On Grief and Doing What We Do Not Do Well

A new series streaming on Netfix this season, called The Kominsky Method, stars Michael Douglas as an aging actor who has never quite achieved success. When the series begins, he is an acting teacher in Hollywood. His best friend, a successful Hollywood agent and a mover and a shaker in the industry, is played by Alan Arkin.

In the second episode, the agent played by Arkin loses his wife to cancer. Kominsky (Michael Douglas) helps his friend to put together the memorial service his wife planned after she went off chemo for the last time. In addition to requiring that her service include performances by Barbara Striesand and Patti LaBelle, and a five minute talk by Jay Leno, all friends of the Hollywood agent and his wife, Alan Arkin’s wife requires that they find driftwood from a shipwreck on a nearby beach or island to use to make her coffin.

This episode works well as comedy and as a commentary on Hollywood. Certainly, when it comes to Hollywood serving itself, no one should be surprised that death would be seen as just another reason to put on a show. Yet watching it, I was struck by something very human about about how we see and approach death and dying. We approach it the way we do everything, by trying to do what we do best. In Hollywood, it’s perform. I could imagine construction workers going out and building some memorial. At the loss of my son, I wrote poetry.

Yet the problem is this: What we do well in life isn’t always what works when faced with the grieving and with the loss of loved ones.

What the Church Does Well

As for the church, I have noticed that the one thing we do well is talk. Talk is the way we control ourselves and others. Even when I have sensed that I am not getting through to someone, for example, when discussing politics with a friend who holds a different position, or with one of my children, I will keep talking. And when I stop talking, I am still thinking about the things I want to say. Perhaps if I reframe it, I think, all will become clear. Even after I stop talking, I am still thinking, not about what the other is saying, but about the next point I am going to make. 

Before thinking about it, this is what we will bring to the grieving among us, our methods of control; no matter how gentle we think our words may be, they are our tools and methods, after all. This is how we have lived the life of faith. Suffering stands before us as something that might challenge that control.

Unfortunately, too many of the things that we say to the grieving, too many things that I have said to the grieving, can leave the impression that they are not really accepted in their current state. We tell them that their loved one is “in a better place,” or that “their loved one would not like to see them like this.” These are words of dismissal. They tell the mourning to get over it, to move on.

Part of our need to talk may also come from thinking that we need to defend God. With suffering, when everything that has happened would seem to defy our expectations for a good life and what we sometimes call the promises of God, we might be prone to defend God and put this experience in the proper light. We must speak for God. In this spirit, so many people have felt led to share “overcoming” and “triumphal” words with me that simply made me more sad than I already was.

This is something along the lines of what Job’s comforters did. Recall that, in that story, after Job lost everything—his possessions, his livelihood, his children, and his health—his friends came and sat around him and wept with him. They did that for a week.

During the second week, however, they began to talk. They talked about what God really thought of what had happened and why it happened to Job. And these friends turned out to be wrong. At the end, they were told to repent. 

We may fail to notice that our talk may be telling the grieving to deny their loss. If we want them to have hope and to put on good cheer, our saying so actually goes in direct opposition to the experiences of the one who is suffering. In telling someone to look on the bright side or accept that their daughter is in heaven, we are asking this person, in all of his or her stress, to somehow ignore that their loved one is gone. When I was told to just praise God anyway, I felt like I had sinned deeply because I really couldn’t. I missed my son. I also felt horribly responsible for his death--as all parents do. 

Doing What We Aren’t Good At

This focus on what we shouldn’t do shows us what we should do. In fact, what I’ve found is that doing what we should do actually opens the way to God’s grace in the shadow of death. I came to understand this after attending a few Survivors of Suicide meetings and listening to the instructions. We were instructed, first, not to interrupt another or to give them advice. We were to let the other talk until finished. Also important was that when someone began to cry, it was not our place to hug them, touch them, or hand them a tissue. Such actions, especially handing them a tissue, suggest that we want them to stop crying. What was desired in the group was for everyone to be honest, forthcoming, and fully expressive of their grief. Even handing someone a tissue could be construed as a kind of denial.

Behind the pain of those of us who grieve is the real loss of a person we would like to have back. And getting that person back is deeply tied to getting back the life we ourselves once lived with them. And that is what we can't have. So we are faced with this most harsh journey. We must go on living without the one we love. We are the ones who must do it, and no one else should take that away from us or add to it. We must simply go forward with loss.

The Beatitude reads, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

This is messy, but it is the mourning that Jesus says will be comforted. Do we have the faith to see and believe this? It isn’t what we tend to do well. But it is worth trying.