Grief can be hard, and it hurts. I’d like to set aside the usual explanations about what can make grief difficult – things like unfinished business, unspoken words, guilt, or outright loss. Even in the presence of these “psychological” factors, there is a tenderness beyond them that transcends one grieving person’s psyche because it reflects our sensitivities as human agents of consciousness.
I’ve thought about grief a lot over the years. I’ve lost people I loved. I’ve counseled grieving people. I’ve watched loved ones struggle with grief. There are also 40 years of doing past-life therapy during which I’d lead people through death experiences and unresolved relationships. And there’s the collective grief we can see resulting from war, genocide, slavery, displacement, and epidemics to name a few.
Our Western culture, steeped in its individuality and conceit of endless achievement, does not do well with grief for long. Grief not only slows down production, but it also makes other people feel uncomfortable things. Perhaps they think about the uncertainty in the world, or doubts about their own beliefs, or some unfinished business of their own. We are not taught how to feel, or even to know what we feel. What’s more, we are not isolated individuals disconnected from the rest of humanity. Whether we admit it or not, we’ve all had those “coincidental” happenings that tell us we are connected in some mysterious way. And, regardless of whatever we’ve been told about what happens after death, the grief, loss, and empty place in the survivors’ world are very real.
When an open-hearted person loses someone dear, I think they feel more than their own grief – although that would be enough. After all, they have lost a cherished presence: the sound of a voice, a body’s image, a touch; reminders of their mutual interests; the things they inspired and provoked from each other. Again, one would think that would be enough.
I often think, though, that the departed also have grief about what they’ve left behind in this world. And I also think the love they’ve felt for us is not just between bodies but is also a bridge from soul to soul. Thus, for a time, they also feel the loss of the sensory world as they’ve known it with its sounds and music, beauty, and touch. And of course they feel the loss in their departure from those they love. The sensitive survivor will – in addition to their own – feel the grief that the departed one feels. After sharing lives, experiences, thoughts, and emotions, two bonded individuals continue – at least for a while – to experience this shared grief of their separating. It’s a departure for both of them. This grief is not just some hormonal reaction of the body. The grief has its own existence (“energy”, if you will) and, like any emotion, we can feel our own as well as another’s.
In addition to this shared grief among people living and departed, I also imagine that the Earth herself misses those footsteps on the ground, misses that body leaning against her trees, misses this individual’s movement through the air, and misses that breath that feeds her plant life. We are all companions to the other creatures on our Earth, and the sensitive survivor may sense the Earth’s grief as well, even as Mother Earth welcomes the body’s elements back to her. Thus, when we grieve, we are sharing a loss that touches other hearts – including the one that is going on.
What to do about all this? Nothing, really. It may be enough to know that, in addition to our own very real loss and grief, we are also carrying the grief of the one we lost, along with the grief of the others – visible and invisible – who have been touched by that one precious life.