Last Tuesday, we continued our Lenten retreat called From Here to Eternity: How to Live and Die Well. During this second session, I emphasized that death is more a birth into eternal life than the end of our earthly life. As such, then our role as disciples of Christ is to help those dying to transition into eternal life. I used the metaphor of “midwifing.” Midwives help the mother give birth and help child be born into this life. As midwives to the eternal life, we are called to help the person dying and those who are journeying with that person. To this well, we need to be aware of the different types of grief and the different stages of grief and grieving.
There are three basic types of grief: anticipatory grief, collective grief, and grief of the loss itself. Each have their own attributes and challenges. I explained how anticipation of a future event can bring great joy and excitement or grief and anxiety. For example, when we plan a vacation, there is a ton of anticipatory excitement and joy about the plans as it brings to life what we hope to experience when we are on vacation. The same is true when it comes to other future events and we need to honest about the reality of those emotional expectations. When a person is dying, they and we, anticipate their death and start to mourn the loss before we even get there. This is anticipatory grief. Collective grief is when a large group of people are experiencing the same loss but maybe at different stages of grief. Finally, the grief of loss itself is when the person has died, and we mourn their loss at different levels in different ways.
We went through the five stages of grieving: 1) denial, 2) anger, 3) bargaining, 4) depression, and 5) acceptance. These are descriptive stages and not proscriptive stages, meaning that we do not pass through the stages in a linear manner from stage 1 to 5. Rather can find our ourselves in several stages in one day. It is helpful to know the different stages and acknowledge that everyone will go through these stages of grief in their own timing. Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint but what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for the grief to be witnessed. That is the midwifing process.
We don’t need to have all the answers, but just a promise to journey with them and be present to them in the pain. This requires humility and that is where our faith comes in. We will not get the grieving process right all the time, but we are committed to walking with our loved ones when they enter this last phase of life. Humility is being willing to walk with them without having all the answers. Humility is about trusting the unknown journey to get to the unknown destiny of life—eternity. We don’t get to choose to be ill or have loved ones be ill or dying. Humility is accepting that truth for oneself and others, especially about how sick and/or old they are.
We closed this session with the need to be able to sit with God in silent prayer and accept his loving presence in the silence of our hearts. If we want to give this peace to our loved ones who are dying, then we need to have that peace ourselves first. We need to be men and women of meditative or silent prayer of presence allowing God to love us where we are right now with our own journey of loss.
Next week, we will continue the conversation about the stages of grieving and move forward to the needs of the dying. I will focus on our ability to be able to be the loving presence of Christ to them in this last leg of the journey home. I will make the distinction between the needs of the dying and our needs as loved ones. Please invite someone to join you and come join us for third session, 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 29. If you cannot make it in person, then watch it livestream at: (250) From Here To Eternity Schedule – YouTube
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan