A friend asked me for some helpful thoughts on grief. She was about my age and shared that she was struggling to process the death of her mother. In considering this, I thought this kind of key loss leads us to deeper reflections and awareness of life, ourselves, and what matters most in living. While grieving the loss of a parent to old age or any individual who we are close to may seem distinct from the example that follows, they remain jarring and unique experiences that a new appreciation of our human needs and the grieving process can illuminate. The life and writings of Dr. Conrad Baars, M.D., a member of our parents’ or grandparents’ own “Greatest” generation and a Catholic psychiatrist, can help us with insight. He had to go underground during medical school when the Nazis invaded and was later imprisoned and starved in the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was forced to care for other prisoners in the infirmary.
Baars observed that his strong relationship with God and his own anger kept him alive, as he was one of only six out of 1,000 prisoners who survived liberation by the United States Army under General Patton.[i] He wrote, “Next to my faith in God, my anger at the Nazis for depriving me of my liberty and their inhumane treatment of prisoners motivated me to survive and deny them the satisfaction of seeing me defeated and dead.”[ii] However, the need to endure such rigors predisposed Conrad to a cardiac condition that later contributed to his untimely, early death.
A connection to God or our Higher Power brings cohesiveness
He demonstrates that the body, emotions, social relationships, and spirit are all interconnected for humans. The mourning process connects the marrow to the soul if we engage it. Therefore, when mourning, the human person is impacted and must care for themselves in all aspects of their person, like eating foods that calm inflammation and having spiritual practices like prayer that calm the soul. Strong emotions, such as anger or deep sadness, move us where we need to go. Ideally, our ability to choose guides our outward actions or responses, our emotions and expressions, and our connection to our spirituality. In Baar’s light, if we miss choosing a connection to God or our Higher Power, we lack cohesiveness and power in living, becoming much like sawdust to a piece of wood.
The limits to seeing only medical science
Early on, Baars saw the limitations of his secular training in psychiatry for promoting lasting psychological healing. He delved into the writings and insights of medieval theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas to gain a deeper understanding of how to help people heal. His insights led him to a new awareness of how we receive and share unconditional caring towards each other in order to receive ourselves anew. When we share our lives and stories with one another, we find new insight into the mystery of the person, the body, carried and empowered by the spirit from within and between us. When we mourn, we enter into a deeply human spiritual journey.
We can come to a new, deeper knowing of ourselves and life, a wisdom of knowing “on both the intellectual and emotional levels of our existence.”[iii] As we mourn to heal and reconcile the death of someone close to us, we move from a relationship of bodily presence with the deceased to a relationship of memory that also can be rich and meaningful. This process takes time. Our contemporary culture attempts to rush us along with the temptation to either avoid the raw experience of loss or rush through it by staying busy and numb.
Some helpful thoughts to consider for yourself and those you care for
Gauge this in yourself. Consider, am I bothered because, for the longest time, I’m numb and avoiding remembering the person who died, or is it I’m struggling because the painful feelings keep bubbling up, leaving me wondering how to get back to normal? The former situation may indicate that you are experiencing carried grief, which can hamper your “divine spark” or enthusiasm for living.[iv] The latter describes the actual process of working through loss. In both situations, you can benefit from someone you trust supporting and listening to you, your feelings, memories, and stories of living with your loved one. Go back or reminisce about your stories, either in conversations, in a journal, or in returning to the old haunts and feeling the feelings that arise. Go back if you stuffed pain away and retrieve the experiences that will lead you to freedom.
The Work of Grief
If we are doing the work of grief, we dance back and forth between evading the pain and encountering it. Numbness helps us dose our reactions and gives us a break. Encountering the loss is not like walking into a Tsunami wave of grief that will overwhelm us. When we feel the loss, it often is more like being on the beach with the tide coming in; it hits us and then recedes. Even years later, we can be hit with a grief burst when something about the person jumps out at us or on their birthday. With time, these reminders can become treasured moments of encounter, for they are never very far away from us in the community of God.
Softening our pain when we lose someone actually helps us rediscover ourselves and live our own potential and purpose. By loving, losing, compassionately caring for ourselves, and realigning who we are, we learn to carry forward our own version of goodness that we are gifted and called to share. We become able to give ourselves to something larger than ourselves, something that our parents or grandparents would really be proud of.
[i] Baars, c, Edited Baars S, Shayne B, I will give them a Hew Heart: Reflections on the Priesthood and the Renewal of the church, St. Pauls, 2008, p xxxi
[ii] Baars, C, 2008
[iii] Baars, C, Edited by Susanne Baars, Shayne B, Feeling and Healing your Emotions: A Christian Psychiatrist shows You how to Grow to Wholeness, Bridge-Logos press, Alachua, Florida, 1979, p 33
[iv] Wolfelt A, Companioning the Bereaved: A Soulful Guide for Caregivers, Companion Press, 2006