Death, Dying & Bereavement

We don't talk enough about death (or dying). We don't talk about our own fears of dying. We view the subjects of death and dying as somehow abstract, as though they are happening 'over there.' We move through life in this haze of unlimited time, days fading into weeks fading into months, fading into years. We don't recognize the blip we are on the cosmic radar until...when? When we finally know someone who has a terminal illness (or we ourselves have one)? Or maybe it's when we lose someone too soon, a child or a a sibling taken at a young age, then death becomes very real. It takes witnessing death close up before we are willing to confront our own mortality. I'll be the first to tell you I fear death. I have too much I want to do in this life. The idea of a life cut short is the saddest and most frustrating thing I can think of. And yet, most weekends you will catch me sitting on the back porch with my husband, doing next to nothing, whiling away the time chatting, reading, listening to the birds. We have perfected doing next to nothing. In those moments if a meteor were to come out of the sky and crash into our home, obliterating us I think I might be OK with that.

I am not my husband's first wife. He had a wife, Robin, to whom he was married for 25 years. Until one morning he woke up and she didn't. There was no warning, no big diagnosis, or car accident. He simply woke up and she simply did not. Some days I think about what that morning must have been like for him, rolling over next to the person you love, only to find them gone. I love him so much that the thought of that moment in his life chokes me with tears for what he went through. And so here I am, living a life that was someone else's, lying next to someone else's husband (now mine).

This was not his first brush with death. My husband is a special soul. He moved his grandparents in when they needed care and four generations lived together for years as they aged. Both of his grandparents died in his home (the home I live in now). Theirs were slower declines more typical of the aging. Hospice was eventually brought in and they both passed in the downstairs bedroom of our house (the bedrooms his mom now calls hers). My husband knows death more intimately than most. You can see it on him sometimes. It's in the eyes. He also jokes about death like no one else I know. I guess he's earned it. We joke about putting his mom in a Nestle quick box (which is what her mom is in for some reason. It happened before I got here, I have no idea why, maybe she loved Nestle quick?), about getting rid of all her Star Wars Tchotchkes and carousel horses. Death seems closer here and yet not in a fearful way.

We as a society have become so removed from death (and the dying process) that I believe it adds to the fear that surrounds it and contributes to how we struggle afterward (bereavement). Once upon a time we laid out our dead in our living rooms, and we "sat up" with our dead loved one. People came to visit (the original "wake") and family and friends would stay up all night with the body the night before the funeral. Now once our loved one passes we have very little to do with the body itself. I think that lack of connection adds to the mystery (which once wasn't mystery at all) and fear.

Quite often I find myself contemplating which school of psychology resonates with me most, and like many modern social workers & psychologists Humanism is at the top of the list, followed by Behaviorism. But Existentialism is right there too. The meaning we make of our lives (that of purpose, fulfillment, destiny, etc.) involve many questions about existence that we all have, and I find those questions especially relevant when we are facing death (ours or someone close to us). Asking ourselves about what makes our life meaningful is one of the most important questions we can face as a human being (after all reasoning is what makes us different from the rest of the animals).

This question of meaning pops up at numerous points in our life: emerging adulthood, marriage, having children, middle age, the loss of our parents, and ultimately facing our own mortality. I enjoy it when these kinds of questions come up in session and I really love hearing what my clients say. Sometimes I will prompt them with a Motivational Interviewing technique called the Miracle Question. I'll ask them how they envision their future, if there were no constraints. Their answers are telling. Once they answer I asked what steps they are taking right now to get them there. Some of them have immediate answers, while others you can see they are thinking about it and realizing they don't know. It's a great question to ask ourselves too on occasion. Knowing that we will all face death and the loss of those we love, and realizing that our time in this world is brief, actively working toward making it meaningful is one of the most effective ways we can manage some of the feelings that come along with death, dying and bereavement.