Margarethe Susanna von Kuntsch lost thirteen of her fourteen children. Ten had already passed when her nine-year-old daughter, Dorothea, died on January 31, 1690. Kuntsch was devastated. Shortly afterward, she wrote a poem in response to the kind but empty platitudes of family and friends:
Spare me your attempts at consolation: little wonder that they seem to shatter the bond between my body and soul
Kuntsch’s lament is reminiscent of Job’s cry to his wrong-headed consolers: “Why offer me such meaningless comfort?” Rote condolences can seem hollow or insincere. Some may be. However, many people offer customary phrases because they do not know what else to say.
This may be one reason that the tradition of giving casseroles continues today. Supportive friends slave over their treasured recipes and present them to the house of mourning. When I worked at a busy funeral home, the bereaved sometimes scoffed, “Nothing says I’m sorry like a casserole,” only to learn later that their derisive statement was surprisingly accurate. In the onslaught of acute grief, faced with seemingly endless tasks before and after the funeral, mourners may slip a healthy and delicious casserole into the oven. No more effort is required. Such practical help is an act of love.
Our visits to the bereaved may be welcome, but sometimes our words are not. Silence is often more meaningful than chit-chat. Much of what we say can come off as trivial or harmful. “Human beings are grieving animals,” writes Christoph Jedan of the University of Groningen, “and consolation, an experiential assemblage through which grief is ameliorated or assuaged, is an age-old response to loss.” Our best gift may be to sit, hush, and listen.
In the Jewish consolation tradition of sitting shivah, or sitting seven (days after the burial), visitors to the bereaved are advised to say nothing and answer briefly when spoken to. Mourners sit in low chairs and abstain from wearing jewelry or makeup. Men do not shave. The point is to make a sacred space for the natural reaction of grief.
German-Jewish theologian and philosopher Franz Rosenzweig observed that liturgy, rites, and prayers create a shared silence of redemption: each person becomes part of a still community that transcends the misapprehensions and failed communications of words. Faced with the sacred, he writes, we grow silent.
It is considered a special blessing to visit and comfort the bereaved during shivah and, by extension, to pay close attention to the needs of the grieving throughout the coming year. Irwin Kidorf, Chief Psychologist at the Cumberland County Guidance Center for many years, holds that “the almost naked expression of feeling” involved in mourning plays an important cathartic role for everyone involved in the observance of shivah. It presents an opportunity to weep, to speak of deep emotions, questions, and pain.
Silence may go against the grain in twenty-first-century America. As a culture we often feel driven to act, to do, to fix. Self-help books dominate non-fiction shelves, and videos with advice on how to improve are a mouse-click away. This may not be healthy in general; and it is certainly harmful for those who mourn.
A 2014 study, published in the professional journal Death Studies, found that among the many mourners who experience a spiritual crisis after a loss, most express resentment and doubt toward God and significant changes in their beliefs. The bereaved are beset with deep questions and crippling fears of future loss. They report that at such times church friends often rush to quote scripture, whether with compassion, scolding, or both.
Another series of interviews with 184 grieving families revealed that many believers stopped going to church because they felt ostracized for not publicly praising God that their loved one is in heaven, or for failing to recover after a desirable period. Those who had been active churchgoers before the loss found little solace in their faith community.
Mourners listed three detrimental behaviors among clergy and congregations: a lack of support in general; a pressure to celebrate the death; and a tendency to ignore feelings of anger, resentment, or grief. The bereaved that “fell apart” at church were often told such a response displayed a lack of trust in God. “The faith community can sometimes be a source of re-victimization,” observes Janice Harris Lord, an advocate for victims and survivors of crime and traumatic loss, “even though they do not intend to be.” This in turn leads to a fear that grieving openly might set a poor example.
Mourners also speak of a struggle to find meaning in life. They sometimes feel abandoned by their dead loved ones, their church, and the divine. Such concerns can cause others to condemn the bereaved as faithless because they challenge pat answers and glib platitudes, adding to their anxiety and sense of helplessness. Death expert and hospice pioneer Paul Irion decries this approach: “In the religious community we need to be reminded often that faith is not a substitute for grief, but a resource.”
The trend is not universal. Many churches host grief groups, encouraging the bereaved to attend for as many months or years as they feel necessary. Others recognize the long-term impact of loss with such important annual rituals as “Blue Christmas” services, designed specifically for mourners who find the season difficult.
Grief is not an aberration to be mended. Rather, it is a universal, biological imperative found across all human cultures. In this respect, the myth of “letting go and moving on” is revealed as typically ineffective, uninformed, and perhaps even deleterious.
Daily reminders of joy and loss remain, as does the love that inspires them. We weep, we withdraw, and to our astonishment, we may find ourselves reaching out to others in service and communion. Such meaning-making, as researchers call it, helps us find ways to make sense of our loss, easing our overwhelming distress in the first few years after a death.
For example, Friedrich Rückert published this poem in 1836, two years after his youngest children died. In four brief lines he transforms an old platitude, “Rest in peace,” into something poignant and comforting:
Nightwatch Do they rest? a watchman's horn sounds in the west; from the east a horn replies: They rest. Do you hear, poor heart, angel whispers in the night? Wrap yourself in peace, put out the light.
The poem so moved Johannes Brahms that he set “Nightwatch” to music in 1888, the second of his famous Fünf Gesänge, praising Rückert’s gift for evocative words and memorable images. The centuries have not changed our need for genuine consolation. But modern societal constraints and misapprehensions regarding what to do and say can leave us feeling helpless in the face of death.
Recently in our local Bible study group, a member mentioned that he was going to call a bereaved friend who had lost a daughter. “Of course, I won’t mention her at all,” he said. This is a common misconception. Mourners, we think, do not want to speak of their loss. The opposite is true. I suggested that the death of his daughter was the only news that mattered. “Say her name,” I said. “I suspect that in all the world, no sound could be sweeter.”
Speaking of our loved ones eases the terrible solitude of sorrow. And it does something more. Mourning forces us, unwillingly but inevitably, to come to terms with our loss and all the changes it entails. In this way, grief is as much from one thing as to another.
Long silences are healthy and expected in a house of mourning. Despite this, we may feel uncomfortable when we visit. It is difficult to resist fidgeting, filling the quiet with chatter, or rushing to leave when conversation lulls. Please remember that your presence is needed. Hush. Stay. Show your love by letting them grieve.
Image via Flickr, was selected in the memory of Sue Bonnet, who loved willow trees.
