The fear of dying is almost assuredly universal and probably increases for most people as they get nearer to the point of death. But what are the factors that contribute to this fear? The fear of the process may be worse than the product when it comes to dying. What will they die from? Will they die: alone, as a burden to someone, or in great pain from some debilitating disease? And what will happen to their loved ones they leave behind? And what’s in store for them in the afterlife? Embracing death can have a profound effect on how you feel about your life. In many ways, it can be liberating, especially if you’ve clarified it in your heart.
Mental health and pain issues aside, most people are reluctant to die and there is a sense of unfairness about it. I believe it seems foreign and unnatural to us because we have been wired by God to want to live forever. No matter how strong our faith, there is a struggle to accept death, and I think this is true whether we are dealing with the loss of a loved one or our own death. Because it goes against our nature, most people are reluctant to talk, or even think about, dying. We will even talk about sex, money, or politics before we discuss death, but if denial were an effective coping tool I would embrace it as well. Part of the process involves realizing, and possibly confronting, our concepts we have toward death. Then maybe we can deal with the inherent mysteries associated with dying without having to deal with the emotional baggage of fear and dread we often bring to the process.
There are always losses associated with life and death if we live long enough. It may involve among others the loss of: valued relationships, cognitive abilities (especially with dementia), physical abilities, our social support system, or something as simple as the comfort you feel being in your own home. These losses accumulate and can make the grieving process more difficult because we often don’t realize the importance of these losses until it is too late. We have to begin adapting to what is instead of what used to be, and denial is often hard to overcome.
Just what is grief? It may be easier to describe what it is not. It is not a specific emotion such as fear or sadness, but is instead a process of dealing with the specific combination of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with an event. It’s not so much the outward display of an emotion, but is more the internal dialogue or the meaning attached to the actual event. This frustrates many people when you start talking about a process. When I used to tell students that the process of learning is as important as getting the correct answer, I could just hear their internal moaning. Left unsaid was their thought that this sounds too much like work, and just give me the answer so I can regurgitate it back to you at test time. In some aspects, the process of dealing with grief properly is often hard work, and as a process, it is individual in nature and therefore different for everyone, at least the pace of completing it. The healing power of grief though can be restorative. It can make whole, it can complete, both inward and outward.
Learning how to deal with your grief is large part of coping with the death of a loved one. There will eventually come a time when you are dealing with the memories of grief rather than the grief itself, even if it doesn’t appear that way now. I have a friend that refers to it as going to “grief land,” as if she had spent the day with Mickey Mouse instead of living in the depths of depression. She and her husband had recently lost a child and when he would ask her what her day had been like, she would reply, “I went to grief land.” Time spent grieving after a loss such as this is measured by the calendar, not by the clock. That’s because a clock can’t measure this type of time since it assumes that all minutes are the same. But as Albert Einstein pointed out, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Let a man sit with a lovely girl for an hour and it will seem like a minute, but let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it seems longer than any hour.” That’s relativity. Time spent in “grief land” often seems longer than any other. But how long is too long when it comes to grieving? Since death is a natural part of life, to grieve indefinitely is not healthy. But to try and stifle necessary emotions in order to “try and get back to normal” can be detrimental in the long run.
Is a person’s history of how they have grieved over loss, or a loved one, a reliable predictor of how they will approach their own death? Much of life has to do with loss, or at least how you deal with it. As you get older, things get taken away from you, but often you don’t realize this until they are gone. And then what do you do? There is no set time limit for grieving. It may be short or long, and it is not tied to how much you loved and who, what, or how much you lost. If you’re the type of person who invests part of your life into other people, when they die you will be lonely. That’s only natural because a part of you has been ripped away, and you are lonely for that piece of yourself. And that’s true whether the person who died is a child, spouse, parent, or special friend. People who are not able to deal effectively with loss don’t necessarily suffer more losses than people who have been able to deal with loss effectively. Often for the person to deal with loss they just have to come to the point where they have to make a choice. They either continue to grieve for what they lost, or don’t have, or they focus on what they still have.
Our society likes to attach labels to groups of people for many reasons, but one is that if we can give something a name then it makes sense to us. If you lose your parents, you’re an orphan, and if you lose your spouse, then you’re a widow or widower. But there’s no label for when you lose a child, and I believe that’s true because this is a concept that’s completely foreign to us. It’s a thought so unthinkable that we refuse to attach a name to it because if we do we will be forced to acknowledge it can happen to us. But remember death is only a new beginning to the rest of your life on the other side. If you’re dealing with the death of a loved one there is hope to be found in God’s promises. We are assured that they have found joy and peace in heaven and this can be a source of comfort to us.
