Talking to the Dead

I’ve dealt with my share of loss, tragedy, and death. Each of these events carried their own weight. Given our societal expectations, I did what was expected of me; I suppressed the loss and didn’t grieve. I was told that men don’t grieve. And I was told that Christian’s don’t grieve. Men are tough and Jesus is to answer to everything. In other words, time will heal all wounds so just get over it.

Over time, I became depressed and angry. I didn’t think I was depressed and surely had nothing to be angry about. But I’m pretty sure other people saw those things in me. In 2004, I left Grand Canyon University under less than optimal conditions. I entered the process to become an Episcopal priest. As part of becoming a priest, I enrolled in Clinical Pastoral Education, which, in part, is an internship as a hospital chaplain. At the same time, I entered what would become twelve years of therapy. Through both of those experiences, I learned that in order to minister to the dying, the grieving, and the dead, I first had to process my own loss and grief. That work was public, vulnerable, and painful. But it was also healing.

During my time as a priest I have sat with those who have lost their careers, their savings, their homes, their marriages, their spouses, their children, their freedom, and their own lives. I have sat with suicide survivors. I have sat with those who lost children to drugs. I have sat with those who lost loved ones from life destroying disease. I have sat in homes, hospitals, psych-wards, and prisons in order to listen to other people’s loss. Their grief process triggered my own and over time, I have learned how to differentiate their grief from mine. The process of grief never ends because the dead and our loss are always with us.

To be willing to process grief is to be fully alive; deeply engaged in the dynamic process of living. To be dead, however, is no less a dynamic process. Whatever is alive—lives, moves, and has its being in the dimension we see. And though we may not see the dead—they live, move, and have their being in the dimension that exists all around us. To be alive and to be dead is to exist within the Divine Milieu.

Still, the living miss the dead. We ache to see them. to touch them, to hear them. And this loss leaves us with a pain, a darkness, a void that can be overwhelming. Oddly enough, those painful feelings are not grief itself. Grief is not a feeling. Grief is the active process through which we process our painful feelings. Unfortunately, many times, we do everything we can to avoid the process of grieving; thinking the pain will somehow go away. Trouble is, it never does.

No matter how hard we try, we can’t get away from loss and death because it’s everywhere. We suffer personal loss. We lose our loved ones. And we also lose jobs, suffer career disappointments, we go through ugly divorces, our family relationships are estranged.

We also suffer loss as a community. Our institutions betray us, our communities fall apart, our beloved leaders move on for reasons that are sometimes good and other times bad, either way we still suffer their departure. Without regard to how we suffer these events of loss and death—we still must go through the grief process; both individually and collectively. If we don’t, we will continue to suffer.
Unprocessed grief will linger in our mind, body, soul, and spirit forever; no matter how much we try to medicate it. We think if we get busy and stop thinking about the pain we can keep our loved ones off our mind. We look for ways to distract ourselves, ways that we hope will help us forget for a brief period of time. Spouses remarry too soon. Lovers sell their homes just to avoid their memories. Children move away so they don’t have to be reminded of their loss. We get new jobs thinking that will assuage our pain. And sometimes we look for unhealthy means to medicate our pain. Somehow, we believe that time will heal all things. But, deep down, we know that’s not true. In fact, the pain just gets worse.

How do we process grief in healthy ways? Rituals are a very important part of the process. Things like:

• Funerals; you might be surprised how many people will not have a service of any kind for their loved one.
• a prayer service or mass to remember the anniversary or birthday of a loved one
• telling stories at holiday events
• journaling and sharing our dreams about our loved ones.
• Simply talking about the dead, helps the grieving process. It many ways, it keeps them alive.

These rituals help us process our grief. They also can assist in connecting with dead. When the dead speak, we must listen. The ancient ones, the wise ones, the wounded ones offer the lament of the dead. The dead want to share their wisdom if we have ears to hear. Can all the living hear the dead? I don’t know, but I hope so. But for those who do have ears to hear, the dead speak through holy texts, through history, as well as in some very mystical ways. Moses and Elijah spoke to Jesus in a misty mountain top. If Jesus could hear the dead, we can too. But, for those who for some reason cannot hear their love ones speak, the pain can be severe.

Here is a four-step grief process; no matter how fresh or how old the loss; no matter whether it’s a personal loss or a communal loss, no matter whether you can hear the dead or not:

1. Pray for God to give you the strength to name your loss. This may be the hardest thing to do. You must name what it is that you have lost; what it is
that is causing you so much pain. You must be honest with yourself. Dig deep to find the answer. Sometimes the obvious is not the answer.
2. Pray for God to clearly reveal to you what you have not honestly confronted in your loss: anger, resentment, bitterness, abandonment, fear, emptiness,
whatever you’re feeling.
3. Pray for God to allow you to find a safe place to process those feelings of loss. Maybe you need a spiritual director to talk to. Maybe you need to
journal your feelings. Whatever it is, you must be able to express your feelings in a safe, but open way.
4. Pray for God to reveal to you, ways you can ritualize your loss. One of them is our service this morning. By placing the names of those you have lost on
this altar, you are publicly recognizing your loss, the pain, and your willingness to continue the active process of grieving.

We might imagine that personal grief and corporate grief are unrelated. But that’s not the case. Corporate grief will trigger personal grief. All of these rituals help us process our personal grief and they will also help us process our congregational grief. Everyone one of these steps is necessary. Otherwise, the grief will never be processed. And, if the it’s not, unfortunately, somewhere, sometime, the grief will rear its head—and most likely we will repeat our personal and congregational history.