September/October 2002
Surviving an Anniversary of Loss
by Kari West
The longer we live, the more experience we have with loss. But that doesn't mean we get better at it. Most of us will struggle getting through the first year after losing a loved one. For many, the first anniversary of that loss is the hardest day of all.
So how do we survive this annual reminder? How do we live out that first year without the spouse we thought would always be there or the people we depended upon for our identity as somebody's mother or father, daughter or son, sister or brother, or friend?
Confronting Anniversaries
Anniversaries commemorate a past event that we remember with celebration or sadness. For years to come, the grief and pain of national tragedies like the 9/11 terrorists' attacks will remain deep and enduring. An entire country lost its innocence, yet that loss is personal. Many describe a heightened sense of vulnerability. The world feels unsafe; our future unsure.
Even if we were not directly affected, such anniversaries can magnify unresolved losses in our lives that we have yet to mourn. We weep not only for those whose lives were cut short, but for the milestones that we will never reach, for words we left unsaid and for deeds undone.
| To survive, sometimes we just have to seize what is left...we have to bury what isn't to make room for what is, so we aren't trapped in un-lived lives. |
Dr. Les Carter, counselor at the Minirth Clinic in Richardson, Texas and author of The Anger Workbook, adds "When an anniversary of a loss comes around, it gives us a chance to respond to survivor's guilt in a wholesome and healing way." He explains that this guilt arises out of our inability to find satisfying responses to our anger, despair and confusion surrounding the question of pain and our conflicting feelings about the fact that life must go on. "We feel strange that someone else had to die while we get to live," he says. "Survivor's guilt diminishes as the anniversary time comes to symbolize our commitment to reflect on the meaning of life as taught by the one who is gone."
Living Out That First Year
"Some days are better than others," say Gladys and Verlin Harris of Red Cloud, Nebraska. In three months, they experienced five deaths in the family, including their only son, Lyndall, from neurofibromatosis (Elephant Man's disease). "We finally realize that they won't show up anymore and we don't hear their voices," says Gladys.
Like the Harrises experienced, painful reminders are everywhere. An empty chair at the table pricks our hearts like a thorn. A song yanks our thoughts back to the past. A distinctive aroma replays a bittersweet event. An invitation to a celebration arrives and our minds latch on to a memory, a time and place and a loved one now gone. A particular date on the calendar catches us unaware -- a birthday, graduation or wedding anniversary forever remembered but no longer celebrated. The more that day meant to us, the greater our grief.
When our heart is breaking and we are grieving, getting through the holiday season becomes more burden than blessing. Wherever we turn, we encounter images of a picture-perfect Thanksgiving and wonder why we can't get into it anymore. Our depression mounts -- along with the dread of reading piles of glowing Christmas newsletters from friends announcing fabulous vacations and their kids' grade point averages. If our family was splintered in divorce, we may harbor resentment as our children go to stay with the other parent. We may fantasize about skipping Christmas and/or deleting Valentine's Day.
| Jesus dignifies grief in Matthew 5:4 with "Blessed are those who mourn." Ecclesiastes 3:4 asserts the importance of times to weep and mourn, as well as times to laugh and dance. |
Yet, to fully live, we owe it to ourselves to remember the important events and experiences of our lives. They are the history of what has shaped us into the men and women we are today. Whenever we erase the parts that contribute to the whole, whether the memories are happy or not, we erase what is our unique selves.
While grief is intended only for a season, the memory of a loss lasts a lifetime. Years later, when a memory washes over us and we feel the pain afresh, we honor the loss and ourselves when we embrace it. Grief gives us pause to contemplate both what we have lost and what we have left. With the passage of time, as raw pain evolves into a more weathered perspective, anniversaries become opportunities for new beginnings. "Having made it through a full cycle of the calendar, we can see that the loved one indeed is not fully gone as long as he or she remains in our spirits," Dr. Carter points out. "Seeing evidence that they made a difference, we can resolve to be better persons for having been touched by the loved one's life."
Seizing What Remains
To survive, sometimes we just have to seize what is left. We have to toss out the wilted roses from the funeral of a loved one. We have to step over the grave of that marriage that died in divorce. We have to reconcile ourselves to living without the happiness we expected or the people we need. We have to bury what isn't to make room for what is, so we aren't trapped in un-lived lives.
Suzanna, a teacher in West Virginia, recently lost a twenty-eight year marriage and the ministry she once shared with her evangelist husband in an unwanted divorce.
After watching a fellow teacher, whose husband died of cancer, avoid the grieving process with excessive busyness, Susanna says, "I could have a pity-party the rest of my life, or I could avoid anything that reminds me of the deep pain I'm experiencing. Frankly, I'm tempted to do both! I compare myself to a video that needs to play at normal speed. I can't put myself on 'pause' or I'll bog down in a grief rut so deep I may never get out. If I try to 'fast forward,' I'll miss what the Lord is trying to teach me."
Going back to the business of living is fraught with in-between moments of dreading the pauses, imagining the fast forwards and longing for standard play. Like Suzanna discovered, loss introduces us to our fears and weaknesses, forcing us to depend upon a strength greater than ourselves and opening us to a love broader than we imagined. Knowing we belong to God, who is larger than our loss, enables us to not only face life's realities but survive painful anniversaries, as the life within us becomes stronger than death.
Creating Personal Memorials
"I buried my son the day before his birthday," recalls Virginia Wainwright, a hospital intensive care nurse in Northern California. For two or three years after her son's death in a car accident, Virginia took off work the entire week encompassing his death day and birthday because the memory was so gruesome. Over time, she learned not to dwell on it, preferring to stay busy at home that day and go to bed early. "Because this was the tenth year, it was hard," she says. "I went to the cemetery with my pastor, and we had prayer. What I really wish is that people would call me on that day, but they don't -- because they don't remember."
If we are serious about starting a new life, we must realize that not everyone remembers or misses our loved ones like we do. Some people remain afraid of our emotions. Others continue to change the subject because they are unable to speak the words "died" or "killed." The rest will keep their distance. But that does not mean we forget the deep loves of yesterday or a painful loss. Choosing to pay tribute to those no longer with us, whether their lives were cut short or fully lived, is one way to cherish their memory. It does not mean we approve of what happened, but how much our loved ones meant.
Dr. Carter emphasizes the importance of taking time to get away from our routine to browse through photos or look at memorabilia, to meditate and pray as we think on ways to continue living so the loved one is honored, or to give memorial gifts that turn our pain into someone else's gain.
This year Pamela Kendall's family placed a memorial ad in the newspaper featuring her picture. They honored her memory with this poem:
In Loving Memory of
Pamela D. Kendall
January 29, 1957 to
April 22, 1977
If tears could build a stairway, and memories were a lane
I'd walk right up to heaven to bring you home again.
No farewell words were spoken, no time to say good-bye
You were gone before I knew it, and only God knows why.
My heart still aches in sadness, and secret tears still flow;
What it's meant to lose you, no one will ever know.
Love, Mom Cullen; Sisters, Diane and Angie; Brothers, Otis and Bruce
The Harrises find comfort in knowing that their son's picture hangs on a memorial wall on the eighth floor of the Salvation Army in Omaha, where he worked as an accountant for over 26 years.
Fifteen years ago, I erected a tombstone on the grave of my marriage by sending a note to my ex-husband. Prepared in advance and timed to arrive the day this unwanted divorce was final, it was a memorial to acknowledge our 22-year marriage, a thank you for what was good, and a way of saying goodbye to the me who was once his wife, to our joint history and shared traditions.
This year Trish Schuster, a nurse by profession, brought meaning to the sixth anniversary of her teenage daughter's suicide by remembering it as "Dawn's date with heaven based on Psalm 139." She says, "Most people might find that phrase difficult to comprehend if they don't understand mental illness and the hope that I find when I contemplate Jesus' death on the cross."
Anniversaries are as inevitable as the seasons. While they bring us full circle in our grief, they also are life-giving. Whether our memories are good, bad or an odd mix, we owe it to ourselves to remember. Each time we draw strength from the events and experiences that have shaped our lives, we link the past to the present and become a little more whole.
In reliving the story we may not want to remember but cannot forget, we celebrate life. Whenever we are able to recall the past and be thankful that it happened at all, we revolutionize its meaning. In time, we discover that the lessons of loss are not about going back, but about looking back and seeing how far we've come; then, moving on. Although our table has more empty chairs around it, and the faces at family celebrations have changed, we are not alone -- no matter how it may appear. Our merciful Creator is never more present, nor are we more open to him.
Kari West is the author of Dare to Trust, Dare to Hope Again: Living With Losses of the Heart. She maintains a grief recovery and divorce care website at www.gardenglories.com.
Acknowledging the UnspeakableWhen we express in words or tears our feelings about what we have lost, we honor that loss. Our feelings reflect many things: Anger that it happened. A desire to change the outcome, along with the realization that we cannot. Fear that we will not be able to function without the one we have lost. In acknowledging these feelings, we cooperate with the grieving process that God designed for our healing. But there is nothing easy about bearing witness to a wrenching experience. The first time you say, "I lost the baby" or "I'm widowed," it hurts. I don't know how it feels for a mate or child to die. I do know how it feels to be rejected and betrayed by a spouse and lose a long-term marriage. The first time I said that word aloud I couched it with "I think we're getting a divorce." Think? Who was I kidding? Most of us struggle with private and public acknowledgment. We resist reconciling the reality of how things are with how we want them to be. We reason that what we do not acknowledge cannot be true. A friend recently told me about a woman who refused to rearrange the furniture in the house after her husband died because she felt disloyal to his memory. It's been fifteen years; she hasn't changed a thing. Denial is the only way she knows to silence the unspeakable. With time and our cooperation, it doesn't have to be this way. C.S. Lewis, who lost his wife to cancer, scribbled the unspeakable in a journal: "What pitiable cant to say, 'She will live forever in my memory!' Live? That is exactly what she won't do."1 Gerald Sittser watched his wife, mother and a four-year-old daughter die one dark night on a rural road in Idaho after a drunk driver rammed head-on into their van.2 Later, enriched by rereading his journal and reflecting on his experience, he wrote A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss. "Writing this book has turned out to be meaningful but not cathartic. It has not exacerbated the trauma, nor has it helped to heal it. Keeping a journal over the past three years did that." Sittser, professor of religion at Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington, readily admits that his experience confirmed how hard it is to face loss and how long it takes to grow from it. That first year after a loss, we can take comfort in knowing that our Creator is an emotional being who does not treat pain lightly. He gave us the ability to cry. To him, each tear is something precious to be treasured and remembered. Since God is not uncomfortable with tears, we shouldn't be either. Weeping out of anguish or anger reflects the truth of how the loss is impacting us. Jesus dignifies grief in Matthew 5:4 with "Blessed are those who mourn." Ecclesiastes 3:4 asserts the importance of times to weep and mourn, as well as times to laugh and dance. Jesus-God the Son-wept (John 11:35; Luke 19:41).
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