Only the good die young. It’s surprising how widely accepted this bit of folk wisdom is. But “young” is relative, since there’s always someone younger or older than you. Good, however, is unconditional. When a kind soul faces his humanity, one wishes that the roulette of death was more deliberate. We get it that we all have to exit sooner or later. As a heckler once said, “When you gotta go, you gotta go.” It just makes more sense if the evil ones went ahead while the caring ones lingered a little longer. Can you imagine what a better world this would be if only we could reverse the order of who goes first? God is a joker. He’s just not as funny as Steve Carell.
One of my closest friends was diagnosed with lymphoma just as another was recovering from breast cancer. Tita Cory is still in the fight of her life. The fathers of two good friends were both rushed to the emergency room suffering from heart problems. Another friend’s husband is experiencing his second bout of cancer. One other friend just flew in from Toronto to bury his father. A former colleague was found dead alone in her room in a Tibetan inn. Sweet singer and writer Susan Fernandez finally succumbed to ovarian cancer. I was too sad to write last week. It felt like the season of sadness is here for a long visit.
Why is it that even when you know that a patient is terminal, you still feel gut-wrenching pain when he dies? Despite the desensitizing effect of the CSI genre on death in its many forms of morbidity, there is no vaccine against melancholy. No amount of preparedness lessens the hurt. So we dip into our reserve of mental toughness and use all available psychological, philosophical and spiritual resources from our anti-grief arsenal. Grief can be invasive and pervasive, just like cancer. But thankfully one recovers. It must just run its course like a common cold.
Over and over I’ve sent texts to the bereaved, expressing the same essential idea in various ways. “He or she is in a better place.” I wonder whether the thought consoles them at all. The writer in me is at a loss for words, an infrequent phenomenon. That’s precisely what makes it so conspicuous and disturbing. It appears that choking on the right expression is a side effect of sorrow. And while prayers make you feel that you are at least doing something proactive, there’s that niggling little voice that doubts whether your appeals are being heard. It can leave your faith shaken, your Pollyanna spirit shut down, in need of repair.
So how does one deconstruct mourning? Is there a 12-step recovery program for dispelling gloom? Apparently there is an equivalent. In a tome called Affective Self-Esteem by Katherine Kreftt, my nerdy side found strange solace in reading a trainer’s guide for grief counselors. Among other lessons, Krefft sympathetically teaches the way out of a sense of overwhelming loss with all the other composite emotions like survivor guilt that is mired in tragic events. She designed coping workshops and exercises that acknowledge all the complex feelings without denial or magnification.
Krefft defined grief as the sadness that results from severing the bond of attachment. She gently distinguishes between valid and invalid grief: “Openly mourning a valid loss is acceptable. Brooding endlessly in depression is not.” Healthy attachment respects the other as a separate individual. Unhealthy attachment sees the other as an extension of self, and produces dependency rather than a relationship. Emotional enmeshment is mistaken as love.
Somehow the rational analysis allows for gentle distance. We’ve heard of the five stages of dying, which also correspond to the stages of grief. Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book On Death and Dying, describes them as: 1) Denial and isolation (“Why me? What did I do to deserve this?”) ; 2) Anger (“I don’t want or need your pity. You can’t pretend to know how I feel”); 3) Bargaining (“I need more time to put my affairs in order. My children still need me”); 4) Depression (“There’s nothing anyone can do about it”); and 5) Acceptance (“I am ready. I’ve lived a full life.”) It is odd that the stages a patient experiences are the exact mirror image of the waves of emotion felt by those left behind.
The counselors expound on “good grief” as that which allows the bereaved to discover their inner strength and individuality. It can be the source from where compassion, empathy and proactive action emanate. But acknowledging the sorrow seems to be the first step. George Burns was 93 years old when his wife, Gracie, passed away. His personal prescription was, “You cry. And you keep crying till you stop crying.” Crying is nature’s way of healing. Emotions hit like a tidal wave with successive swells and surges before the calm. Tears literally wash out mourning, so you can feel a little better next morning when the sorrow finally gives way to constructive renewal.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy began wearing the president’s jacket. This was his way of honoring and remembering the qualities he most admired in his brother. Eleanor Roosevelt involved herself in the social and political issues that her husband fought for. Coretta Scott King devoted herself to human rights issues in memory of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr. Sometimes the heartache is transformational, turning those who used to be just the wind beneath the wings into advocates.
The human psyche is not built for prolonged bleakness. The spirit inevitably mends itself and the healing begins. To channel the grief into constructive action, a circle of friends conceptualized a fundraiser to help our comrade in her battle against the Big C. Among other problems, the financial drain is an added burden. Health has become another measure of the great divide between the haves and the have-nots. One chemo treatment can reach P150,000 a pop! And the protocol could require at least 10 sessions for the first round. So if the patient cannot afford P1.5 million … he’s dead. Another stark demonstration that men are not created equal. It is only demise that is life’s true equalizer. It literally levels the field. Prince or pauper, to dust they will return.
All have felt the anguish of loss. Many have faced the specter of prolonged terminal illnesses that threaten to rob wealth and then life. I have listened to homilies that suggested that cancer can bring families closer than ever. And I can bear witness to this: estranged brothers who finally bury the hatchet before they bury family; sons who forgive, and beg forgiveness.
The lesson from life’s painful chapters can be summed up in a truism: Every day we look death in the eye and it becomes easier not to blink or turn away.
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