099 - Connecting what I'm learning to what I'm doing.

Building #griefliteracy as I go.

Welcome back! Or welcome!

This is a newsletter with stories and tools to help you be more comfortable as you help others in hard times.

It’s also a place to not know all the answers.

In the last couple weeks, I’ve led two funerals and attended another. I spoke to a group of men at a breakfast about being helpful in grief. I’ve kept doing my hospital work and I’ve met with families before and after the deaths of loved ones. I’ve been reading and writing about being helpful in loss. I went back to the place my mom died for the first time since she died five years ago. Nancy and I are fighting colds (or something). I acknowledged my ninth anniversary as a hospital chaplain.

And so, I asked myself this question: “How is your study of grief shaping your practice of being helpful?”

(I know that I probably should be asking “How are you taking care of yourself?” too. But I’ll keep this newsletter short as a way of answering that.)

Five things I’m more clear about in grief help.

I’m talking more about time. In all the places I talk about time, as in when I pray, or when I send a sympathy note, I’m talking about the next days and months and years and lifetime. I want people to be aware of grief being more than a moment.

I’m letting people know that the idea of stages of grief is dumb. In fact, in a room the other day, with the family still by the bed, and after enough time together that I knew we could talk, I actually said that. And a family member looked at me and said, “no one’s ever said that.” And I explained that as a way of anticipating grief, as a way of thinking about dementia, for example, moving from denial to acceptance may be helpful. But after a death, there’s no predicable series of stages that we have to, or likely will, follow. There are other models that are helpful (The dual process model, for example).

I wasn’t mean, by the way. I was giving the family permission for the uncertainty and unpredictability of their next days and weeks and months and years.

I’m gently correcting sentence structure. Often people say, “This is hard, but they are in a better place (or aren’t in pain (or something close to that))” As if I shouldn’t be sad because my loved one is all better. And so, because I’m a words person, I suggest that they switch it to, “They aren’t in pain, but you are.” Or something close to that.

I’m talking more about habits. When we’ve been together with someone for a long time (or even a short time) our habits of thought and action have taken them into account. We can expect those habits to persevere, and don’t need to feel bad about that. (I wrote about this in 068 Maybe being reminded is okayish.)

I’m thinking that talking about grief in regular groups is as important as sending grieving people off to grief groups until they get “better”. Recently, Russell Moore from Christianity Today wrote about a book club he was part of. It started on Zoom, to talk about books. Across time, he writes, it took them longer and longer to get to the books as they talked about their lives, their kids, their aging parents, their own cancer.

They’ve gone to funerals for members of the group.

The names of the decedents, Tim Keller, Michael Gerson, tells us that these are guys who have thought and written well.

Their deaths tell us that even famous people die, and even famous people grieve.

For me the most compelling part of the story is that this group meets and talks together about all of life, including the death and the grief, as part of being together.

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That’s enough for now. By next week I’ll have a chance to reflect more on the last couple weeks. And, as grateful as I was to lead those funerals, I’m hoping there aren’t any in the next week.

Jon