Stories of Loss

During my initial visits I attempted to draw her out, asking about her beliefs and fears and where she drew her strength from as her death neared. Most of our talks were superficial; like a water-bug never being able to break the surface tension of the water, we would float above the things that really mattered.

Finally, on one of our outings I asked Emily, “Tell me. What was the most difficult loss you’ve ever experienced?”

What followed was a story both intimate and incomprehensible; one that out of shame she had kept secret for over 60 years.

Her first marriage was to a dashing young gentleman of means in the late 1920s who drank too much, was abusive, and controlling. When she could no longer tolerate the abuse she threatened to leave him. Fearful that she would expose him and bring about his ruin in the community, he had her forcibly committed to a mental institution where she was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and underwent insulin-shock therapy which ultimately resulted in her sterilization.

Meanwhile, the dashing young gentleman had the marriage annulled.

Emily eventually gathered the pieces of her life together and began anew. She had five husbands over the 60 or so years that followed, and “enjoyed every one of them.” Emily said she loved men, even the ones where the marriage didn’t work.

As we explored the elements of what made this event the most difficult, it wasn’t the forcible commitment to a mental institution, or even the treatments per se. What was most difficult was never being able to have children.

All Emily’s life, what she wanted most, more than anything else in the world, was to bear a child and to be a mother. To Emily, you couldn’t be a complete woman without giving birth to a child and mothering that child in all the ways that fulfill motherhood. Now, over 80 years of age and nearing death, she lived her whole life without ever knowing what it was to be a “woman.”

The pain that could not be medicated was the pain of loss and grief. One can never know how the pain manifested in her life, but there is no question it found expression in myriad ways. Could it be that Emily’s flirtatiousness and her multiple marriages, her chameleon like personality and borderline like traits were ways in which she compensated for unresolved grief?

Whatever the reality may be, one thing is true. The anticipatory grief Emily experienced triggered the precinct of “Unresolved Grief”, and it was only by working toward resolution of the profound loss of an unfulfilled life that she was able to integrate the anticipatory grief, which… she did in the brief time that remained. The last time I saw her she was in a wheel-chair celebrating her birthday, surrounded by the children of her caregivers, lavishing her with bouquets of flowers.

IV. An account of a grief resolved by Lenore Freidman

In a Midwestern prison, a middle-aged couple and the man who raped and killed their young daughter regard each other across a heavy wooden table. All three have agreed to this meeting. The murder took place four years ago. The parents have gone through many terrible stages of grief and rage and hatred and helplessness. Now the man responsible for all of it sits opposite them, tense and uneasy. What is there to say? They sit there, silently, for a long time, their eyes looking into each other’s eyes, until at the very same moment, all of their eyes fill with tears.

(The above was story was reported by Lenore Friedman in Turning Wheel, a Buddhist journal. Lenore is a psychotherapist living in Berkeley, California. She has meditated with Toni Packer for many years. She is the author of Meetings with Remarkable Women, and co-editor, with Susan Moon, of Being Bodies: Buddhist Women on the Paradox of Embodiment, Shambhala, October 1997)

V. Unfulfilled expectations, three stories: The 30 year-old daughter,

the 64 year-old widow, the pregnant mother.

We often don’t recognize what expectations we carry because we haven’t named them; they may only be known to us through the experience of their loss. So, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, now in her 30’s, cares for the abuser mother while she is dying. And the mother continues the abuse, hiding the implements of torture with her money and valuables to be found by the daughter after her death. Some might think the daughter should be glad that her mother is dead. Instead, the daughter grieves the death of her mother deeply and can’t understand why. She thinks her grief is about the loss of her mother, but how can you grieve the loss of someone who’s harmed you? However, with her mother dead, the daughter grieves a subtle and profound loss, the loss of hope. The possibility is forever gone that the daughter might someday have resolution with her mother; that the mother she longed for might somehow appear.

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Or the 64 year old woman who deeply grieves the loss of a husband who abused her for the 48 years of their marriage. The adult children can’t understand why mom is grieving over their father’s death. She doesn’t even know why. It doesn’t make any sense at all; she should feel liberated. It wasn’t until she began to review their life together, and how it all began at a UFO club during WWII when she met this handsome, charming, affectionate and bright young man on the dance floor, fell in love, and got married. When things got bad after his return from the war, she kept waiting for the handsome young soldier to “come home.” She wanted the one she fell in love with back. So, for 48 years she waited. And now that he was dead the possibility of his return was forever lost. She not only lost her husband, she lost her hope for his return, and she lost 48 years of her life.

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And then there’s the young mother who is 8 months pregnant when her 2 year old son, who is in hospice care, dies in her arms of a fatal degenerative disease of the nervous system.

For many, the hope of our future lies in our children. When a soul is given to our keeping we are filled with hope and expectation for the unfolding potential we imagine the future holds, and for the fulfillment we expect in our own life through our expression of this process. It is therefore wholly compatible with our "human-ness" that we assign some tangible evidence of mission or purpose to that soul's role on earth - some comprehensible manifestation of ultimate meaning that will bring relevance and validation to our own self-image and "God-concept." And where once we may have in some peculiar way felt "power-less," we might then feel as though we were given the power to make a meaningful difference by our presence in the universe.

When the child dies a quite death in his mother’s arms, in her despair she resuscitates him and calls 911, and when paramedics come she regrets what she’d done, but it’s to late, the paramedics are required to do everything to prolong life, or death as in this case. Her son spends 28 days in the hospital suffering continuous and uncontrollable seizures, and his mother stays beside him 24/7. The law won’t permit him to be removed from life support. The mother’s grief is compounded by her profound guilt and regret.

To learn about Grief as Spiritual Practice, click here.

Consider what Gotama lost. It wasn’t just the security of a grand life behind palace walls. He lost every part of who he thought himself to be. Who he had thought himself to be only existed in relationship to a reality that had been created around him. I believe the sum of all the Buddha’s teachings flowed from his grief, much as the beautiful poetry of the 13th century Sufi poet and teacher Jalaluddin Rumi flowed from his profound grief over the loss of his lover and teacher.

Gotama Buddha’s enlightenment into the nature of impermanence and grief became the object of his teachings about liberation from grief for the remaining 40 years of his life. On his death, Gotama Buddha reminded his most trusted and senior disciples what he’d taught them about liberation from grief.

The story of Gotama Buddha’s upbringing, loss and grief really is a modern-day fable. Our culture and society is ingenious in creating ways for us to avoid the realization of impermanence and its ways; thereby creating ways to replace every loss with something to distract us from the pain that follows, offering a false promise: Just one more attachment will banish the grief.

II. Spiritual loss: Reverend Clyde

A very dear childhood friend, who I’ll call Barbara, died of metastatic breast cancer at the age of 40. I was infatuated with Barbara in my teens, but as we grew older we went our various directions and eventually lost contact. Many years later I learned that she had died only a couple of months earlier.

Her father, who I’ll call Clyde, was a Minister, a Pastor of a large Christian congregation in Northern California and a much-sought-after conference speaker. Clyde had also sat on my Ordination Committee when I was ordained to the clergy in 1963. I was well acquainted with Clyde’s doctrinal beliefs and knew that “faith” healing was a core component. He literalized the historized prophesy of Jesus as the Messiah of the Hebrew scripture, and contemporized the prophesy of Isaiah, “and by His stripes you were healed (KJV);" asserting that one’s healing was already complete, the only requirement was for the believer to accept their healing through faith.

As the organist, pianist, and choir director, Barbara was a central figure in the church her father pastored. Given her dedication and role in the congregation, and that she was only 40 years old, and given Clyde’s unyielding belief in “divine” healing, I expected that grieving the loss of his daughter would be complex.

There was a ministerial conference in Northern California at the time I learned of Barbara’s death. Certain that Clyde would be there, I decided to attend the conference and seek him out to offer whatever support might be meaningful. Though I’d parted with the ranks of the denominational group I’d been ordained in years before, I was greeted warmly — though some were concerned for the welfare of my soul when they learned I was practicing a form of Buddhist meditation.

Clyde and I met for the afternoon meal, and I began to inquire about Barbara and what she had gone through. I learned that she had died in the hospital rather than at home, and I asked Clyde if he had been able to be with her at the time of her death.

“No,” Clyde gravely replied, “I couldn’t visit her [towards the end] because that wasn’t my Barbara any more.”

I. Aspects of loss: The Buddha

Imagine the most pristine, peaceful, and secluded palace residence and grounds that you can. What would it be like to live in that environment from birth to adulthood? Every need would be catered to, no luxury denied. At night attendants would come out in the darkness and pick up all of the fallen leaves, clean the bird droppings, make sure that each morning when you arose there would be no evidence of the ending of things, of suffering, or decay.

by his discovery, the Buddha could not understand how others could rejoice over the birth of his son into a world in which the baby was destined to suffer the very things the Buddha had just discovered. So overwhelmed was he by the inevitability of his son’s suffering that the Buddha left his princess bride and new born son in search for meaning and understanding about what he had seen.

Then one day you wonder, “What is it like outside the palace compound?” You’re almost 30 years old, and you’ve not seen life outside the palace grounds. You ask your attendant, who has become a confidant of yours, to sneak you out of the compound.

Outside you see shocking and disturbing things never before seen in your 25 to 30 years of life; decay and death, old age and illness, pain and suffering. You ask your attendant, “What is this? What does this all mean? Will these terrible and unimaginable things happen to me?”

“Yes,” replies your attendant each time, “they happen to all humans.”

Imagine the grief you would experience?

When this happened to Gotama, the Buddha to be, he was so overwhelmed he could not find peace. Overwhelmed

“The Grieving Buddha,”

III. Story of unresolved grief: Ms. Emily

Emily was a woman in her early 80s who was receiving hospice care from an agency for whom I was providing services. I had been called in because the nurse and social worker caring for Emily felt there was underlying spiritual and psychological suffering that was compromising the quality of her care. Emily was a person who would present whatever persona she felt the occasion called for. In this case, she was the perfect patient for the nurse and the perfect client for the social worker. It was only through the 24-hour caregiver and the housekeeper that the hospice team was made aware that Emily was in pain.

Charming and the life of any party, Emily stayed engaged in community activities even as she moved closer to her own death. And, she loved to tease. When I would come to visit she again presented the persona she felt the occasion called for, and in my case it was to be the perfect hostess and to entertain me — and flirt. She would dress up in her fanciest clothes, usually a period gown with an outer corset, lots of make up and perfume — always making a point to get lipstick on my collar and the smell of perfume in my clothes, so that my wife “would think I had been with another woman,” she would always say. Then she would ask me to take her down to the waterfront where we would sit on a park bench and look at the water, and talk.

“Mendocino Morning Glory”