REMEMBERING THE WHOLE PERSON: WISDOM FOR GRIEF, AND BEYOND
In my day job, my alter-ego is of a bereavement counselor. There are certain repeated themes that come up in my work with clients, regardless of that client’s background. One of those themes is the person wondering how they will move past the potent memories of their loved one being so sick and, if on hospice, dying. This is especially the case of the surviving person was their primary caregiver, because not only is there grief but there is the lived intensity of the caregiving itself. It does something to you to have to change the clothes of your parents when they soil themselves (and no, I’m not talking about the earthiness of it!).
My most frequent advice and counsel to a person struggling with this part of their grief is to work with me to remember the whole person. By that I mean simply that who their loved one was to them was more than just the continuum of time from not feeling good, to being diagnosed with a sickness, to getting sick and finally dying. That was a part of who they are. But it’s not the whole story. We then begin to reminisce, starting often with the origin story of when they met and building out from there. The lightbulbs that go off bring the healing to live without that person. Often caregiving and the demands of it make you even forget the fun times. When those things get remembered, the survivor often has their own epiphanies of things they would like to do in their life moving forward.
This is not just a grief issue though! We live in a society and world that is quick to sum up a person’s entire life almost exclusively by the mistakes and failures a person makes. This is often the case with movie stars, for example. None of us really know them from Adam. But we think we do. And we then start to feel like that gives card blanche to be an authority and judge on that person’s life. But I find that when I take the time to get to know the whole person, I am less judgmental. I am less reactive even when they do something wrong.
American society has a problem with amnesia. Our media and social media doesn’t help matters any. But as spiritual workers, we don’t have to get sucked into that. We can choose to remember that what we see isn’t always what is with someone. Whether it’s grief or some other life event, we can remember and honor the fullness of a person, which is usually more complex than being a saint or a villain. That’s what I’m trying to do myself.
