Grief and healing, healing and grief
This past May 24th I listened to an NPR segment on the first anniversary of a lone gunman’s murder of nineteen children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The segment included interviews with relatives of the victims and the term ‘healing’ came up several times, spoken by grieving relatives and the NPR reporter.
‘Healing’ struck me as both fitting and puzzling. Fitting because anyone with a heart must hope for relief from the pounding rhythm of grief for people whose loved ones died in such a horrendous event. Puzzling because I wondered, ‘Healing how, from what and to what?’
I understand healing from a physical wound or condition, although such healing may be partial. My wife, Gail, is eight months out from successful back surgery that stabilized and strengthened her spine. But her back is not what it was before she began having problems several years ago, and it’s not going to be.
‘Life is a constant renegotiation of what you had planned,’ she told me. She grieves the loss of long walks and is building a new life. Her renegotiation includes interactions with friends and acquaintances who hope to hear that she’s ‘better’ now. They want this for her, but they also want to be reassured. Some may wonder at her comment that she’s better now than she was just before the surgery and is adjusting to a changed life.
Not quite a ringing endorsement of her recovery from major back surgery with the best surgeon around. Some may even have the fleeting thought, ‘Well, she looks better!’ Or ‘Can’t she just be grateful for what was done for her?’ I’m pretty sure this is the case, since these thoughts have passed through my head, and I doubt I’m the only selfish turd around.
But what does healing mean for people whose loved ones died in the Uvalde massacre? One thing that might help, though about grief in general, is to consider that the experience of grief does not go from A (pre-grief event) to B (grief event) back to A. It may go from A to B to C, where C is a less searing, later grief.
Another thing that might help, though again not specific to the horror of one’s child or sister’s murder, is to consider what I wanted to say, but did not, when asked how I was doing in the early days of my son’s death following complications of a liver transplant:
“Acknowledge that grief has changed me, that I am not the same person you knew before my grief event struck, and I will acknowledge that part of me is the same person.”
Or another response I considered giving but did not:
“Grief is part of my healing. Healing means incorporating my grief into my life and going on, not shorn of joy but capable of experiencing it even while my grief goes on with me.”
At the thought that we are letting children and teachers be murdered when we could reduce the risk of this dramatically I am dumbfounded, depressed, angry. Thinking of the death of their child for Uvalde parents, I share part of their experience, but not the circumstance. Of that, I stand in awe and sorrow.
