Learning from the commonality of grief

Interesting stuff recently on the Good Funeral Guide, about grief, had me thinking.

“I’ve lost him; but we had a good life. Now he’s gone, I can hold that much close to me out of the desolation.”

Grief on your own can be desolating. Perhaps a shared grief is a less desolating pain?

Maybe dealing with grief, one’s own and other people’s, can sometimes move us gently backwards from the immediate pain to a position of acceptance, a wider view.

That distancing is not the same as avoidance; it could be a wider view than the immediate pain of bereavement. It could be, in a positive way, a possible easement. It could involve feeling a link to the generality of suffering as a constant in the world, and placing a single loss in that wider field.

People need to share their grief, and their fear of mortality, in some way or other, whether it's in a big wailing session, or by a restrained, oblique comment - or just a hug. We need to know that other people get how we feel. When they do so, it makes a powerful bond, and perceived break-outs from that bond may be harshly treated - that's what this GFG posting "altered identity" suggests to me. (Cursor over the title above will take you there, thanks Sir Tim B-L.) 

Those combat troops who return from a war have commented on the powerful bond between them, which comes not just from the dangers of battle, but from shared loss.

In a (happily!) more mundane way, perhaps funeral work can also move us gently back from the potential or actual pain of our own mortality, and the pain of those close to us, by continually making us experience loss as a generality.

In the same way, shared joy widens its effects on us.

what are funerals for?

I'll trundle a bit further down this particular branch line in my meandering journey to the heart of mortality (modest aim, I know..) because these immediate questions about funerals are important, to me and others.

Charles, in his comment on my last posting, is thought-provoking and interesting, as ever. He prompts me to ask a question: what is a funeral for? Are they as useless at achieving what they set out to do as Charles suggests? So leaving "are funerals any good?" for a blog soon, I'll look now at what funerals are apparently for.

1. Let's be direct about this - there is a body to dispose of. It needs to be put in the ground, or burned. ( The Towers of Silence/Sky Burial method is not really an option for us here and now - is it?) However sad we may feel about it, the thing is finished with. It once embodied that distinctive wave of energy we call a human life. It no longer does. So a funeral is a ceremony preceding the disposal of a body. This basic function creates a certain imperative. (Not, of course, that it is necessary to have a funeral in order to dispose of a body at a crematoriuum or a burial ground. You just need certain documents and some money! Incidentally, http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk/
will give you a lot of very helpful and independent advice about funerals, from a particular point of view, if you're looking for advice.)

2. The mourners present need to be helped towards a new relationship with that body. It has changed from an embodied life to a body that may still symbolise, very powerfully, that life, but is not any longer that person. (I've looked at this in an earlier post.) In short, mourners need to release the body and stay with the life they remember, the life that has been part of their lives and is still therefore part of them. It's time to let go of the physical thing, it can no longer be part of their lives. A body is no longer a person. That bit hurts, and a funeral has a function in relation to that hurt.

3. The mourners need a chance to relate their specific loss to wider patterns of human life and death, within a set of religious or secular concepts and emotions. They need to find some larger meanings to relate to. Few of us can actually live with the idea that a life is meaningless - humans build meanings, and someone's absence needs to be built into the lives of those present. At a more personal level, reassurances may be needed that the life that is over means something to other people, especially if it has been a humble, nondescript sort of existence. (The mourners of big-shots may have different needs at this point..!)

4. The mourners may need, may be looking for, some consolation or comfort in what the funeral means to them. This may be even more important for non-religious people, who don't believe, or at least are not certain about, meeting up in a supernatural world (a life beyond this one.)

5. The mourners need to share this event as a group. not just suffer it individually. There is grief to express; a ceremony, a ritual even, may give voice to that grief in other than purely personal, individual terms. This shared expression, in our culture, may be fairly reserved and low-keyed - we don't ullulate much - but it is still there.

6. There is a life to be informed about, perhaps to wonder at, certainly to celebrate if possible.Though not every life can be celebrated. "We are here to celebrate the life of Adolf Hitler" would have been a bad start to a funeral - I'd have wanted to celebrate his death.

These seem to me to be what a funeral is for. No doubt there are other functions one could identify?