It has been two months since my parents passed away, within three weeks of one another. They enjoyed long, fulfilled lives, reaching the ages of 94 and 93. Though I was unable to be with them at the time of their deaths (missing my father by an hour), I was able to say goodbye to my father before the hospice staff took him away. I was also able to speak and say goodbye to my mother via smartphone about half an hour before she died. She was unable to speak, but I was assured by those with her at the time that she could hear me. My father’s death had been expected for some time and came as no surprise. My mother’s was the unexpected one; she suffered from a fall three weeks after my father died, breaking her leg in the process. She was gone just days after that. I was tasked with writing the obituaries for both parents–simultaneously. In one week, I will be attending an interment ceremony, when the urns containing their ashes will be sealed beneath their headstones in the city cemetery in my home town. On some level, this ceremony will offer a sense of closure; it is my hope that this essay will prove cathartic for the emotions I have experienced over the last two months, and for any readers who may have had to wrestle with similar feelings.
Given the variety of spiritual paths that readers of this essay follow, I am sure that the experience of losing someone close to you is processed in a number of different ways. I am currently experiencing a dramatic spiritual transformation, and the deaths of my parents came just as I had reached an epiphanic threshold where I was genuinely able to say, “I have found it. My true path. Why did it have to take me so long?” Readers of my previous essay entitled “Encounter with the Bifrost” might have at least an initial impression of where the soul road has led me. What I want most to address here is how we process grief, and how that can be such a unique and personal experience for each of us.
A question I have wrestled with over the last couple of months has been “Why hasn’t it hit me yet?” I have wept, yes–but not as might be expected. I remember the first time I heard the song “The Old Man,” written and performed by John McDermott of the Irish Tenors. I wept then, that being decades before my father’s death. The song took me forward in time to the inevitable day when I would lose him, and it had a powerful effect on me at the time. Then my father would walk in the room, and I was able to wipe my eyes and realize that the event McDermott sang of had not actually come to pass. He was still with me, and I believed that that situation would never change. It did. Two months ago, I stood at his bedside an hour after he died and sang the chorus of that song to him, holding his hand. I wept then, but only enough to cause my voice to break a little. Why not more? Why? What’s wrong with me?
My father probably never said the words “I love you” to me or my siblings at any point in our lives. As it began to look like he might not be with us for much longer, I took to saying it to him before hanging up the phone, and his inevitable reply was “You take care now.” We never doubted that we were loved; my father showed his love to us through his actions. We were always supported, and he was always there for us. So where is the soul-wrenching grief that should be draining me of every tear in my body? As I wrestle with this question, the answer, just for me, is slowly starting to crystallize.
Hamlet’s uncle Claudius has this to offer his nephew by way of consolation for Hamlet’s father’s death:
Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persevere
In obstinate condolement, is a course
Of impious stubbornness; ‘tis unmanly grief:
It shows a will most incorrect to Heaven;
A heart unfortified, or mind impatient;
An understanding simple and unschooled…
(Hamlet, Act One, Scene Two)
Now, let’s set aside the fact that the speaker here was the murderer of Hamlet’s father, and look more specifically at some specifics of the quote as they apply to this context. All fathers die, and all sons have an obligation “for some term” to grieve for them, just not forever. It’s “unmanly” to persist in it.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am grieving. It is rather how I am grieving that has been the source of my introspection, and at times, confusion. Is my grief as deep as Hamlet’s? I haven’t been wearing all black or muttering to myself that all the uses of this world seem weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. I can barely keep the tears from my eyes if I look into the eyes of a photograph of my father, or hear specific music I associate with him or experiences we shared. In fact, I am crying as I write this, working to reach that cathartic state I so deeply desire. Hamlet lost all his mirth. I am still able to summon some. There is, as I reflect on my younger years with my father, a moment that might explain why I feel as I now do.
My first year of teaching was an exceptionally difficult one, the hardest professional challenge of my 33 year career. My first job was only 45 minutes or so from my parents’ house, and I remember going home one weekend just to get away from the frustrations of my work and to surround myself with a more familiar and hopefully comforting setting. I tried to explain to my parents the struggles I was having, exasperated and at a loss as to what I could do that would improve my situation. My mother calmly listened as she always did, nodding sympathetically, where my father’s only contribution to the conversation was to ask, “When are you going to get tough?”
At the time, that really stung me. What exactly did that mean? I have always given my heart and soul to my profession, and cared deeply about those in my charge. Yes, I was naive and inexperienced, and the group of students I had then were taking advantage of that, but I didn’t deserve the level of disrespect they were throwing at me, as I had never shown them anything but kindness. In the years since, I have learned to balance that kindness with a confidence and a bearing that I think likely resembles the “toughness” that he was trying to awaken in me before I had the necessary wisdom to embody it. Another statement my dad had offered during that year was “If you want to make a good sword, you have to put it through the fire.” At the time, all I wanted was to get out of the fire. Now, I am glad I endured it, as it helped shape what I have become–the good sword.
It’s hard to find the words for it, but I think that my father’s call to get tough is what is preventing me from “persevering in obstinate condolement.” He would not want me to be unable to get out of bed, unable to be there for my family, or unable to go to work due to grief over losing him. I can almost hear his voice in my head as I write these words: “Come on. Get back out there and get it done. I’m not coming back. Be the good sword; the forge fires are out, and the fires facing you now can be put out just by swinging the sword at them. You take care now.”
I hear you, dad. I need to stand strong for him, for my wife, for my kids, for my siblings…for my life. I have a duty to live as the man he helped forge me into, or his efforts as a father will lose their meaning. I need to be the good sword now, to cut through the obstacles yet to come.
So what does all that say in relation to how I am processing the loss of my mother so soon after losing my dad? To be honest, it is still an emotional maelstrom, and I am clinging to whatever philosophical life-preservers I can to find, or make, meaning in it all right now. There is some manner of emotional shield that I can sense inside my brain, keeping some manner of storm at bay for now. I just know that no matter what the future holds in terms of the feelings that will surface and how potent they will be (such as at the interment this weekend), I have to keep the sword ready to protect me and those I love.
For those of you reading who have suffered a loss that evokes in you similar feelings of guilt or just confusion about your emotions, just know that it is okay. No one, and I mean no one, can tell you how to feel, and don’t let them judge you or let them try to make you feel a certain way at a certain time. Your feelings are uniquely your own, grounded in your experiences and relationships with those you have lost. No one will feel them as you do, or when you do. Let them come as they will, and how they will. Sit with them, and just be. If tears come, let them flow. If they do not, do not will them into existence before their time. Be the good sword for those who surround and love you. That’s what your lost loved one would want most. Do your “mourning duties” in the way that makes the most sense just for you. The feelings will come at strange times, unbidden and for unknown durations. Call on what spiritual practices and traditions you honor to help you grapple with and make sense of them. Hold onto your memories. Your loved ones live on within you. Memories of them will keep the edge of the sword sharp.
I hope that this might, in some small way, help someone reading it as it has helped me to write it. You take care now.
__________
Learn about Membership in the Spiritual Naturalist Society
The Spiritual Naturalist Society works to spread awareness of spiritual naturalism as a way of life, develop its thought and practice, and help bring together like-minded practitioners in fellowship.
SNS strives to include diverse voices within the spectrum of naturalistic spirituality. Authors will vary in their opinions, terms, and outlook. The views of no single author therefore necessarily reflect those of all Spiritual Naturalists or of SNS.
__________
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare. Edited by A.J. Valpy. New York: The F.M. Lupton Publishing Company.
❤️❤️❤️❤️