Finding Acceptance and Joy through Grief in Death and Dying
My mom died suddenly a couple of years ago. Last week, November 2, would have been her 77th birthday. I think about her every day. It still hurts. She had a relatively long life, but it still felt like way too soon. I was not prepared for it. This past year it seems like a higher-than-normal number of our clients died. In my profession we euphemistically say their estate plan “matured”. But they are dead, and I miss them. I write notes to people when they “lose” a loved one and express my sympathies for their “passing”. I don’t know for sure why I shy away from the word death. It seems so strong. So final. I don’t want to cause more pain.
I don’t know why it has been so hard. Death happens all the time, to all of us. But grief is something we usually go through alone. I deal with death in my profession daily. But I deal with grief by myself. In my faith we believe that death is really a transition. A transition from this mortal life to an eternal life. I believe this is true. But I am still on this side of the “transition” and my mom is on the other side. More than two years later, it still hurts.
Comedian Stephen Colbert lost his father and brothers in tragic plane crash when he was young. In an interview he explained how his mother handled the grief. “the only way to not be swallowed by sorrow, to in fact recognize that our sorrow is inseparable from our joy, is to always understand our suffering, ourselves, in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity? Imagine being a parent so filled with your own pain, and yet still being able to pass that on to your son. It was a very healthy reciprocal acceptance of suffering. Which does not mean being defeated by suffering. Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness. You gotta learn to love the bomb. Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that's why. Maybe, I don't know. That might be why you don't see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It's that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”
Colbert went on to describe a letter from author J.R.R. Tolkien. The letter was in response to a priest who questioned whether Tolkien’s writings were sufficiently in line with doctrine as they “treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift.” Tolkien’s response: “What punishments of God are not gifts?” Colbert then said: “So, it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”
When a person dies there are many things, legal or otherwise, that need to be attended to. But in our rush to attend to those things, sometimes we forget the most important thing that needs to be done. To suffer sorrow and grief, a joyful sorrow. There is no “right” way to process the death, sudden or otherwise, of a loved one. We all do it a little different. But we have to do it. So, give yourself grace and accept the suffering. Love the thing that you most wish had not happened.
This post is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact an attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing herein creates an attorney-client relationship between Hallock & Hallock and the reader.