[I]magine that you injured yourself and there is a fresh, bleeding wound on your hand. Instead of letting the injury heal, you go about with your life ignoring that it even exists. Before you know it, the wound starts to fester, causing more pain and discomfort than before. What could have been fixed with a little bit of care and attention is now a big gaping wound that will take more time to heal.
Like physical wounds, your emotional wounds get worse when you ignore it. That’s probably why you hear people telling you to “cry it out” if you are going through a rough phase in your life.
Why some people don’t grieve
• Sadly, some of us hate showing the world we are vulnerable. We hate being perceived as powerless or weak. So we put on a brave face and make it seem like we aren’t hurt.
• Society sometimes dictates what we can and cannot grieve about. I was shamed for grieving for my pet cat who died in an accident last year. “It’s an animal, after all,” they would scoff!
• Sudden loss of a loved one or failure of a relationship can leave us stunned for a while, delaying the grieving process.
• We may want to put things behind us and move on with life and speed up the grieving process.
According to the Kübler-Ross model, a person undergoes five stages of emotions in the grieving process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Skipping any of these steps can lengthen the grieving process causing more harm than good. Dr Arun John, executive vice president of the Vandrevala Foundation, who has a wealth of experience in dealing with bereavement and grief issues, tells us what could go wrong if we don’t grieve properly.
Self-blame
“Self-blame is a telltale sign of an incomplete grieving process,” says Dr John. If someone doesn’t grieve properly, they may get stuck at the bargaining stage. “They get obsessed and waste a lot of their time and energy investigating what went wrong and how they are to be blamed for it,” adds Dr John. “Usually, people blame themselves for a week or two, but if the self-blame extends for more than one month, the person could need help.”
Acute depression
“If the grieving process is not complete, the person could slip into acute depression,” says Dr John. Depression sets in when the person does not deal with his or feelings of grief appropriately. It may not show initially, but if the problem is not dealt with at the earliest, it may spill into his personal life and work. Prolonged depression can also become a cause for other health and mental problems.
Anxiety
According to Dr John, prolonged depression can also precipitate anxiety. When the loss is sudden or unexpected and if the person doesn’t give enough time for grief, he can slip into a state of stress and anxiety. In the case of a loved one’s passing, the idea of having seen death at such close quarters makes the person think about his own mortality.
Lifestyle diseases
It’s a known fact that stress, anxiety and depression can have serious effects on your health in the long run. Repressed negative emotions like fear and sadness cause elevated levels of cortisol in the blood. “It can lead to weight gain, hypertension and other lifestyle diseases,” says Dr John. Some may take to binge eating or drinking to escape confronting negative feelings; this can also affect their health adversely.
Whether it is a death of a loved one or a loss of a relationship, only you know the depth of your grief. Instead of bottling up your negative emotions, you should deal with it at the earliest. “Talking to loved ones speeds up the grieving process. If you feel no one understands you, feel free to call up a helpline number and talk to a counsellor.
[F]or Royce Young, writing their story was not only a way to work through it, he said, but also a way to remember it.
Nearly five months ago, Young and his wife, Keri, found out that their unborn daughter had a rare birth defect called anencephaly, a condition in which the baby does not develop a vital part of the brain or top of the skull.
If their daughter was born, she would die all too soon. If the pregnancy were terminated, she would not live at all.
So the grief-stricken parents made a decision: Their daughter would be born — then they would donate her organs.
“We decided to continue, and chose the name Eva for our girl, which means ‘giver of life,’” Young, an NBA writer for ESPN.com, wrote Thursday on the blog Medium. “The mission was simple: Get Eva to full-term, welcome her into this world to die, and let her give the gift of life to some other hurting family.”
But Eva died before she ever made it into the world.
Young, a 31-year-old father from Oklahoma City, wrote a gripping and gut-wrenching 3,200-word article titled “We spent months bracing and preparing for the death of our daughter. But guess what? We weren’t ready.”
From the start, Young said, he and his wife had planned to document every moment of their newborn’s life, no matter how short it turned out to be — introducing her to her big brother, Harrison, and her grandparents, and holding, hugging and kissing her for the first and last time.
After Eva was tragically and unexpectedly stillborn on April 17, Young said he wanted to share their daughter’s legacy.
So he did — and his post has swept the Internet.
“It’s neat to see that our little girl, that people know her name,” Young told The Washington Post on Friday. “Her legacy is something that’s impactful.”
Not long after the Youngs learned of their daughter’s terminal diagnosis late last year, Young said he started writing about his wife, Keri — how “tough” she was through it all.
In February, while covering the NBA All-Star Weekend in New Orleans, Young said, he posted it on his Facebook page. Someone shared it, and the couple ended up on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
People knew about the Youngs’ wishes for Eva. And when she was stillborn this month, some mistakenly thought they had been successful in their mission.
“People kept reaching out to us after we said that Eva was born and that she had passed away,” Young told The Post. “People were like, ‘That’s amazing; I bet she saved so many lives.’ And to know how it actually happened, with her dying in Keri’s womb and everything and us not being able to donate her kidneys or liver, it was kind of getting more and more depressing to see people thinking that’s what happened.”
Young wrote in the Medium piece about the sorrow he felt watching his wife carry their dying child to term as well as the unexpected joys of the pregnancy.
“We got excited to be her parents,” he wrote. “I think a big part of that was connected to the decision we made to continue on, which was empowering. She had a name, an identity, and a purpose.”
On Sunday, April 16, the day Keri officially hit full-term at 37 weeks, suddenly, we were in the two-week window. In two weeks, we’d be prepping to welcome our baby girl into the world, and preparing to say goodbye to her. I planned on sitting down that day to write Eva a letter, like I did before Harrison was born, to give him on his 18th birthday. She’d never read it, but I was going to read it to her. Keri didn’t feel Eva move much that morning, but we both brushed it off and went to lunch. We came home, put Harrison down for a nap, and Keri sat down in her favorite spot and prodded Eva to move. She wouldn’t.
We started to worry. Keri got up, walked around, drank cold water, ate some sugary stuff. She sat back down and waited. Maybe that was something? We decided to go to the hospital.
“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?” I said.
Keri erupted into tears and her body shook. I had my answer.
We held on to hope that we were just being overly anxious, and didn’t take any bags. We arrived, and a nurse looked for a heartbeat on the doppler. Nothing. Not unusual because it was sometimes hard to find because of the extra fluid. They brought in a bedside ultrasound machine and looked. It seemed that maybe there was a flicker of cardiac activity. They told us to get ready to rush in for a C-Section. I freaked out. I just remember repeating, “I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready.” I was supposed to have two more weeks. What about the plan? What about Harrison? What about Eva’s aunts and uncles and grandparents? What if they couldn’t make it in time? …
They brought in a better ultrasound machine. Keri and I had seen enough ultrasounds to immediately know. There was no heartbeat. Eva was gone before we ever got to meet her. The brain controls steady heart functions, and Eva’s finally gave out.
Keri rolled onto her side and put both hands over her face and let out one of those raw, visceral sobbing bursts. I stood silently shaking my head. We had tried to do everything right, tried to think of others, tried to take every possible step to make this work, and it didn’t. No organ donation. Not even for the failsafe, research. We felt cheated. What a total rip-off. The word I still have circling in my head is disappointment. That doesn’t really do it justice, because it’s profound disappointment. Like the kind that’s going to haunt me forever. The kind of disappointment that is going to sneak up on me at different times, like when I’m mowing the yard or rocking Harrison or driving to a game.
Since there was no reason to control variables anymore, the doctors induced Keri into labor. The rest of Sunday and into Monday morning were the darkest, most painful hours of our lives.
In the end, Young wrote, he and Keri were able to donate their daughter’s eyes, which he called “the best moment of my life.”
“The timing of it all is just something I can’t explain,” he wrote on Medium. “It wasn’t what we planned or hoped for, but it was everything we needed in that moment. I buried my head in my arms and sobbed harder than I ever have. Keri put her hands over her face and did the same. Happy tears.”
Young told The Post that this had been “the most painful, excruciating five months of my life” but that he has no regrets.
“This is something that’s life-defining, and I think Keri and I feel like we’re going to be better for it,” he said. “That’s something people often say: ‘I’m so glad this happened to me. I’m going to be a better person now.’ But I wish this had not happened to me. I wish that I had a perfectly healthy daughter right now to hold, and I wish my son, Harrison, had a little sister. And it kills me that we had to go through this, but the main thing we wanted to try to do is regret as little as we could, and when Keri and I are 40 or 50 years old, I hope we can say we handled this the best we could given the circumstances.”
[T]he Jewish tradition is rich with mourning rituals. We’ve done it as a nation for millennia; mourning the loss of Jerusalem, lamenting the Holocaust, remembering the long lost days of the Holy Temple. As individuals, we do it with bagels and covered mirrors and week-long shiva visits. We can say Kaddish (the mourner’s prayer) for a year. There is plenty of space and opportunity to grieve.
And it’s a good thing. A great thing even. It’s supportive. It’s community showing up at times when someone might be at their lowest low. It’s not leaving people to manage their grief alone. It’s a built-in system of shoulders to cry on, arms to lean on, caretakers, yentas – all of them creating a space for you to mourn and pause before gathering strength to move forward.
But while we offer so much to mourn those who have passed, there is nothing available to support those mourning pregnancy loss. There are no rituals. No one brings bagels. No one even talks about it. Some rabbis will tell you that you are not even permitted to say Kaddish after a stillbirth. It’s like it never happened.
And there’s a logical reason for that. In times long ago, pregnancy loss was incredibly common. It was also often very public. It was rare to find a family that had not lost a child or infant in the course of their family-building. In fact, many parents lost more than one in their lifetimes. So if the custom would have been to stop everything to mourn, people would have been in states of mourning constantly. And one could say that therapeutic value of shiva/mourning rituals would be diluted. The rabbis, in their wisdom, thought it better to not make such a big deal of pregnancy loss – precisely because it was so common.
But what about today? 2017. When pregnancy loss is not something that happens as often in each family? And certainly not in the same public way it did in olden times? What do we do with these feelings of loss that can be so devastating – particularly in the midst of communities that value children so highly?
Where should a couple take their grief when they learn that they will not be able to be parents? How should a mother-to-be mourn the loss of a life that she cherished? What prayer should she say? There is no ritual. No one talks about it openly because of the attached shame and disappointment of not being a “fruit bearer.”
It’s rough. It’s lonely. And it is incredibly sad.
It is ironic that a faith community that is normally so very good at supporting individuals laden with grief, can fail so terribly at addressing this common and natural loss.
I know of more than a few synagogue regulars who stopped attending services and recuse themselves from the ebb and flow of Jewish communal life after a miscarriage or when they continue to fail to conceive. With no “official” way to mourn a pregnancy loss or a fertility struggle, it can be incredibly isolating and “othering” for couples — often pushing people away from their communities during the very time they need support most. They feel not understood, invalidated, wrong for being so heartbroken. The absence of ritual or commemoration of pregnancy loss sends a message loud and clear: “Your loss is not a real loss. It is not worthy of the community’s attention or caring.”
Ouch.
So we wanted to do something about that. We wanted these important community members to feel held and supported and we wanted to validate their loss and let them know that they are not alone in their grief.
This month, we participated in Yesh Tikva/The Red Stone’s “Infertility Awareness Shabbat” in an unusual way. Our goal was to create a space for empathy and understanding about infertility in the very tight-knit, family-focused Jewish community. But, rather than ask our clergy to talk about infertility or pregnancy loss in a sermon as has been traditional, we decided to do something new.
On the Sabbath before Passover, the Agam Center at Ohev Sholom invited the entire community to “Light A Candle For Your Loss.” We circulated an anonymous form and asked our community members to indicate the number of memorial candles they would like illuminated on their behalf and gave them the option to have their candles dedicated or labeled in the manner of their choosing.
The response from the community was overwhelming. We lit forty-seven candles, submitted anonymously by thirty individuals – just from our 300 family congregation alone. We displayed these candles publicly, at the entrance to our sanctuary, in our light-filled atrium. Every community member passed by the memorial display on their way into services, and our clergy, Maharat Ruth Balinsky Friedman, invited the community to pay their respects and honor the (often silent) loss felt deeply among our grieving community members.
The responses from the community came pouring in.
“Thank you for doing this. Don’t really have words right now. Just gratitude to have the opportunity to mark my little boy’s birth, especially so close to the actual date.”
“This is absolutely beautiful. Thank you for giving a voice to so many who are on this journey. All my love and support for your amazing, very necessary work.”
“I thought I’d fill out the form because it was a lovely idea – and then found myself in tears, making a small space for something I mostly push aside. Kudos to you for creating the holy opportunity. Really proud to be a part of this community.”
As far as I know, our decision to publicly anonymously recognize pregnancy loss in the synagogue community is a unique endeavor to validate this loss and create a space for a life-experience that can be so isolating and stigmatized and reframe it as an opportunity for communal support.
As we filed into the sanctuary for Saturday morning services, we stopped to read the inscriptions and dedications next to the memorial candles. They took my breath away. Here is but a sample of what was shared:
“I would have loved to love you.”
“Eternally grateful for the journey you were a part of, as painful as it has been. Your loss made way for those we watch grow, shaping me into a mother who strives for daily patience and gratitude.”
“Mothers Day 2011. You were and then you weren’t. Still wonder why I wasn’t supposed to be your mommy.”
“For the family I thought we’d have and the empty seat at our table that I wish we had filled.”
The Agam Center is working hard to make people feel seen and understand that their community is indeed there for them during their time of sorrow or struggle. We want to help people in the midst of a fertility journey see that they are truly not alone, and that there have been so many others – even right in their very synagogue community – who have walked this path with them. We are creating a space to mourn something that is usually so privately painful – particularly in a tradition that is, ironically, so “good” at supporting mourners in other circumstances. I am hopeful that we can begin to highlight ways that communities can create spaces for these losses and families unrealized.
Rather than staying home and feeling isolated, these mourning couples made a point to come to synagogue that week and watched as others learned about and began to appreciate the magnitude of the loss they were feeling. They came inside from standing on the fringe of the community and felt embraced and found solidarity, all without a word. This heartbreakingly beautiful display was our community’s way to show that all loss is real loss and to remind those still struggling that they are not alone in their grief of hopes for the family of their prayers.
An Illinois couple married for 69 years have died within an hour of each other, family members tell US media.
Till death do us part: The couple first met in their native Argentina
Isaac Vatkin, 91, was holding the hand of his wife Teresa, 89, as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease on Saturday, the Daily Herald reported.
Isaac died 40 minutes later. Family members said they took comfort in knowing they were together at the end.
“You didn’t want to see them go,” said grandson William Vatkin, “but you couldn’t ask for anything more.”
The Vatkins sparkle on their wedding day
“Their love for each other was so strong, they simply could not live without each other,” said daughter Clara Gesklin at the couple’s joint funeral.
“They were always in love, literally to the end. To the last second,” said Rabbi Barry Schechter, who led the service at the Shalom Memorial Funeral Home in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights.
Staff at the local Highland Park Hospital found Mr and Mrs Vatkin unresponsive and breathing shallowly on Saturday and chose to place their beds side by side.
Family members positioned their hands so they touched.
The couple raised three children in Skokie, Illinois, and had a close relationship with their grandchildren, family members said.
Mr Vatkin had been a kosher meat distributor and Mrs Vatkin a homemaker and manicurist.
There were about 150 people at my father’s memorial service.
[S]tanding in the receiving line afterward it seemed like every conversation, whether it was with an old friend or a total stranger, began with the exact same phrase, “I’m sorry for your loss.” Most conversations didn’t go far beyond that, partly because there’s not much to say in response except, “thank you.”
A few people managed to mix in another platitude like, “He’s in a better place now” or, “At least his suffering is over,” but it all started to sound like a broken record pretty quickly; one that I had heard many times before, seen played out in movies and even unknowingly participated in myself. Now it was being played for me at one of the most painful moments of my life, and the hollowness of that experience would literally change my course forever.
Why do so many of us struggle with what to say to someone who is grieving?
Perhaps it’s because of our cultural death phobia, and the way it pathologizes everything related to sadness. If we’re not better at dealing with grief, then it’s because we’ve never been taught better. Unfortunately, that leaves the majority of people with only one stock phrase in their repertoire, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Grieving Needs More than Clichés.
One problem is simply the overwhelming use of this one phrase, while simultaneously reserving it almost exclusively for the family. It seems as the close friends aren’t really grieving at all, while family members get the idea of loss hammered into them over and over.
Saying, “I’m sorry for your loss” is a bit like the cashier saying, “Have a nice day,” at the convenience store. It betrays a lack of original thought and is so pervasive it has become irritating for many.
When responses are this programmed, how sincere is the sentiment? As more people start to become irritated by it, choosing this particular phrase because it feels “safe” isn’t really that safe anymore.
Clarity Works. Euphemisms Don’t.
Using the language of loss as a euphemism for death is one of many ways in which our culture conceals the reality of death, perpetuates our phobias about it, and keeps us trapped. Spoken by a griever, “I lost my mother in 2015” is being used to avoid saying the word “died.” Spoken to a griever it expresses pity combined with distancing, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The problem is that it’s linguistically incorrect. The verb “to lose” is active, something we do. The reality of grief is that someone else died. You didn’t lose them in the same way you would lose your car keys or your wallet, and depending on your religious convictions you may not feel like you lost them at all.
For most of my life, I definitely thought of deceased loved ones as lost because I was well trained by the culture to do so. Visiting a Native American friend one day I said something about losing someone and my friend responded, “You don’t have to lose someone just because they died.”
That was the first time I was exposed to the idea that it’s possible to live in the presence of the dead, not as frightening ghosts, but as honored members of the clan.
These days I’ve become accustomed to drawing comfort from the idea that I’m living in the presence of departed loved ones. Actually, speaking to them in quiet moments when I’m alone is one of several key components—like meditation, being in nature or remembering special occasions—I use to process my grief whenever it shows up. Whether one wishes to think about that in terms of psychology or in terms of the spiritual language, it seems completely irrelevant. All I know is that I find it helpful.
It’s the Wrong Mental Programming.
Experts in the field of grief care (Stephen Jenkinson, for example) are starting to recommend using the language of suffering, healing, and overcoming challenges instead. The language of loss refutes the notion that there might be an upside to grief, a spiritual deepening that can result from being exposed to something that’s an inevitable consequence of being born and choosing to love each other. By shifting to the language of suffering, healing, and overcoming challenges instead, death and grieving can once again become the redemptive processes I’ve come to believe they were always meant to be.
After personally experiencing the old cliché and its real world application thousands of times over several decades, I remember quite vividly the first time someone said, “I’m sorry for your suffering. I’m here with you.”
How different those words felt!
I immediately knew the stranger sitting next to me on a park bench somehow understood something that had been missed by all the close friends and family who had been sorry for my loss, but not present with my suffering.
Firstly, she knew I was suffering, and her use of the word “sorry” came across as authentic compassion rather than pity. Second, there was no distancing or avoidance in the way she said it. She knew what I needed most: validation of my grief and someone willing to listen, even if that meant listening through some tears. Best of all there was no judgment.
The Challenges Ahead.
Significant numbers of people are starting to open up about their dissatisfaction with this worn out cliché. Others seem almost determined to defend it as the ultimate expression of sympathy. What the defenders don’t seem to understand is that no one will ever be offended or hurt by not saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
For those wanting to improve their grief communication by eliminating clichés with more accurate, helpful, and authentic responses, but still aren’t sure what to say, here are a few other choices in no particular order. These are just a few of the many options available, and they can be combined in various ways to make them both personal and appropriate.
1. I’m sorry you’re suffering right now, but I’m here with you and willing to help any way I can. Is there anything you need right now?
2. I’m sorry for whatever challenges might lie ahead for you, but I’m here and willing to help. Would it be okay if I call next week just to check in with you?
3. Please accept my deepest condolences. I can’t imagine what you must be going through right now, but I know enough about grief to know that it can be very challenging. Don’t hesitate to call me if there’s anything I can do to help.
4. I’m so sorry to hear about _____. I’m sure you’re going to miss him/her terribly. How are you holding up?
5. I know there’s nothing I can say right now to make things better, but I also know that having someone to talk to at times like this is really important, so don’t hesitate to call me whenever you need to.
Follow any of those with what you loved most about the deceased or tell a story about a favorite memory of them, and I think most people will be pleased with the deep level of connection that’s instantly created. I’m absolutely certain the bereft will feel less isolated and better supported.
One reason is that the phrases above easily open into longer conversations, while “I’m sorry for your loss” tends to shut them down. In some cases, it’s even appropriate to simply remain silent and offer them a deeply heartfelt hug instead.
Most important of all is just being willing to listen and be present.
You were born. You will die. And now, thanks to the internet, you’ll be publicly mourned.
Loved ones will change their profile pictures to photos of you. Stories will be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, VK. People may even snap selfies of themselves attending your funeral.
As familiar as we’ve become with the digital world, we’re still in the midst of adapting to our emotion-filled existences lived online. As social media evolves, we’re changing the ways we interact. The result: new etiquettes and new normals for every aspect of the human experience.
Even mourning.
“Over millennia, different communications media have affected and influenced how people relate to the dead,” says Tony Walter, professor of death studies at the University of Bath. “I see online mourning as the latest chapter in a story with a very long history and prehistory.”
Walter has tracked the evolution of grief back to the Stone Age. From the development of writing and mass literacy to photography and the recording of sounds and images, all had an identifiable effect on how we mourn.
Some academics see a strong parallel between grief on the internet and the advent of photography in the 19th century.
“That was revolutionary, this idea that you could have an image of the deceased,” says John Troyer, director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He’s also a member of the Order of the Good Death, a group of funerary professionals, academics and artists working to demystify death in a culture that fears it.
“Any new technology that gets used when it comes to death will almost always cause a momentary panic or freak-out,” he says. “Whatever the technology is, it just seems inappropriate.”
Post-mortem photos are considered shocking now in western culture, but there’s an ancient precedent for the practice. Taking likenesses from the bodies of the dead dates back at least to Roman times, when death masks were cast in wax. The masks would then be displayed at home and sometimes worn at funerals.
Nipper the dog, now recognised as the mascot for audio label HMV, was originally painted listening to an Edison phonograph recording — as he sits perched atop a coffin. One of the technology’s imagined uses would be the preservation of the voices of the dead.
A form of the Roman tradition of wearing the masks has returned on Facebook, where users in mourning often change their profile photos to those of lost loved ones.
The practice is also reminiscent of Georgians wearing black armbands, which served as visual signals the wearer was bereaved. Grief, experts say, used to be expressed in public.
In the modern world, however, our lives allow only so much time to mourn. Jobs keep us busy, families are on schedules. In the US, the situation is exacerbated because there is no federal bereavement law allowing people time off to grieve.
“I really believe that a lot of these social media mourning rituals are popping up because people aren’t able to mourn in public spaces the way that they used to,” says Candi Cann, an assistant professor at Baylor University and author of “Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century.” “People have this need to be recognised as grievers.”
The portable tombstone
We’ve always talked to the dead.
Since the invention of the phonograph in 1877, people imagined audio recordings would be used to capture loved ones’ final words and preserve the voices of those departed. In private moments, we might even respond with “I miss you,” “I wish you were here,” or “You always knew what to do.”
This kind of talk has now made its way onto the internet. A message posted to a dead friend or a remembrance on a birthday demonstrates someone’s memory lives on.
Social media lets you address the dead directly and demonstrate that their memory lives on.
“When people would go and visit the tombstone and they would talk to the deceased, now you’re seeing that on the internet,” says Cann. “It’s essentially this portable tombstone.”
Social media gives us the illusion that the dead are still among the living. You can go to a Facebook or Twitter profile to read the person’s posts and look at their photographs. You can address them directly and post on their timeline.
“Most people will address the dead directly in the second person,” the University of Bath’s Walter says. “They do it knowing other people are going to read this, which is really interesting because if you’re writing to somebody it sort of implies they’re there and in some kind of way hearing this or receiving it.”
I Was Here
One of the most contentious issues around online grieving is the funeral selfie. It’s just what it sounds like.
Mourners pull out their phones, snap photos of themselves and other bereaved, and post to their favorite social media sites. To many, it seems gauche, even self-centered. It’s the latest example of a new death practice and it feels shocking to some people. A famous Tumblr even documented the trend until 2013, when it stopped updating.
“I think it was just an easy way for adults to tut at youth, like, ‘My God what are the kids doing, the kids these days are being corrupted by the technology,'” Troyer says. “I’d be more surprised if younger people weren’t taking selfies at funerals, because that’s what the phone has turned into.”
For a generation that’s grown up with phones and social networking, Cann says the selfie is just another component of their visual diaries. She says she’s seen that in her own daughter, who had surgery when she was 6 years old and asked to have her photo taken as soon as the operation was over. She wanted to document that moment.
Funeral selfies are just another entry in what are public diaries. They say, “I’m here and this is an important moment in my life.”
The complicated deaths
There are much darker taboos than whether it’s acceptable to snap a selfie at Gran’s funeral, like the deaths no one wants to talk about. Miscarriage, sudden death, suicide, voluntary euthanasia.
These are “complicated deaths,” says The Order of the Good Death’s Sarah Chavez, who also co-founded Death and the Maiden and helps run Death Salon. Unlike the sad but expected death of an older person or an ill patient, these can be controversial endings that make people uncomfortable. The response to these deaths can be very different.
Rather than an outpouring of support, the bereaved can feel isolated — and sometimes worse, Chavez says, speaking from experience.
Three years ago, Chavez’s unborn child was diagnosed with a fatal disease. When she told anyone, even medical professionals, the reaction was same.
“From dealing with decisions to counselors to specialists to anybody who I told, there was an immediate recoil,” Chavez says. “No one wanted to face me or deal with me.”
People mourning these deaths may look to social media, hoping to find people who’ve experienced similar traumas. Online social groups also provide a barometer to see how people will react.
It’s not always for the better.
Chavez said she scoured the internet for people who had experiences similar to hers. She found few. And those who posted their experiences overwhelmingly faced hostility.
A woman she knew gave birth to a stillborn child and, in her grief, got a tattoo of the child’s scan. She then took a photo and posted it to social media.
The response, from hundreds of people, was devastating.
People berated the mother, telling her “she should go die,” Chavez recalls. “Somebody actually said, ‘This is creepy wrong shit’.”
That’s changing, if slowly.
Private, safe forums have sprung up. Facebook groups have been created for people processing these deaths to seek support from others feeling the same emotions.
“Social media has really created this space for marginalized communities,” Chavez says. “It can make people feel like they’re not alone, there are others out there that are grieving with them, or are hurting, or are angry, or whatever those emotions are.”
Sun setting on gravestones at Abney Park Cemetery in London.
Etiquette in all things
So how should you respond to bereavement online? It’s not very different from how you’d respond offline, says Daniel Senning, a manners expert and spokesperson at the Emily Post Institute, an etiquette organisation.
“The first major faux pas that often happens is that you don’t want to scoop the news,” Senning says, noting that information travels fast on social media. “You don’t want to precede the family’s announcement onto social media if you can help it.”
Those close to the deceased should be told in person, but social media is appropriate for making sure a person’s wider circle sees the news.
As for offering condolences, Senning says there’s nothing wrong with responding to the news of a death in the medium you heard it. But that doesn’t mean you have to.
Senning says a handwritten condolence note carries the most weight. “In today’s rich communication environment, in making the choice to send a handwritten note, the medium itself becomes part of the message,” he says.
The more things change…
As it always has, the way we mourn is evolving. The internet is democratizing grief, even if the technology leaves us uncertain. But it always has, if that’s any consolation.
“These are just new norms or evolving ones, some of which are quite old and some of which look brand new,” the University of Bath’s Walter says. “It’s difficult for people to kind of negotiate this terrain. But I think it always was.”
[O]n Jan. 4, 11 years and 26 days after I walked out of an animal shelter in New Jersey with a little white and brown dog attached to the end of a brand-new leash, she died. On this day, an undiagnosed tumor pressed down on Emily’s brain and told her that she needed to escape, which made her usually soft, cuddly and often napping body go wild, endangering herself and me. The humane thing to do was put her down.
I don’t think anything could have prepared me for that moment, or the searing grief that followed. But if I could go back in time to console myself, I would tell myself these six things:
Most people will say the wrong thing. They will talk about dogs they knew and loved and put down, too, or, if they haven’t walked through this long, lonely tunnel yet, about how they can’t possibly imagine losing their very alive pet, which reminds you that yours is dead. They will also ask how old she was, and when you say 15, they will say, “Well, it was a good long life,” as if the ending of it would be less painful because of how long you were together.
They may tell you other dog death stories, too, like the one about the dog who was so excited to be home from vacation that he bolted out of the car and was immediately run over while the whole family watched — stories that imply it could have been worse. They will shove shelter listings for other Jack Russell terriers at you, as if another dog could slip into that perfect little spot left by your beloved one-of-a-kind pet.
Guilt overwhelms. I still tell myself that I killed Emily, despite the veterinarian telling me, after her body had been taken away, while I gripped both a counter and a vet tech to keep from collapsing, that all four of her paws had been bloodied as she had clawed at the floor, the door and the ground during her manic and desperate attempt to get away from my home. There is guilt, too, over the relief of no longer having to take care of a dog who was on multiple medications and who had arthritis, two defective heart valves and pulmonary hypertension.
You will become unmoored. I adopted Emily soon after I became a freelance writer, and I wrote three books with her by my side. She was the metronome to my life. With her gone, I floated through a space she no longer occupied but haunted with every little white hair found on my blankets, on the floor, in my shoes. Once, in the first week following her death, I came up from the basement and looked at the spot where she would usually be waiting. I called for her with the foolish notion that she’d appear at the top of the stairs. But of course, no: just another sledgehammer reminder that she was really gone.
Grief is exhausting. Last fall, I ran two marathons and an ultramarathon. After Emily died, I couldn’t drag myself through three miles, not to mention find the energy to get out of bed, put on clothes that were not my pajamas and shower at regular intervals. I pushed off assignments because the idea of putting my fingers to the keyboard was inconceivable when Emily wasn’t sleeping on her bed in the corner of my office. These were wretched, grief-stained days, surrounded by a deafening silence.
I went back into therapy after she died and was told I was depressed, which wasn’t surprising, as I had started to slip into bed at 8:30 p.m. and not get up until half a day later. Losing a companion and your routine all at once, especially if you’re single like me, could throw anyone into a tailspin.
It will get better. You won’t want to hear it, or believe it, because the pain is so suffocating. It does ease, though, almost without you noticing it.
But still, it slaps back. This may happen at predictable moments, such as when you decide to sell her crate, and sometimes not. Soon after Emily died, I got on a plane and went to Florida to bake out the pain with all-day poolside sessions punctuated by midday drinks. It worked, somewhat, but on my last night there, my face cracked open at the World of Disney store when I saw a mug with the character Stitch that said “brave” on one side and “loyal” on the other. Only the cashier noticed that I paid with tears and snot running down my face. I then ran out of the store to stare at a lake.
These days, I get up, I brush my teeth, I write, I run. I smile now and laugh sometimes. The pain still catches me, though, and I can now more clearly see why: I loved that dog, and in giving a scared, abused, imperfect Emily a home, she loved me back, and together our lives both bloomed. The loss of that joy is why the pain is so acute — and why, at some point in the maybe not so distant future, I’ll go back to that animal shelter with a brand-new leash, and do it all over again.
