Sometimes things are just too hard. We can’t take in what’s happening and still stay anywhere near sane. Life is so complex and confusing. And grief – the Great Leveler – compounds and deepens the complexity. In experiencing loss, it’s hard to know how to get through, or why we would even want to. It’s hard to know what is the right step, or stopping point, at any stage of the journey.
When I was teaching nursing students about whole health, we’d end the class by talking about all the exterior and interior resources one can access when faced with life and health challenges. We’d make a list that included things like family, friends, financial support, prayer, our own interior wisdom, exercise, rest, counseling, patience, forgiving ourselves, and so many other ways of getting through hard times. The students were amazed to realize how these positive supports could help us help ourselves. They were surprised, then, when I added something they often thought of as a “negative” to the list – Denial. Wasn’t that something we were supposed to avoid? They thought of denial as a turning away; a refusal to deal with what’s pretty obvious. But I told them that sometimes it helps. Sometimes, we need to indulge in a big fat No! I’m NOT going to deal with this. I CAN”T deal with this. I’m putting it on hold. I’m tucking it back in a corner, and I’m going to live around it, even if I have to live in a smaller space. I can look the other way. Sometimes, we just get to say NO, at least for a while. Some part of us needs to go to sleep, take a break, turn the other way. To act like nothing’s changed.
It’s not a permanent fix, of course. Eventually, the leaden reality of loss will seep through – but in the meantime, we can turn the other way, do something ridiculous, splurge on something expensive, eat ice cream and fried chicken. Celebrate a sunrise, even if we know the sky will darken again.
When my sister called to tell me my mother had died, my first words were, “You’re kidding, right?” Not that she would have joked about something like that, but my whole mind/body immediately rejected what it couldn’t process or believe. And when I found out my aunt had died – when I got the call from the nursing aid who I had JUST TALKED WITH a few minutes before, and who had told me my aunt was having a good day, sitting at the window and watching the birds, I said, “But you just told me she was fine!”
We discard what we can’t handle. We make a bargain with reality – I’ll let this much in, if you’ll give me a little time to get used to the idea – to go a little crazy – to fall apart, but gradually.
Denial buys some time – not time with our Beloved, of course, but time to figure out a way to withstand the truth. And a surprising thing can happen. As our bio-psycho-spiritual selves begin to gather nourishment from the flashes of memory we experience – as we connect with others who have known our Beloved – as we readjust the long-familiar parameters of our lives – as we learn to include loss in our expectations of life – we gain enough strength, recall enough love, to let what’s real be real. To let grief be real. To let ourselves, our torn and grief-stricken selves, stand in place, surrender to the inevitable, and still look forward.
In the time denial offers us, we become strengthened in our understanding, in our surrender. Over time, we can bear the questions – the unknowing, and we can live with it all. Not perfectly, not exactly in full compliance, but perhaps – if we’re very lucky – in great Grace. We accept the love we have been given, even if the love-giver has been torn away. We were made whole by Love – and even if the Lover is gone, Love lives and breathes and thrives within us. We become rare individuals who know the terrible secret of walking in a world of emptiness, sharing all the fullness we can bear. It’s a ragged gift, that skill, but one day we – the tattered survivor – will look into another face ravaged by grief, and hold out a hand. We will understand. And that will help. Because denial – the little stolen space of not knowing even though we do – has helped us along. For a while.