Mourning a Loss - To What Degree?

We might agree that mourning a loss, if not strictly necessary, is at least normal. We suffer when we lose a job we have had for years (although celebration seemed more appropriate to me at those times in my life). We lose sleep over the loss of a major part of our invested retirement funds when the market crashes. We feel extended sadness at the loss of a valued relationship. But to what degree is mourning a loss normal, and why?

Most of us can dismiss the necessity of suffering over the loss of money - intellectually, at least. We easily say that "it’s just money," hoping that though will take away the sting of the loss. It might to some extent, but in any case, we are at least not burdened by the sense that we "must" suffer. The same is true to some extent for the other losses mentioned.

On the other hand, when a friend or family member dies, we not only suffer the feelings of loss, but we are under pressure to suffer more - as though this proves love for the departed. The truth is that everyone is a bit different in this respect, and each situation is different. Some do not seem to suffer much even at the loss of those closest to them, yet they are truly hurting in private. Others do not seem to suffer much and truly aren’t suffering much. In either of these cases someone is bound to say, "We each mourn in our own way," in order to "excuse" the lack of overt mourning.

The implication is clear. There is something wrong with a person who does not mourn enough when someone they were close to dies. But why?

First of all, let’s get past the silly idea that there is some sadness for the departed. Those who believe in a heaven after death should be happy for the dead one, and those who do not believe in such fairy tales usually accept that there is nobody and no soul left to suffer, and so nothing to feel bad about for the dead one. We feel bad for ourselves - our loss. But how far should this go?

An example or two will help here. A man dies, and his wife suffers. This is natural, but in large part it is normal because the loss is not an intellectual one or something perpetuated by purposeful memory of the past. A wife, after all, is intimate with her husband on a daily basis. When he dies, she will not only have a total change of life, but she will also be reminded off the death every day. She will turn to tell him something out of habit and remember that he is no longer there. She will roll over in bed and find him missing. This is the kind of loss that is inherently felt in the total change that comes with it.

On the other hand, consider the former best friend of the man who died, who had not seen his friend for several years. He may cry, and might feel the loss repeatedly over time. But to do so he has to actively engage in torturing himself with thoughts of the past and reminders that it is "all over." After all, he was not mourning the loss for all the years he did not see nor call his friend. Nothing necessarily changed in his life when his former friend died. In fact, if he never learned of his friend’s death for another ten years, he would not have reason to feel bad at all. He would assume his old pal was alive and well somewhere and think no further of the matter.

Looked at this way, we see how difficult it is for a wife not to feel such a loss profoundly - and for some time - while we can also see that for someone not recently involved in the life of the departed one, the suffering must be created actively in the mind. The mourning of a loss must be a created pain for those who were not directly involved in the daily life of one who has died. This is done by thinking about the death, comparing the good times in memory to the current state, repeating over and over things like, "he was so young" (with the implied idea that his death is tragic and the reminder of one’s own mortality). We can also speculate that as natural as the suffering of the wife is, she too might choose to suffer more than normal, by sustaining the thoughts that lead to such feelings. This seems like a callous thought to some, but then almost all of us would agree at the extremes - like when a person is still mourning a loss from decades earlier, and it is getting in the way of living.

In other words, suffering of this sort is natural, but not nearly as necessary as we might think - at least not to the degree that it continues for years and with a high degree of pain. How much is natural? I’m not going to venture a guess, and it is obviously a matter of the degree of attachment, the personality we each have, and other factors. Quite simply, we grow attached to those we are with and we suffer losing them.

What I won’t agree to, though, is that all must suffer to prove love. Some will suffer greatly, while some may let go of their pain a few days after their closest friend has died. To suffer is normal, but to uphold the idea that we have a duty to torture ourselves is a sick idea.

Love, by the way, is for the living as far as I can tell. All we can love after a death is memories, and if that kind of habit leads only to more pain, I doubt it should be called love. Attachment and love are not the same thing, though we often confuse them. So while it may be natural to be attached to people, and therefore mourning a loss of a special person is normal, perhaps it should be seen as normal to let go of the suffering as quickly as possible, and so to get on with life and love.

Note: There is another aspect of this that I didn’t consider when I first wrote this. It is the social agreement inherent in mourning a loss of people we know. We all participate so that we can all feel that we ourselves will be mourned after death - as though we could care when we are cold and buried. Perhaps we all want traditions such as these to give us a sense of immortality. From this perspective, the excessive mourning of those who have died appears to be an effort to deceive and comfort the living. We don’t like the idea that we will not be remembered at all in a hundred years - true for most of us - and all signs that we once existed will be gone in time. - Bishop Ateo