People leave us, often when we don't expect them to.
I've written on a few occasions about topics wherein I invoked a grand-niece of mine, a young lady of twenty-six. For the most part -- well, every time I mentioned her -- it related to her extreme liberalism, and the linkage to her extreme success in her academic pursuits. She was brilliant and dedicated, and this past spring was awarded her doctorate after doing extensive research in her field. The family was incredibly proud, despite the political chasm between her and pretty much all the rest of the family.
And she was twenty-six.
She was still twenty-six years old, when a few months later we received the late-night call you never want to get. Stricken by a pulmonary embolism, the otherwise-healthy young woman had collapsed and died in her home shortly before beginning her post-doctoral research on the way to what was undoubtedly going to be an amazing academic career.
How do you mourn? She was an only child, and her parents were, of course, relatively young. They, along with a grandparent from each side, now have to "go forward", as they say, with an incredible hole in their lives.
No one can honestly feel guilt about what happened, of course; her passing was not precipitated by any action or mistake and, of course, was neither her nor anyone else's responsibility. And it's not so much guilt that is felt, as it is a reluctance or inability to move forward with one's life when a loved one is unexpectedly taken, certainly at such an early age.
How, we ask, can we go back to work, or a hobby, or engage in anything pleasurable, even enjoy a nice dinner, in such circumstance? It simply feels as though we are dishonoring the memory of the lost loved one, and I get it.
So not long ago, I happened to be watching a show within which there was a passing reference to some Asian culture and the fact that they had a period of mourning for the passing of a family member -- thirty days, maybe?
It struck me then that a fixed period of mourning was embedded in the cultures of many societies, faiths and sects worldwide, and that it had been the case for a very long time. For most of my sixty-nine years I have paid only subconscious notice to that fact, always with the equally subconscious thought that the widespread nature of that fixed mourning period had been to pay respect to the dead, and to make sure that we took that time to honor them.
But now, I truly contemplated the notion and have come to the conclusion that the idea of a fixed mourning period was not to ensure that we remembered the dead, and focused attention on their memory for at least a certain minimum respectful period.
Rather, it was for the living; that is, by devoting a month, or a week, or a fortnight to the honor of the lost loved one, the mourners could become freed thereafter to return to their lives, without the guilt of feeling as though they were ignoring the honored loved one. Not, of course, that the departed would be forgotten; it meant that society removed any stigma from the family for living their lives.
It is not helping now. For the most part, "American culture" does not have that universality of mourning process; no book of rules to say how long to mourn when your loved one is young and the loss sudden and unexpected. And so our family has still, short months thereafter, not come so much to grips with this loss that everyone's lives are back to a semblance of daily routine.
Perhaps there should be something in American culture. Perhaps we would be better served if there were such a period that then thereafter allowed us to go forward and live a normal life, not ignoring or forgetting the departed, but acknowledging that we had indeed mourned -- and that almost certainly the late loved one would not have wanted to have felt responsible for paralyzing the lives of the living.
It is a lesson too late for us, as we cope with a return to normalcy.
Copyright 2020 by Robert Sutton
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