Grief

 

Past Sunday evening I met up with a dear friend at The PYC Gymkhana, a prominent landmark in Pune. She lost her mother in July and two more people who were close to her soon after. She was having a really hard time accepting her mother’s passing. We had a real heart to heart talk that evening. Did not realize that we sat there for three straight hours. 

In the context of grieving I shared with her my experiences when my brother passed in 1999 and then my dad in 2020. Both under entirely different circumstances. 

This friend looks up to me for my spiritual understanding and anticipated some advice from that angle. Yet that was not what I discussed with her. 

Whenever situations of grief arise there are two spiritual learnings that come to mind.

One is from Samarth Ramdas:

Marey ek tyaacha duja shok vaahe 

Akasmaat tohi pudhe jaat ahe

One person dies and another carries the burden of the grief. Little does the latter realize at the time that he is himself inching towards death. 

Second one is from the Geet Ramayan, penned by Ga Di Madgulkar, the famous Marathi poet. The occasion is when Bharat gives Ram the news of their father’s death and pleads him to return to Ayodhya. Ram’s response is as follows:

Taat swargwasi zale bandhu ye vanaat 

Atarkya na zale kahi, jari akasmaat 

Maran kalpaneshi thaambe tarka jaantyaachaa 

Our dear father left for his heavenly abode and now you my brother have come all the way to the forest to see me.

All these events are sudden no doubt but not something that are beyond comprehension.

Wise men know that death stops at the threshold of imagination! 

Jaraa maran yaatun sutalaa kon praanijaat 

Dukkha mukta jagalaa kaa re kuni jeevanaat

Vardhmaan te te chaale maarg re kshayaachaa

There is no one who has escaped from aging and death. Nor anyone who has not experienced sorrow in life.

Any living being that goes through a cycle of growth proceeds on a path of eventual decay or destruction.

Jeevasave janme mrityu jod janmajaat 

Disey bhaasate te saare vishwa naashwant 

Kaay shok karisi vedyaa swapnichyaa falaanchaa 

Death tags alongside with birth of a person. Life and death are an inseparable pair. Whatever you can see or perceive in the universe is all destructible. You are silly to despair over an illusion.

Daivajaat dukkhe bharata dosh na kunaachaa 

Paraadheen ahe jagati putra maanavaachaa 

All beings created by God must endure sorrows and suffering. No one is to be blamed for this except our own past deeds. All humans are bound by karma. 

All above is philosophy and very valuable philosophy at that. However this is for each to imbibe and put into practice in one’s own life. It is highly impertinent to preach this to a friend or a family member who is grieving the recent loss of their loved one. 

It is true that the Hindu philosophy teaches that birth and death are illusions created by Maya. That the soul is the real entity and it is imperishable. But you can’t give this piece of wisdom to someone for whom their mother, father, brother, sister or offspring are/ were real and meant something precious. Their emotions are/ were real. Their life revolved around that person. It is most certainly inappropriate to talk of these doctrines in the period of acute grief. The only one who has the qualifications to teach philosophy at that moment would be God Himself or a Sadguru. 

My role towards my friend that day was to validate her grief, express empathy, and give her some tips to cope. Those tips too weren’t simply from book reading but from personal experiences. 

From medical perspective grief is considered normal or simple grief up to 3-6 months from the loss. If it persists beyond that period it then falls into the category of complicated or prolonged grief. Normal grief needs no intervention. It is a natural human emotion that needs to express itself. Complicated grief on the contrary can impair the person’s life in several ways and calls for intervention. 

When my brother passed away he was 31 and I was 33. He took his own life and that was a trauma to us surviving family members by itself.  It was my very first time seeing the death of such a close family member. I was also the eldest amongst siblings and it was a rather natural instinct to assume the role of guardian for my grieving parents and sister under the circumstances. Days went by and weeks and months and years. I was having some unusual symptoms particularly around each monthly cycle. There would be intense pain like a knife piercing through my head and a deep feeling from within asking for death. When I mentioned it to my gynecologist during a routine checkup she immediately sought advice from a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist was quick enough to diagnose the problem. I was subconsciously identifying with my brother !! At the root of it all was the fact that in the process of caring for my parents and putting on a brave front,  I had entirely forgotten to grieve my personal loss. My symptoms improved once I knew what my brain was doing. It was a huge lesson for me about why it is important to allow yourself to grieve in a timely manner. Grief is a cleanser and a healer. You must allow it to do its job. 

With my dad it was different. His decline was rapid but he had lived a full life of 80 years. He had lived it on his terms entirely. I was able to care for him in his last days. I was a daddy’s girl all my life and I missed him dearly, still do in many ways. But I was able to process the grief after his passing in a much better way. I allowed myself to cry when I felt like. I wrote about him. I mused about the good times with him. I reminisced all the good things he had done for me. Tried to be positive about everything related to him including turning negative experiences surrounding his last days into a positive plan of action like working to promote palliative and hospice care in India which was lacking in a huge measure and he could certainly have benefited from. 

Ultimately one needs to lift oneself out of the grief and move forward. You lift up your friends and help them move on with their lives. All the philosophy you have learned you can gently discuss once the period of acute grief has passed, that too only if you see the necessity for that, and in very small, measured doses, with an understanding of how much that person is capable of swallowing. What a grieving person often needs is a hand on the shoulder, a sort of reminder that their loved one is still watching over them and that they will not be alone in the journey ahead. They also often need to be assigned some meaningful responsibility that brings a sense of purpose. This is very effective in filling the void in their lives. 

When my brother passed away I had thought that I I would never again see the smiles on the face of my parents. They proved me wrong. They gave me a big lesson on courage and unselfishness. The reason they lifted themselves up from such devastating loss was because they did not want my sister and me and the grandchildren to be bogged by their own grief. They didn’t want sorrowful feelings to dominate in our lives for too long. I think this is a lesson for anyone going through grief. To think of the impact it has on people around you. Our grief must not spill into other’s lives, directly or indirectly, for extended periods. 

We must acknowledge our human vulnerabilities and allow grief to express. At the same time we must remain sensitive to our fellow humans. It is a delicate balancing act.

Lastly, death is the greatest teachers of all. Every loss, every suffering brings some of the most valuable lessons in life. We must be ready to learn. 

Extreme sense of loss, as I came to realize, can change the trajectory of one’s life and make you turn inwards on a spiritual journey that you may have never considered if life had been comfortable all along. You would have missed one of the prime privileges of human existence which is to find who you are.