Mourning
Rev. Ron
Sala
The Unitarian
Universalist Society in Stamford, October 28, 2001
When
I was in 7th grade, my grandfather was quite ill. He had
been sick several times before, but this time was serious. My father
had driven across state to be with him while the rest of the family
stayed home. He was my eldest relative, and I was worried. We spent
every school vacation staying with our grandparents. I loved them so
much and did not know if I could handle the death of either one.
I
came home one day from junior high, and my mom told me that my grandfather
had passed away. I immediately collapsed onto the couch. I pressed my
face between the cushions and felt myself flush.
I
thought I might cry but didn’t. I hadn’t wept since the fourth grade
when I cried in class and my teacher told me that boys don’t do that.
(I wouldn’t cry again till my twenties. Now I tear up over anything—a
movie, a story on the radio, a song. Perhaps I’m making up for lost
time....)
My
mom asked if I was alright. I said I was. My mom has never been one
to talk much about feelings. In fact, my whole family is not very expressive
emotionally. It never occurred to me to do anything but keep my feelings
to myself. At first those feelings were searing pain and disbelief.
But soon they changed to a blanket of sadness that seemed to cover my
whole world. I spent some time in my room staring at the wall and remembering.
Yet,
amid the sadness, there was a strange comfort, a intuition that this
was normal, natural, the way things were meant to be.
My
uncle drove us across state to be with my father and grandmother. He
was a reassuring presence while we were away from Dad. Though he didn’t
have any kids of his own, he knew how to put us at ease through his
friendly manner.
As
we stood by my grandfather’s open casket to pay our last respects, my
uncle and my father both fell into uncontrollable weeping. It’s the
only time I’ve ever seen my father cry. Even today, the memory moves
me. My Dad showed me another way to be a man than those stoic heroes
on TV: what it is to be strong and to visibly grieve at the same time.
I
still remember some of the kind words the minister spoke in his eulogy,
and all these years later I still remember one of the hymns, “Jesus
Has Risen,” sung in the stirring a cappella Mennonites are known for:
Resplendent
in glory to live and to save.
Vain were the
terrors that gathered around him
And short the
dominion of death and the grave.
Though
now I doubt the literal truth of these lines, I know that part of my
grandfather lives on.
After
the funeral, I went back to school. Though she knew that my absence
was caused by a death in the family, one of my teachers still chose
to humiliate me in front of the class for not having my homework done.
I didn’t express the rage I felt. But, even today, I can’t hear that
teacher’s name without anger. It was a hard lesson for me about what
it feels like when someone acts without sensitivity—especially one in
a position of trust and power. I take this first-hand knowledge with
me into ministry.
On
the other hand, I feel that the care I received from family, friends,
and clergy helped me to accept a loss I wasn’t sure I could handle.
Such
mystery, such heartache, such challenge that mourning gives is thrust
upon children, their parents, and especially the aging. But no matter
our age chronologically, as Emerson once wrote in his journal, “Sorrow
makes us all children again,--destroys all differences of intellect.
The wisest knows nothing.” It is a universal condition. The late Carl
Seaburg writes, “The Harvard anthropologist asked [an] African Bushman
why he stayed near his dead. The … Bushman answered quietly, ‘He is
our person, whom we love.’” Seaburg concludes, “Civilization has no
better reply.”
My
favorite writer growing up was Edgar Allen Poe. A lot of the attraction
I’m sure, was the same as other boys that age—the fantastic and macabre.
In this vein, my favorite poem was “The Raven.” It had all the requisites:
a spooky nighttime setting, a thinly-veiled Poe figure as protagonist
and narrator, and a preternatural being in the form of a black-winged
bird. In short, it was creepy!
I
used to gather my friends together and read it to them by candlelight
on Halloween. O.K. ... sometimes I still do.
There’s
something fascinating about death. The overdone spook-forms of a children’s
Halloween party are caricatures of their fears, primarily about death.
Vampires and monsters allow them to manipulate these fears and realize
their creative and destructive possibilities. It’s as if they’re playing
“Peek-a-Boo!” with life and death and persuading themselves they will
be able to handle the real thing when it comes.
It
was in this way that I first read “The Raven,”—as a ghost story. (And
that is a wonderful way to look at it. C.S. Lewis reminds us that even
Hamlet is, in way, a fine ghost story.) But I eventually came to read
“The Raven” in a different light. The underlying emotion of the piece
is one more of sorrow than of fear. The second stanza reads,
Ah,
distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And
each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly
I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow
From
my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For
the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Name
less here for evermore.
It
was not the Halloween season of autumn, but mid-winter, December. This
is the time of the bleakest, shortest days. In terms of Wicca, a Celtic
form of Paganism, the god of the waning year has died on Samhain, Halloween,
but now he is in the underworld, approaching Yule. Likewise, the December
of “The Raven” is not the immediate horror of death, but the bitter,
lonely longing of grief. And where does the narrator turn on this barren
December night of mourning? “[V]ainly I had sought to borrow/From my
books surcease of sorrow....” He turns to his books, his intellect,
to escape grief. But he finds this way is vain.
His
grief, in the form of the bird of death, cannot be kept out by any effort
of his mind. He then confronts the bird’s, that is, grief’s, arrival
by fear, then joy, then anger. But the raven could be turned away in
none of these ways. At the end of the poem, the raven’s shadow envelops
the narrator’s very soul.
In
the same way, grief cannot be prevented or eliminated, no matter how
hard we try sometimes. This raven, at some time or another, is the unwelcome
guest in the room of every heart. And all we can really do when he comes
is to sit with him, like one does at a wake or sitting
shivah.
There’s
something in our culture, though, that doesn’t approve of this sitting,
that wants us to be moving—efficient, happy, innocuous, at all times.
I
was riding an elevator once and was horrified at a conversation I overheard
between a woman and an acquaintance who had just gotten on. She said,
“My mother only has a few days to live.” Her voice was perky. “But she’s
not gone yet, she’s holding on!” she continued with a nervous laugh.
There’s something in our culture that reinforces such a mask of cheerfulness,
such an armor of the emotions.
In
the Western world “mourning is treated as if it were a weakness,” says
anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer. How often we expect a person to have
a serious loss and be “back to normal” in 3-5 days, as if it were some
kind of flu! When I was treated harshly by that teacher, I experienced
pain and alienation when I most needed comfort and acceptance.
A
cottage industry has sprung up telling us how to go through a so-called
“grieving process” with a prescribed list of steps and stages. But everyone’s
steps and stages are unique. And anyway, theories about grief aren’t
grief itself, or even a treatment for grief. It can only be gone through.
In
my early days in New York, I had a breakup with a girlfriend. It was
my first serious relationship, and I was devastated. This was not physical
death, but it was a type of death nonetheless. A friend spent the following
afternoon with me--was with me in my loss. He listened to my sad tale
and didn’t run away or try to control my grief. He simply said, “Don’t
‘a+b=c’ yourself to death.” He meant that we can ever so carefully plan
our lives, we can have it all worked out, or so we think, and then some
force blows it all away. He meant that we can try to hide in expectations
about the world rather than taking it as it is. He meant that my brain
couldn’t do what my heart had to. “If you cry it’s OK, if you don’t
its OK,” he said. “Don’t a+b=c yourself.”
And,
speaking of tears, scientists have discovered that the chemical composition
of happy tears and sad tears is different. The sad tears contain toxins
released from the body. It seems that tears are a way of washing poisons
out of our system. Or at least that’s the way it feels. Let’s not a+b=c
ourselves.
Everyone
has to find their own way across the wilderness of grief. Turning once
again to C.S. Lewis, in A Grief Observed, he describes all the
ways in which he struggled through the death of his wife. Lewis journeys
across sadness, anger, doubt, and hope. If you’ve seen the movie,
Shadowlands, based on the book, you would certainly have felt
each of these states through Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal. (That’s one
of those movies I sobbed my way through). And you would have seen the
many ways this grief helped Lewis grow and deepen as a person. As a
result, his pronouncements on the human condition through the printed
and spoken word rang more true. The human process of mourning had humanized
him. He became a person better able to walk with people through their
pain.
I
think that’s a dynamic each of us have become more familiar with since
September 11th.
Yes,
we must each find our own way through the valley of the shadow of death
that is grief, but someone to walk with us part of the way helps us
along. To be such a shepherd is a blessing not only to others but to
ourselves. Don’t be afraid to show honest sympathy to someone who has
had a loss, a sympathy that honors them as equals of ourselves.
We
UU’s are famous for our memorial services. Someone has joked that the
reason why they’re so good is that it’s the one time we really listen
to each other. I don’t think that’s true. It’s a backhanded complement,
but a complement nonetheless. We do really listen to each other at such
times. Our focus in memorial services is on people, not theology or
ritual. We listen to each other express our pain and grief. We listen
to stories about the one whom we’ve lost. We take comfort in the eternal
processes of nature without trying to definitively explain them. A UU
ministerial colleague of mine has colorfully said, in a memorial service
he won’t touch the subject of the afterlife with a ten-foot pole. That’s
my policy, too. It’s this world that we focus on. That’s what we know
for sure.
Dignity,
simplicity, and intimacy are the trademarks of a good memorial service
in our tradition. Such a service allows the community to come together
so that no one need be alone.
ReBecca
and I were in Boston a few years ago. We walked through the graveyard
of King’s Chapel, the oldest Unitarian Church in the country. Many of
the ancient gravestones had a motif etched into them of a skull with
wings. This, a plaque explained, symbolized both the gravity of death
and hope for the future. Many of us today are not so sure that there
is some heaven we can wing away to after we die. But through our grief,
we have hope as well.
We
hope in the promise of healing love we find in others and ourselves.
We
hope in the growth that comes from struggling sleepless with the meaning
of life and death.
We
hope in what poet Brendan Galvin calls “the simple rightness of things.”
We
hope in every kind of birth that comes out of death.
We
hope in a part of us that carries on all others we have known.
We
hope in a part of others that will carry us when we go.
We
hope in Life always.
Amen.