I was wandering through a cemetery by the sea the other day.  A strange thing to do on a weekend, perhaps, but I was searching for inspiration for a guest post on The Daily Undertaker’s blog. (It’s tempting to say that I found it in spades, but that sounds a little too gruesome).

What I did find was a certain curiosity which seems to hover above all the graveyards I’ve ever visited – a cloud of questions that you may recognize, too:

What does it mean to die? What actually happens then?

And so, in light of that, what does it mean to live?

Where might spirituality factor into this (or not)?

How are these things connected (or not)?

And how can we learn from all of this, somehow, and enrich our days, while we have them yet?

Sometimes these things almost seem too big to fit into a paradigm like therapy. Yet these are exactly the kinds of questions which existential therapy asks of us. In the hope of uncovering a richer, more meaningful life, it wants us to peer into our death as an ‘existential given’ – a thing we can’t escape. Something that, like gravity, just seems to be a part of the deal.

So what might it feel like for you to peer into that space?

The footpaths were littered with camellia blossoms this morning, as I walked around the streets. Perfect pink blooms dropped onto the pavement.

I heard a saying, once, about this phenomenon. These flowers, falling mid-bloom from the tree, echoes the way we’ll all fall from the tree of life one day.

Unexpectedly (even when it’s expected).
And often with a sense of ‘too soon.’

So how might we prepare for this?

Are there things that could make it easier when our time (inevitably) comes?

And what might our death actually have to teach us about living?

In the last blog post (Part 1) on grieving, we looked at how western grief theory is gradually evolving to allow for the idea of ‘continuing bonds’.

Instead of insisting that you must simply ‘learn to let go’ of the person you love after their death (as many of the earlier theories suggested), this idea of continuing bonds allows you to forge an ongoing relationship with them – even despite their death.

(Notice I didn’t write ‘the person you loved’, in the past tense? For this theory recognizes that even though that person’s life may be over, your love for them, and your relationship to them, are not). 

Death is making its presence felt around me at the moment; in my work, in my family, in my circle of friends. So I’m thinking a lot about grieving, and the challenges of doing it in a society that would rather forget about death altogether.

Not so long ago, we generally did our dying at home, surrounded by the people we loved and the places we knew.

Now, more often than not, in the western world our dying is ‘outsourced’ in some way. Many of us will die in hospital and then be washed and dressed for our funeral by strangers. Handled ‘discretely’ behind closed doors.

All of this makes it easy for the whole business of dying, and therefore the business of grieving, to become taboo. Consequently, many people feel uncomfortable about grief (‘What should I say to the bereaved?’) and, collectively, it seems we’d rather that any grieving was kept quiet and ‘respectable’. 

So, in light of this,
how might we grieve when it comes time for us to do so?