As the holidays approach, the subject of Grief becomes more common in articles, social media posts and advice columns. And for good reason. These special days of family celebration can be reminders of who will not be at the table this year. And perhaps as the rotation of another year comes around again, we are returned in memory to a time we still long for –when the children were small, when we lived in a part of the country were the weather seemed to cooperate with our holiday spirit, when gas was under $2, or when holiday gatherings did not involve the accommodation of complicated diets and eating programs. We may remember an idyllic time, which many never have existed, when we didn’t dread or try to avoid gathering at a common table with loved ones, some in deep grief over crushing losses while others ecstatic at the victory of their candidates.
So, what ancient recipes can we call upon to help us navigate these unsettling waters?
As a grief advocate and author of The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us to Grieve and Live Our Best Lives I am often asked to speak or write about these dilemmas and challenges that are not unique or new to this year or this place. I grew up in Louisville Kentucky in the 1950s though my ancestors were not from there, so I was surprised to learn that during the war between the states, which was less than 100 years prior, Kentucky had been a border state, not officially joining the North or the South in the Civil War. I heard stories that were still being told of families who had sons that fought on different sides of the conflict. I remember thinking that must have made for difficult family gatherings.
There was a time when we knew how to grieve, when we understood as a culture that grief is not a stairway we climb where, we tick off a series of emotions on each step, and reaching the top, put our palms together and declare we are finished. There was a time when we knew that grief was not just a private matter, something to keep to oneself so as not to bring others down, but as a time to companion one another with compassion through disrupted terrain. To enter ritual space together for a time between the worlds, not to put the past behind us but to honor and keep close through the years to what we will always love.
I offer the visual art image of the spiral as an image that can help us grieve. A well-known author of the 20th century C.S. Lewis wrote of his own bereavement process in the book,” A Grief Observed.” He wrote it under another name, which tells us something of the unpopularity of the topic. He shared what I believe are elements of a universal model. “For in grief, nothing stays put. One keeps emerging from a phase but it always recurs. Round and round everything repeats. Am I going in circles or dare I hope I am on a spiral?”
The spiral is found in nature and in cultures worldwide, one of the oldest intuitive symbols of the physical, mental and spiritual development of a human life as it winds its way through the seasons of its years. Grief is the processing of our life experiences to determine what to cherish and what to hold dear, and what to let go of that will no longer serve us and the person we become in the future. For this we need a new perspective. The spiral brings us back to the same place each season but on a more evolved level. The anniversary of the loss occurs or a situation of remembering occurs, and the mourner now has another year of living without their loved one. They are viewing the situation from a different vantage point.
The festivities of the family gatherings provide opportunities to use the art of storytelling to bring those gone from our sight into the present moment and to honor their contribution. For those too young to have known the deceased, they are shown where they have come from, and what has allowed them to have their turn at life. Don’t worry about repeating your stories. In my family, we kids knew Auntie’s stories so well we could tell them ourselves, but we begged to hear them again and again. At the time, I thought it was the humor in them, and the fanciful way she told them by adding made-up new passages which we of course, would call her on. But now I think we needed to hear them again and again because the subtext of the stories was that our ancestors survived tough challenges so there’s a pretty good chance that we will survive tough things too.
If you live in the Pittsburgh area, I’d love to have you join me for an evening service on the theme of dealing with grief at holiday time. The program Blue Christmas is next Tuesday December 3rd at 7 pm in the chapel of First United Methodist Church 5401 Centre Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15232.
