Getting Through Grief And Religion

[Kurari]

I think I'm just going to end up blurting a bunch of stuff out here, so if it's rambling and doesn't make a lot of sense, I apologize in advance.

 

My grandfather died one week ago. He was 97 years old and someone I loved very much...but there were issues that prevented me from developing a close relationship with him. One of which being the fact that I live in and was raised in Seattle while they are in Birmingham Alabama. So, we didn't get to visit much.

 

The good stuff is that my grandfather was always there for my family. When my mother started going insane and could not/would not provide for us anymore, he paid a stipend every single month to make sure we were all taken care of, could stay in our house, and so on. If you needed him, he was there for you. He was also a really inspirational person. He had many friends and did a lot for the community. He was a doctor and innovated some new techniques for his field of specialty. He also taught medicine, developed local hospitals, and worked tirelessly to make sure that people who could not pay for medical care got it anyway. He also cared a lot for animals, especially birds. He loved birds and built birdhouses, fed them, and helped with endangered species conservation. He lived a good, long life and genuinely cared about others.

 

Now for the conflicting parts...my grandparents are Old Money Deep Southern Blue Bloods. This means that I've had to deal with listening to some racist slurs and their devout Presbyterianism. My grandparents were elders and decons at their church for many, many years. My mother suffered religious abuse growing up, and became apostate and an agnostic. She could not WAIT to escape from the South. She also really hated her mother and they never got along. She loved her dad dearly though...she just couldn't really have a relationship with just him without getting through my grandmother first.

 

I grew up in an atheist/agnostic household, so my parents did NOT want religion to influence on us. My parents split up briefly when my brother was around 4 years old and before I was born. Mom moved back with her parents in Alabama for a bit at that time while the parents were trying to work through the trouble in their marriage. My brother showed me the Sunday school around the side of the church that he went to during that time. My brother is also an atheist, and I was shocked to learn he'd actually been to Sunday School (I never have.) I said, "I guess Mom wasn't going to get away with preventing you from going so long as you were under the grandparent's roof, hunh?" My brother nodded and said, "Yeah, more than likely."

 

I was one of the pallbearers. One of the things while I was trying to squish my way over that Alabama red clay mud and not drop it was, "Dead people are surprisingly heavy." It really hit me then that I was carrying my granddad and he was really gone. As if he had never been The same as the clay I was trying not to slip on.

 

I kind of muddled through the memorial after that in the church. I felt like I was sitting in a really pretty insane asylum and trying not to attract the attention of the inmates.

 

One of the hymns we sang was "The Old Rugged Cross", which I was fortunate not to have heard of till then.

 

"On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,

the emblem of suff'ring and shame;

and I love that old cross where the dearest and the best,

For a world of lost sinners was slain."

 

Um...That's really disturbing. O_o

 

 

It was just...awkward. Lots of talk about God and how my Granddad isn't really gone, he's just been called home. And I felt intense pain because I know that isn't true. But I really wanted to believe again that he was out there without his body somewhere with my mom and our loved ones, and I'd get to go "home" someday to them too. I thought I was OK with the thought of just oblivion, but I guess I'm not quite so yet.

 

I guess what really hurts most here is that I had to miss out on having a special loved one in my life because of religion and other dogmatic beliefs.

 

Again, I'm sorry this is just a disjointed word dump. I just needed to get that out of my system and try to find some comfort with others who understand what I'm going through and feeling here.

[Margee]

hi Kurari. Thanks for sharing that story and I'm sorry for your grief. I can totally relate.

 

The whole story is wonderful and sad.....such is life, eh? Religion can definetely separate people........It's very sad but true. We're probably going to have that problem for a long, long time yet because people need the 'dream' that we will all meet again, so it dosen't make death look so bad afterall.

 

I had to 're-grieve' my whole family after I deconverted. I knew in my heart that I would probably never see them again. This was very hard on me in the last couple of years. When they died, I was still a believer, so I had that hope that I was going to see them again. Looking through the glasses of reality isn't much fun.

 

I still want to believe in an afterlife every now and again.......as much of a 'non-believer' that I am today....I am still always hoping that there is a spirit world out there somewhere.

 

Kurari... I would go ahead and grieve this wonderful man...let those tears fall for the sadness and enemy of death that will take us all someday. It will get better in time....it does for most of us.

 

Maybe, there will be an afterlife....I don't think there's anything wrong with hanging on to this one last thread of hope?.

Hang on to all those wonderful memories, my friend and best of love and wishes for your grieving recovery.

[asanerman]

 

Again, I'm sorry this is just a disjointed word dump. I just needed to get that out of my system and try to find some comfort with others who understand what I'm going through and feeling here.

 

Kurari, yours is not a disjointed word dump! Not at all! I know the words to well, the melencoly too deeply!

 

Disjointed not at all!

 

Some years back I took the preceding from Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), of all people--may the powers that be, forgive me:

 

Although the work of such pioneers as Cecily Saunders in the hospice movement and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Stephen Levine. and Ondrea Levine in their work with death and dying have done a great deal to enlighten us in this area, we remain a society in which death is viewed as the enemy, an onerous thing to be hidden or shunned, and separated, physically and philosophically, as much as possible from living.

How else would materialistic culture view the death of our material being except as an abomination and a defeat This ;denial of death, to quote the title of Ernest Becker's groundbreaking book, have created a phobic atmosphere surrounding the issue of our own mortality, as well as the kind of fascination that arises with a taboos.

We see this clearly in the cultures obsession with violence, and its preoccupation with such topics as euthanasia, suicide and casualties of street crime and war. Like anything we seek to repress, the fear of death holds a particular, insidious power over our culture. Underneath our youth-conscious, death denying veneer, we are, in fact, more morbid than societies which death is confronted more openly. ~

Still Here

pp. 148-149

 

 

My entire attitude toward death, not unlike Alpert's, has changed, and the implications for my life have been profound.

 

I can say with him; "though I'm not completely rid of fear-- no one short of a liberated being, of whom there are very few can claim this-- I can honestly say that from where I sit today, death does not terrify me as it did; on a good day, with my mind at peace, death and life seem almost equally appealing." Thanks in large part to my "struggling" with grave health issues which has brought death a great deal closer, I’ve learned to relax my hold on life, "to rest in life like a bird resting on a dry branch, ready to fly away."

 

How did I experience this change?--what some call "good grief"--well...in a word, my suffering lessens as I realize that the world always remains indistinct from itself despite the appearance of dualisms.

 

My wish for each of us, Kurari, is that we might settle into life with the feeling of "release, completion and fulfillment!"

 

Much Peace,

 

saner