I can understand the practical value of people forming attachments to one another, but an unfortunate by-product is grief over the loss of attachments. What is grief good for? Does it have any practical value? Once a loved one dies, for example, is there any real point to grieving over their loss? Or is grief totally negative?
love wouldn’t be love without grief…
-Imp
Yes, grief is a phase that helps you to adjust the the reality of loss. I’ve noticed that if a person’s relative dies after a very long illness, then grief can be less. That’s because they got used to the idea of the person’s death and maybe see it as a blessing. Now, if a person dies quickly, then that can be hard to believe for the living. So, grief helps us to not go crazy and believe although painfully what happened.
So, I suggest that when you feel grief don’t worry about it, and just feel it.
Try reading some Mozi (Mo-tzu), he/they wrote a great deal about the impracticality of grief. Personally, I think that it is all about letting go with aknowledging the impact the person had on your life. Not to grieve is too detached for my liking.
I suppose grieving is superfluous at some level, but I have yet to find anyone who hasn’t felt pain at the loss of a love, or a loved one. Met a few who repressed their emotions, but in the end, our humaness seems to require the process in one form or another.
JT
Not to quote the old coot too much, I thought this was relevant:
XVII.21: Tsai Wo asked about the three-year mouring period [for one’s parents], saying, “Even a full year is too long. If the gentleman gives up the practice of the rites [everyday living] for three years, the rites are sure to be in ruins; if he gives up the practice of music [whereby one’s character is corrected] for three years, music is sure to collaspe. A full year’s mourning is quite enogh. After all, in the course of a year, the old grain having been used up, the new grain ripens, and the fire is renewed by fresh drilling.”
The Master said, “Would you, then, be able to enjoy eating your rice [luxury] and wearing your finery?”
“Yes, I would.”
“If you are able to enhoy them, do so by all means. The gentleman in mourning finds no relish in good food, no pleasure in music, and no comforts in his own home. That is why he does not eat his rice and wear his finery. Since it appears that you enjoy them, then do so by all means.”
After Tsai Wo had left, the master said, “How unfeeling Yu is. A child ceases to be nursed by his parents only when he is three years old. Three years’ mourning is observed throughout the Empire. Was Yu not given three years’ love by his parents?”
Is it inhuman to even question the value of grief, then?
It seems to me that if you value your time with someone and make the most of it, there should be no reason to grieve. I can understand feeling regret for not treating them properly, but if your life together was good then there should be no grief. It was time well spent.
Also, people die all over the place and we accept that as normal. If someone that we care about personally dies, though, it becomes worthy of our grief? That seems more self-centered than anything else.
“Is it inhuman to even question the value of grief, then?”
No, unless you understand the roll of grief it’s perfectly natural to question it.
Meanwhile, I explained that grief helps us to understand the reality of our loss. That means that if we didn’t fully understand our loss on all levels we would become psychotic. We would be walking around only half knowing that a variety of things no longer exist. So, a centain self-centeredness is good to maintain reality orientation.
We do not have to maintain our reality orientation regarding people that we don’t know. Also, a high percentage of grief thoughts/feelings is about ourselves as the people in question may be dead or the objects gone.
My grandfather died on Tuesday, so this topic peaked my interest.
Grief is a selfish, egotistical emotion. That being said, it’s an important process that everyone must go through at some time. This week I have found my self saying, “I wish I would’ve gotten to know him better,” “I wish I would have spent more time with him,” “I wish I could have heard more of his stories.” Even if I had gotten these wishes, I would have grieved, and my grief may have been greater because I knew my grandfather better. I loved him very much and visited, on average, once a month for the 24 years I’ve been alive. That’s a lot of time, but it doesn’t matter. There will always be those people in life who are so amazing that we can only see a small part of their personality. It’s very much like an iceberg, only seeing the tip. No matter how much time you will have spent with your loved ones, you will always wish for more and grieve for them.
Adlerian, I’m not sure how I feel about this. My grandfather had been ailing for a while. He was 92, had a few strokes and other problems over the years, but on the whole was a healthy, vivacious person. My grandmother (his wife) died 10 years ago. Yes, I was younger, so my grief for her was different (maturity and experience). She died suddenly, after a heart attack, so it took my family by surprise, where when my grandfather died, we all knew it was coming. I honestly think I grieved more for him. Perhaps it was because I knew him better, longer. But I don’t remember my personal grief being as bad when my grandma died.
Just comparing the funerals, though – my grandmother’s was very sad, mainly because of the suddenness of her death. My grandfather’s was strangly joyous. Everyone was talkative, laughing and telling stories. It was very loud. I didn’t cry at all during his wake, where I bawled straight through my grandmother’s.
“Just comparing the funerals, though – my grandmother’s was very sad, mainly because of the suddenness of her death. My grandfather’s was strangly joyous. Everyone was talkative, laughing and telling stories. It was very loud. I didn’t cry at all during his wake, where I bawled straight through my grandmother’s.”
That’s what I have noticed and I think it says something.
Imagine your favorite ice cream was no more. All other ice creams would pail in comparision.
Greif is knowing you’ll never have something you love. Acceptance is moving past grief. Some people might have a realization that they’ll meet again in the after life. Others won’t want life without this love.
That’s why Love hurts.
Not to trivialize the conversation, but I can’t find my favorite Ben & Jerry’s anymore.
Oh, Chubby Hubby! Where have you gone?! Why, Ben!? It was Jerry, wasn’t it?
Have a good cry about it.
Grief is coming to terms with an absolute. Something we very rarely encounter in the world. It’s like 1+1 has to equal 3 for you to live, but no matter what you do it never will. Everything in life has something you can do to fix it, but when people die you can’t change it. Nothing you do in the future has any effect on that past. No lie you tell yourself changes what has happened. It is set in stone. All the things you didn’t say, you won’t get to say. All the things you did, are done. It’s like a time when we have to truely face ourselves as well as truely face an absolute loss. And a lot of the greatest learning and insight about ourselves and the world comes in this time. Because it is one of the few times we are made to stop and really see. And at the end of it, you forget the loss and remember the good points. And somehow the person lives on in your memory. Your thoughts become a shrine as the last point on this earth where parts of them exist.
My mother chose this poem to be read at her funeral. It was her final lesson and gift to me, her youngest son.
To Those I Love
by Isla Paschal Richardson
If I should ever leave you,
Whom I love
To go along the silent way. . .
Grieve not.
Nor speak of me with tears.
But laugh and talk of me
As if I were beside you there.
(I’d come. . .I’d come,
Could I but find a way!
But would not tears and
And grief be barriers?)
And when you hear a song
Or see a bird I loved,
Please do not let the thought of me
Be sad. . .for I am loving you
Just as I always have. . .
You were so good to me!
There are so many things
I wanted still to do. . .
So many things I wanted to say
to you. . . Remember that
I did not fear. . . It was
Just leaving you
That was so hard to face.
We cannot see beyond. . .
But this I know:
I loved you so. . .
'twas heaven here with you!
[quote=“SCYa”]
My mother chose this poem to be read at her funeral. It was her final lesson and gift to me, her youngest son.]
Love your mother’s poem SCYa… her wisdom and compassion are written there.
Chrita,
Thank you for your comment. That poem was read by Clark Clifford at statesmen W. Averell Harriman and also by Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra’s funerals as well.
Interesting. I thought it was something out of the Trascendentalist movement.
You have made me curious of when it was written and I searched a bit on the author. I could only ascertain the life span of the author (1886 - 1971) but my search left me with the curiosity of how certain we are of death as a transition only, and not a finality. Authors have been penning this sentiment in such a way as to secure the belief itself. Philosophically, it left me wondering if we’re actually creating eternity, rather than it being a pre-existing given, for those who believe in it at all.
All grief –
Is an expectation that has not been met,
And [is] an unsatisfied hunger.
When we expect, it extends our personal-instinct around a concept, and we feel loss or pain when that concept is lost or non-existent, because of our self-defence systems attempting to fight an invisible enemy, and win an invisible war, that few have truly ever seen…
Grief,
the mind makes it real…
Christa,
You pose a few interesting questions. As far as my mother’s intent I do know she was a church goer over the years but we never really discussed her beliefs concerning eternal life. My reading of the poem does not give me the sense of the actual position of the author either. It seems to me to be an implied possibility rather than a statement of fact. I could be wrong as we all interpret things in our own way.
I DO believe that my mother’s lesson to me was that I should NOT grieve concerning her passing. I still miss her and wish I would have had the opportunity to say the many things to her that often remain unsaid for many, but the poem does confirm to me her feelings about me in some ways. She passed in 1989 and in some ways it seems just like yesterday.