The topic of Grief

The other day my friend and I started having a conversation about grief and the conversation just kept going on and on, until we decided to record our chat for her podcast.  When it was done we were both like, that only barely scratches the surface of the topic. And it is still so on my heart that I decided to come here and make some space for it.  In the past few years one of the things that I have said to Michael over and over again is that in many ways it seems as though our society is suffering from some form of global PTSD.  That ever since 9/11 it seems like we don’t know how to behave when there is a tragedy.  And the pandemic just made that even more clear to me.  

In college my favorite counseling class was Death and Dying. I know that sounds strange but what I was so fascinated to learn about was how much our society had changed (just in my lifetime)  in how it looks at grieving.  For instance before the end of the 20th Century it was customary to wear black for sometimes a full year after a loved one died.  And typically people would not wear black unless they were in mourning.  Think about that for a second. That tradition is so far gone that we can’t even imagine it and yet, it wasn’t that long ago that that was a cultural norm.  Somewhere in the 90’s black became a popular fashion color and people started wearing it year round. Before that, it was a symbol that you were in grief and mourning.  So it used to be a well known fact that if you were wearing black you were in a particular state of grief.  So everyone you encountered knew. Also they used to have car decals that you put on the back of your car.  To me, those things are HUGE.  When I was in college a good friend passed away. And I was obviously heartbroken as I drove away from his funeral towards home. I’ll never forget this. I was driving down the 101 in California and my mom was with me. And she said, “Do you want me to drive?” And I said, “No, I’m fine.” And she said, “Well you need to speed up then because you are only going 35 mph.”  In my grief, and lost in thought about my friend I was totally not paying attention to my driving. That hit me so hard. I think because before that moment I had no compassion for why someone would be driving on the freeway 50 mph under the speed limit and that moment of clarity has stuck with me ever since.  Now ...what if it was still a tradition to have a decal on the back of your car, letting strangers know you were in mourning.  While it might not be any safer driving that slow on the freeway, at least the cars around you would understand your state of mind and maybe we’d have less road rage. Ok that’s a different topic. But what I’m trying to get at and trying to emphasize is there used to be a social and societal understanding that grief and mourning meant you were in a different state of mind and therefore people should expect you to behave differently and they should treat you more tenderly as well.   Can you imagine if we had some universal signal for that now??? And can you imagine if we had that sign for this pandemic? Now I know mourning the death of a loved one is different than grieving the loss of experience and normal life. So I’m not trying to compare the two, per se. But I am trying to help you think about grief in a different way. A way that says grief is actually a part of our every day lives right now and something we should be giving a littler more thought to.  My point of that story is really to say, we don’t, as a society give mourning and grief the value we used to. By wearing certain clothes or putting a decal on our car, we were saying, please show my state of mind (grief) respect. And as a society, we understood that, and we did. We put value on our feelings in a different way. And it’s funny because we say we have value for feelings now, but it seems we’ve lost of value of grief. 

More of grief tomorrow!!!