Grief as Exile
Exile is as old as civilization, Men, women, children, infants (Jesus), political figures, writers, the famous and the unknown, have fled or been forced out of their countries by tyrannical regimes, colonizing powers, floods and famine, to seek refuge in another land. Or be slaves in.
The life of exile comes with grief over the loss of homeland, security, family or extended family and friends, profession, and security. Grief over the loss of a loved one is a form of exile, too:
Then it was over and we were back home in a world we’d been a part of but was foreign now, where neighbors passed by outside walking to Adrian’s for a gallon of milk when the world had changed utterly. Some people were kind. Few knew what to say or do . . . People gave us grief manuals, which got it wrong from the start. They focused on the griever not the one grieved over. They didn’t understand that you have to keep the wound open to maintain alertness for the moment of the moment when loss is a hot knife to the heart that brings us together again. 1
Grief is an unknown world you are thrust into. ‘Griefworld’ is all around you. It crawls into your heart too, making you an integral part of it not just a new recruit.
There’s also an idea about being a citizen in the country of grief. I’m not sure about that. I’ve studied and written about citizenship, especially the social and collective aspects of it, for a long time. Griefworld seems so isolated and isolating by contrast. And griefworld, even with its own sights, smells, and sounds, is a shadow world. Everything that happens in it happens, at least partly, in relation to ‘lifeworld.’ American lifeworld, with exceptions, knows little of griefworld. It has no Italian Catholic woman in mourning from another land and era to stand in our midst and force us to acknowledge death’s presence.
Lifeworld’s ability to shut out griefworld exposes its shallowness to residents of griefworld, leading some who grieve to have ambivalent feelings about returning to such a shallow place. As Jonathan Lear writes about the aspect of mourning that involves encouraging people to return to lifeworld, ‘[t]he very idea of mourning is outrageous. [It] seems to presuppose that justice requires us to return from our preoccupation with the dead.’ 2
Return from exile involves the pull of external forces. Work. Children to care for, get to school and support in their own grief. The fact that seeing someone walk down to Adrian’s for a gallon of milk no longer shocks you. Then one day you find yourself walking down to Adrian’s and a shudder of guilt passes through you. You have just graduated to the early adolescence of your grief. Soon, you will step off the boat, a traveler home from exile. And it will hurt.
Rowe M. The book of Jesse: A story of youth, illness, and medicine. (2002). Washington, D.C.: The Francis Press, 223
Lear J. Imagining the end: Mourning and ethical life. (2022). Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 117
