One last trip

"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep." -- 18th century child's prayer.

I am consumed by thoughts of ritual and death. We cling to the comfort of ritual to handle the death of loved ones, The prayers, the symbolic clothes and the movements of the priest help us to give structure to the end of structure. It helps us to focus on keeping our grief under control by giving it boundaries beyond which it shouldn't go.

It's OK to cry and feel sad. It's not OK to wail uncontrollably. It's OK to bring flowers. It's not OK to throw yourself on the casket, screaming.

The Buddha says, "All life is suffering" and that's true enough. We are all ravaged by time and finally spiral down into the inevitability of death. It's a difficult thing to accept that it all just ends and that's probably why we need these structures to help ourselves through such tough times. I know I find comfort in them as much as anyone. Why am I writing this? I'm going to the funeral of a friend's mother today, she's the second person I know who died this week and it brings me up thoughts of death.

Do we need grief?
I'd like to think that we can just move on, satisfied that a person's life was well lived and that all of the good memories of them will just keep their memory and light alive. However, that's just not the case with me, or I suspect most of us. We feel that hole where that person was and it's a raw wound. It's a selfish thing to grieve, but then we are all selfish creatures. We need those people we hold dear. Their loss leaves us with less and we feel that. So we grieve.

We all feel grief to one extent or another and yet none of us knows how to talk about it. Why? I think it's because everyone's grief is such a person mash up of different feelings that no one can talk about another's grief with any certitude.
(Fair warning: This is where you should leave. It gets personal after this point)

Loss + Need + Guilt (squared) = Grief

My grief equation when my dad died 22 years ago was Loss+Need+Guilt(squared).

It's a strange equation, a mix of emotions that all added up to a life-changing time. Loss is easy enough to understand. He was a central figure in my life up until that point and I loved him dearly, though he was a deeply flawed individual. But we all are. If you think you aren't -- that's a flaw.

Need is also understandable. We all need our parental figures. They shape who we are and help guide us on our way.

Guilt? How does that factor into my grief? Well, it just does. My guilt (squared) comes from two incidents as his life ended. The first is that I wasn't there when he collapsed from a heart arrhythmia in the kitchen. I had just left 15 minutes earlier to go hang out with some friends. So, why guilt? Could I have done anything to stop it? No, he had been on a downward spiral for months, but I was Red Cross certified in CPR and maybe if I had been there I could have helped. Could you? Maybe, and that's where the guilt comes from. The compounding guilt comes after he had been in the hospital for 10 days. He came out of his coma, but couldn't talk because of the respirator tube down his throat. He could still communicate with glances and holding hands. It was pretty clear that he knew my mom and my brother Philip, but it was also clear he didn't know me. So, after a days of trying to jog his memory, and just being there, I decided not to visit him for a day. That's the day he died. Guilt (squared). Once again, it didn't really matter if I was there or not. It would have happened anyway. But there's guilt because I feel like I didn't do everything I could have for him.

That's my grief equation. It's also why Ruth couldn't really talk to me about it, though she had lost both her parents. In fact, none of my friends could talk about it. Grief is just too personal, and we all have to work our own way out of it.

When is death the best option?

Some would say death is never the best option, but I know they're wrong. Sure we all want to say, "Do not go gentle into that good night. ... Rage Rage against the dying of the light" as Dylan Thomas exhorted his father. It's good to fight as long as you can, but there is a time for everything to end and that's when it becomes the best option. I think of my dad with a respirator tube and various monitors and medication IVs tied up to him and I know that's not how he would have wanted to live that way in the long term. Sometimes, it's time to let go. I find myself feeling more and more like the Buddha these days, and I think his last words are appropriate, "All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation."

Is there an everlasting paradise at the end of the road? I'd like to think so, but it's not certain. That's why this life matters. We need to be the best we can be to each other, so that when we draw our last breath we know we did what we could to have a good life. If that happens, then death doesn't matter.

"I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
When in the morning light I wake,
Teach me the path of love to take."