What If We Just Need to Grieve?
An Introduction to the Five Gates of Grief
When people look at how much time I spent with my parents during my dad’s 15-month battle with cancer, the fact that I was there for the surgeries, daily visits during hospitalizations, driving my parents to who knows how many appointments, getting them moved into an independent living place with a week’s notice, and dropping everything to be with him at his deathbed, they assume we were close.
One of my best friends even left me this long voice message after my dad passed about how obvious it was when we met that my dad had played a huge role in my life. His reasoning: great men come from great men.
But the truth is, we weren’t all that close. In fact, while planning his funeral, I’m discovering that in some ways, I didn’t even know the man.
Wait, Dad What?
I’ve mentioned a few times here how Vietnam was a formative experience for my dad. Then, a week ago, while we were at the funeral home, my mom dropped the bomb that he never supported the war. He didn’t support the Korean War before that. Or any US military interventionism. He wasn’t anti-war, just anti-aggression or using the armed forces as part of American Imperialism.
Because he was ROTC, something he only did because his father wouldn’t help him pay for college, he was drafted. His ethics wouldn’t allow him to take the money and run, so when drafted, he served. When he finished his tour and they asked him to join the reserves, he didn’t just say, “No.” but, “Hell no!” Then he threw away his uniforms, only keeping one fatigue jacket.
How did I not know this about my dad? Ultimately, it’s because he never shared anything about his life. And it wasn’t just me. I texted my brother about Vietnam. He was equally shocked. But it wasn’t just Vietnam (I know lots of vets who don’t talk about that). He didn’t talk much about being raised a military brat, what inspired him to become a mining engineer, his relationship with his father, or, well, anything.
Moreover, he didn’t ask much about me other than what I was learning in school and later on how work was going. As a kid, I’d help him with woodworking projects and household chores. I’m sure I was a rabid fan of the Denver Broncos growing up because it was a chance to connect with him at some level, but in all the doing we never talked about anything beyond the project at hand.
He would show up in beautiful ways when most needed, but apparently, I didn’t really know him and I don’t think he ever knew me. And if you don’t know each other, how can you be close?
So if closeness didn’t drive me to spend all that time with my parents during his cancer treatment, what did?
Duty or Love?
About a month into my dad’s treatment, my dad made a comment about me helping out because I was a good oldest son.
Those words made my stomach turn.
Inasmuch as I know the man, I can understand this comment. After all, as far as I can tell, he lived a life of duty. He did what he was supposed to do, whether it was go to Vietnam, have two kids and a house in the suburbs, or devote his life to providing for his family. Perhaps this is even true of the support he gave to his dad (who died of cancer in 2006) and taking care of his mom’s finances (until she died in 2014).
That said, since embracing the soul of soul, the idea of living from duty feels repulsive. Rather, I aim to live from love.
I wanted to be there with him this past year. I wanted to see him get the best care, be treated with dignity, and feel supported through the journey. If the worst possible outcome happened, I wanted him to know that my mom would be ok.
So what does this have to do with a post titled: What If We Just Need to Grieve?
The Wild Edge Of Sorrow
A little over two years ago my friend Dan introduced me to Francis Weller’s, The Wild Edge of Sorrow. The book’s subtitle is “Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief.”
In the book, Weller identifies five gates of grief, that is, different ways that grief can confront us. What I opened this post with, is a way for me to introduce them to you. They are:
Everything We Love, We Will Lose
This is what we typically think of when we think about grief. In this post, it’s represented by the death of my dad. Whether we were close or not, he was still my dad and it hurts to say goodbye.
The Places that Have Not Known Love
This kind of grief is the parts of you that are tender because they were rejected by others or you deemed them unlovable. Another way to think about this is by asking, "What stirs up shame?"
In the post, this can be seen in my dad feeling rejected by my grandfather for not helping him with college (but then turning around and paying for his younger sister’s college).
I wrestled with it also for many years, until the soul of soul broke through. That allowed me to engage out of love rather than duty because the places in me that spent decades not feeling love, now do.
The Sorrows of the World
Another kind of grief is the grief that comes with all kinds of injustice. This grief focuses on the systems and structures of society that hinder or even prevent human thriving.
In the post, this is represented by America’s post-WWII history of military interventionism.
Whether it was Eisenhower’s CIA triggering a coup in Iran so British Petroleum could continue to extract resources from the country, or the Red Scare that prompted us to send troops to Korea and Vietnam and guided our response to the Cuban Revolution, our mismanagement of Afghanistan and the destabilization of Iraq, even when the US has had good reason for military engagement (9-11), how we’ve handled ourselves often gives us something to grieve.
If nothing else, we should mourn the amount of money that has gone to military contractors while our infrastructure collapses and more and more of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.
What We Expected and Did Not Receive
While the first kind of grief is all about losing something you had, this grief is about losing something that you should have had or deeply wanted but never received.
A year before my dad was diagnosed with cancer, I did a bunch of work on this kind of grief, specifically focusing on the things that I wanted and needed from my parents when I was a child.
It began with researching childhood needs and writing everything I felt I missed out on at the top of a sheet of paper. Then, with my non-dominant hand, I wrote what I remembered experiencing in childhood. When I was finished, I read each sheet of paper and then allowed the adult in me to speak the truth to my inner child. In the process, I gave myself now what I needed then. Then I burned the pages in a candleholder.
Without doing that work, there’s no way I would have shown up this past year the way I did.
At the same time, discovering new things about my dad after he’s passed is creating fresh grief that I never really knew him, but suddenly wish I did.
Ancestral Grief
This is the kind of grief that carries from generation to generation. Whether it’s been woven into the DNA or family patterns that prompt generation after generation to experience grief, this grief cycle takes extra work to break.
In the post, there is a taste of this in my grandfather not seeing my dad, my dad not seeing me, and me now fighting to change the pattern with my kid. In this case, it’s a kind of grief that feeds the grief over what we expected but did not receive.
Beyond Grief
As my ritual with the sheets of paper and the candleholder would suggest, grief is something to work with. Whether you remember what you’ve lost, hear an invitation to self-love, are called to be a part of restorative justice, given an opportunity for healing, or find yourself pursuing a new path for future generations, each kind of grief is an opportunity waiting to be acted upon.
But when we ignore grief, when we let it fester or pretend it doesn’t matter, that’s when it does us harm, which makes me wonder, what kind of grief are you feeling?