we will find answers to our questions that we can live with over time. We believe in the power of human influence and the potential of the human spirit, trusting that we and our loved ones live on in the lives of others. We accept that there are things we cannot understand, that sometimes silence is better than words, that joy and pain are wound up tight, that we live in a world of incomprehensible complexity - that sometimes paradox is our best guide.

There is no doubt - learning to live with the reality of death is hard, but it is true for many of us that in learning to live with death we also learn how to live our lives with purpose and meaning and joy. There is no doubt - learning to love differently is hard - learning to live differently is hard - living and loving with hands wide open, with doors banging on their hinges, with the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms - as we learn to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch - learning to love and to live letting go again and again.

As we learn to live and love differently, may we lean into and may we learn from one another. Finding in our shared struggle both comfort and inspiration, that we might open ourselves to the reality of our lives, to the love and wisdom that grows in depth from our healing, from our risking, from our learning to live and to love differently.

May it be so, and Amen.

Jen Crow, Acting Associate Minister
February 27, 2005

1. Virginia Morris. Talking About Death. (Algonquin Books: Chapel Hill, NC. 2001) p. 61.
2. Ibid, pp. 56 & 61.
3. Ibid, p. 6.
4. Edwin Friedman. Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue. (The Guilford Press, 1985) p. 43.
5. Virginia Morris. Talking About Death. (Algonquin Books: Chapel Hill, NC. 2001) p. 78.
6. John Buehrens. A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism. (Beacon Press: Boston, MA, 1998) p.5.