When I dreamt, I found the spaces in between…

I’ve been struggling these days with the existence of grief, or more appropriately, with our 21st century westernization of it (stuff it shame it curse it). How does one acknowledge suffering or explore grief and pain when we live in a time where pain is demonized, tears are shamed and grief is seen as weak? How do I honestly live with pain when I live in an era where its reality is either ignored or pathologized, when I’ve been taught to hide from it, run from it, manage it, ignore it?

I read an article last month in the New York Times about death, hospitals, and doctors, and the (unfortunate) dialectic that’s developed between corporate values and the commerce of death - make it clean, make it business. Death, it’s said, is easier to manage for both doctors and families under the cold facts and figures of the hospital. Doctors run tests and update charts, machines whirr in the shadows of last breaths and heartbeats, patients’ families hold their breath and their tears in stoic stances of pain management. And the doctor who writes this piece elevates this atmosphere as necessary, as desirable, as the price to pay for good care and clean deaths. Welcome to the 21st century, when death has a brand and a tagline.

I remember as a six year old when my grandfather moved in with us. It was his last year of life: he had a hospital bed, his own little fridge, everything he needed, all in our living room. I got to hang out with him every day after I came home from school. He helped me name my new puppy. One time he took the car to run off to Atlantic City, got lost, we were worried, but he was just having his own adventure. All the while his health was slowly declining from cancer, and the family knew he wouldn’t be around much longer. And then, one day, I came home to a police car in the driveway and so I ran in the house, knowing something was up, and found out that my Pop had died that day. And you know what? I was sad, in the pure way that six year olds are sad, and that was fine: there was space to mourn, space to exist as I needed, a family/community to be with while mourning. Of course, this is all remembered through my experience as a young child, so who knows what the details were. But details, for this purpose, are almost pointless. The important point is that there was a real sadness that was entirely natural. No inner monologue or outer dialogue of “when are you going to get over it?”, “stop crying”, “oh, you’re fine”.

And yet, as I look at how I’ve dealt with loss and grief and pain in my adult (and teenage life), I see more hiding, aloneness, and discomfort involved. We mediate with self-help books and doctors and mindless work. We see others in pain and don’t know how to fix it (hint: we’re not supposed to fix it) and so feel paralyzed. We hurt, we chastise ourselves for hurting, and so we hurt some more. In short, we stuff it, until it implodes into depression, or explodes into rage.

Is it because of the loss of close family and community? our culture’s bent toward the grand narrative of Progress (ie, always moving forward and moving on)? our loss of spirituality or connection with the earth? Some combination of the above, I’m sure.

Anyway, exploring this is a bit of a personal project for me these days. More to come…