"Hope is as reasonable as despair"**

On Wednesday, my colleague spontaneously gave homework to our bereavement group. She asked each member to grab a pen upon waking in the morning and write down things they are grateful. In fact, she asked that we all write 10 grateful things every morning for a week.  My first reaction was “cool, what a great idea.” Then I thought, TEN? That’s a lot!!  

In this new series of group sessions, we’ve decided to turn to the subject of resilience a lot sooner. We find that if we wait until the last two sessions, our group members seem more resistant to closing the group, begging for more.  While we encourage telling their stories many times and completely endorse crying and expressions of despair as a necessary part of grieving, we also see our role as guiding our clients towards living again.  Grief processing is easier when it includes a positive view along with the sadness.  For example, flashbacks of the final moments and the shock of the death itself can be alleviated through remembering the good times, all the years of love.  Just as one can’t stay stuck in abject sorrow, keening and wailing without end, it is imperative to let it go for a while. Put the grief on the shelf for an hour or so and take a walk in the woods.  Don’t suppress your feelings but balance them with some small activity of daily living. Breathe.  Relax.  Laugh.  Be grateful.

When I woke up this morning it was with a rather ungrateful thought. I sat with it for a while, noticed it, then took out a journal.  I chose one from several years ago, with many blank pages.  The first pages were scribbled with a few random daily descriptions and one of my favorite poems by ee cummings: i thank you god for most this amazing day.  I smiled, picked up a green pen (for gratitude) and completed my 10 Grateful Statements.

What are you grateful for?  It doesn’t have to be a huge thing; my first statement was that I am grateful for morning birdsong, even in Manhattan.  I am grateful for each of my children of course, and I am grateful for my new career and the people I work with.  I am grateful for every insight I am privileged to witness from a person who is mourning and rediscovering the meaning of their life. 

Try it - tomorrow when you wake up, write down some Grateful Statements.  It doesn’t matter how many…

***from Healing after Loss, Daily Meditations by Martha Whitemore Hickman.

Being IS Doing

Today marks my one year anniversary as a bereavement counselor for Hospice.  It has been a heart-expanding year; a year of daily karuna practice. Every day, I have been called to open hearted listening, just Being with someone, compassionately. 

Inside the practice of karuna and active presence, the practice of managing chaos resides.  How much of life is chaos and how much of life is predictable?  A psychologist posed this question to me a few weeks ago and I've been asking it to others. Most people rate chaos quite high; some people go for a 60/40 split with predictability having an edge. That was my position too, but it was surprising when this doctor stated that only 5% was actually chaotic.  Of that 5%, he asserted, 4% was merely irritating or annoying.  The only real out of control chaos in life is about 1%.

Of course, in hospice work, we are helping people who are in that 1%. They are panicked, watching their loved one deteriorate, providing medical care they never imagined they would have to do. While many people prefer to die at home, the toll on their families is enormous. Wives, husbands, children, grandchildren and even family friends step up and gamely administer medications, change and clean the frail bodies, tempt them with tasty treats that can no longer be swallowed. And they are grieving in anticipation, not knowing when it will "end," and dimly recognizing that the end of life will not end the grief.

Daily, people ask me, "what can I do?" I smile gently and lean forward.  Just BE, I answer. Sit with him and tell him you love him, or don't even say it out loud.  Hold her hand and sing quietly. Open your heart and just BE with your loved one, as calmly as you can, pulsing with love, light and gratitude.

Afterwards, come and sit with me.  I also will hold your hand and walk with you for a while.  And if you are wondering what to do with all this pain, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. They won't fix it or make the sadness go away.  But they can help you manage it, learn from it, grow with it. And one of the best lessons I've learned this year is that sometimes, you don't really have to do anything.

Just Be with it.

Somewhere packed away, I have my Certificate of Being, bestowed by a humorous professor from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.  I think I will dig it out and put it on my desk.

There be Grief Monsters

Widows call it a monster and it has a sneaky, surprising quality, especially after several years, post widowing. It rears its massive, ugly head suddenly, causing overwhelming sadness and a feeling that death just happened and no healing has taken place. I try to imagine what the Monster looks like, and see a large leer, something like a mastiff dog, with a lion's mane curling around its face. My grief monster is probably a line drawing, colorless, its teeth sharp and its tongue dripping. It has wings and a long tail, like the dragons wrapped around the edges of a medieval map of the world. It sneaks up over the edge of my waking life, curling its tail and breathing hot, fetid sorrow all around me, coloring my world dreary. The Grief Monster has a tendency to pop up at the turning of the seasons, or when the children leave to go back to their lives, or at 3:33 am. While it is no longer a constant companion, it has been hanging around a lot lately, taking a seat on the chair next to me, waiting for me to calm down so it can rile me up again.

The Grief Monster likes to create misinterpretations, to cause tears to fill my eyes when I am driving so I have to intuit the road rather than actually see it. The Grief Monster enjoys a good argument about nothing important, and likes to remind me that I am very small, completely alone and not particularly worthy, even though none of this is true. Except perhaps the small part.

I want to banish it to the nether realms, send it careening off the edge of the flat, dull world, burn it into oblivion so it will leave me alone. I want it to sit in a corner with my Inner Critic and have a slightly bitter cup of tea, discuss the price of goods in far off places and then take a long hike somewhere else. In fact, the two of them should get a place together, preferably in another time zone and only visit me when and if I invite them, instead of when I least expect it. I could conveniently delete their contact information from all inboxes and never see them again. Now, wouldn't that be nice.