We seem to be a culture that lives in fear of death, its not something we wish to discuss, the prospect of losing our undergoing death in ourselves or another may in causing us to feel insecure, to find it difficult to approach the issue with openness and honesty. Alternatively when faced with death or grief we (or others) speak in platitudes that may effectively silence others even more.
I remember after my older sister died in April 2014 her daughter in law saying to me, “be happy, she would not want you to be sad” and I am sure this is true as my sister found it hard when I cried by her bedside if she was in pain or if she was crying, but never the less I did feel sad even if (to be brutally honest) there was a relief in her passing in that for so long her golden self seemed so trapped in a damaged body that that kind of imprisonment and the lack of attunement she was meeting at times must have felt like a hell. For me her passing did come with a kind of elation too, even as the sorrow of her life was with me but at the same time there was sadness and it would have felt such a relief to be able to have and share it honestly with someone, so instead I just continued to cry alone and try to write about and process it both in my blog and in therapy.
Death, its a complex issue and one we should never judge.. Perhaps a question like how are you feeling would be a more open ended way of dealing with things.. Sadly lately having not been in touch with my living sister for some time I remember lately how she would ask me how i felt about something I may have mentioned, sadly I do not know if that question was often asked or if it was, if she could honestly answer in the later times when it seemed to her like nothing was working, not the drugs, not the ECT, not the phone calls from me. At that point after being drawn into a spiral of sadness after our last conversation I had to let go and I have but it does not mean that my sister is not in my mind and heart each day along with the complex confused feelings i so often felt around her.
I was prompted to write this post today after by reading the story of Annie and Betsy told by Sarah Krasnostein in her book The Believer,. Betsy is the dying aunt of Annie, whose life and journey, Sarah profiles in that book. Annie herself underwent a life of significant emotional abandonment, in later life after many relationships ending and lots of loss she became both a Buddhist and what is known as a Death Doula, someone who is bought into a situation to help a family grieve the loss of a child, parent or loved one.
When Betsy lays dying of pancreatic cancer Annie’s mother asks her “not to speak of all that death stuff” but when she opens the issue with her aunt Betsy reveals she is longing to talk of it but no one in the family will allow that conversation. I will quote the following extracts from that chapter which are full of the wisdom of NOT REMAINING SILENT ABOUT CRITICAL EMOTIONAL ISSUES SUCH AS DEATH especially with a dying person provided they WANT TO SPEAK ABOUT IT.
Like all socialized silences, the one around death does not do what we think it does. Doesn’t make anything any easier. Breeds only disconnection, isolation, fear.
“What do you want to tell everyone?” Annie asked her Auntie.
“I want everyone to be kind to one each other,” Betsy replies
“This is one of the things I’ve learned,” Annie says to me. “Everything that was so important – we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to achieve this – when faced with our mortality, the simplest things become the most significant. Kindness. Patience. Gratefulness. And that doozy of all things : forgiveness.”
Betsy felt that she was a failure …that she could have done things better. In her bedroom, Annie started pulling items out of Betsy’s box of memorabilia. Things that had been totally forgotten, things that reminded Betsy of her successes. “The victories in her life were totally trivialised because the negative things were just taking over her attention. Which is quite common, isn’t it.”
End of quote
If Annie had not had the courage to open up a conversation about all of that ‘death stuff’ all of this other pain would have remained trapped deep down inside Betsy.. how heartbreakingly sad, but how painfully common?!’
Emerging From The Dark Night 