Scissortail Hospice Chaplain Bristow, Oklahoma
A surprising secret about grief is that it can become like a good friend, comfortable and routine. When my precious mother died, I suffered like many people do for a very long time. Grief was the whole tone of life for a time, and living well enough to appear okay to others was a great effort. Eventually, however, I wanted a more peaceful settling in my heart of sadness and freedom of spirit to become more lighthearted.
Spontaneously, I began more openly laughing with friends or humming while driving down the road. On a dark winter's morning, warm from a shower, I found myself looking at my clothes and happily deciding what to wear. Simple moments of pleasure started appearing in my life. Without notice I was hit by a boulder of fear and guilt and immediately fell into the gloom of the day's weather. Back and forth my internal emotional compass would swing between genuine, unencumbered pleasure with life and living in and the grief of missing my mother and all that it meant.
Periodically, I would have a good talk with myself about the need to recover and move on with a good life. Intellectually, I knew that was true, but emotionally I had trouble believing it. Only slowly I realized what was keeping me from genuinely continuing well with life. Planted somewhere in my subconscious were the ideas: if I left grief behind me, it would mean leaving my mother; or if I recovered it would diminish the importance of her life and death. I thought that perhaps I would forget her, but being over eighteen, I knew in my heart that was very unlikely to happen.
My thinking could have stopped there, leaving me to always live in grief's shadow. Luckily, no really through the grace of God, I had thought that was helpful and positive that my loving mother would want me to move on with my life. Not recovering was a disservice and failure to the people who were now in my life, and also perhaps to the memory of my mother and what she wanted for me.
One by one I considered these stumbling blocks. As a conscious thought, I knew immediately it was impossible that I would ever forget her. She would always be important to me. I'd lived in her death long enough to know it was now my history and memory, just like high school and getting married. She was embedded. Quietly, I thought about the importance of her life. To me it was important, and her presence helped shape me socially and as a minister. Her joy and cheerfulness even today adds immeasurably to life. It was illuminating to realize her importance in shaping me both before and after her death, but I also realized that her life and its direct influence was going to diminish. But, that is the story of all people and I could expect no more for her.
The last thought of not recovering or being a failure to those still around me cinched the deal. I dearly loved my brothers, sisters and friends. They deserved better care from a more aware person. When these stumbling blocks of my thinking were exposed, a true recovery became more natural, quicker and easier.
Working and re-learning how to enjoy life was a slow painful process. It's not just death that is difficult to overcome. It is all the little hidden beliefs, loyalties and loves to be faced, dealt with and settled that can slow recovery.
John T. Catrett, III Scissortail Hospice Chaplain 306 North Main Street, Suite E Bristow,OK 74010 918.352.3080