You get ready for work and life as you know it ends. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. Life changes in an instant. Even though the person is gone, you still feel the need to tell them what you heard on the news, at work, on TV. How can life change so fast? So permanately? I want to know.
This is such a bizarre, western-culture thing. I've been reading about death, dying and mourning through history and in other cultures and it hasn't always been this way and isn't this way elsewhere in the world.
Everything must be instant. Instant banking, instant solutions to everything that ails us, chicken soup books and six-easy-steps to achieve whatever it is we think we want (are TOLD we want, is closer to the truth). Time is scheduled so tightly, we are all in a mad dash to where - the grave? Reflection, introspection, emotions other than the happy-faced ones, are tut-tutted over and "diagnosed" by an overly-self-helped society that has been largely brain-washed into believing that we can live forever, have it all, and if anything goes wrong along the way we must be to blame. I've seen this happen to sick people as well as the grieving.
We are mortally afraid of our mortality. A society awash in denial, desperately seeking ways to look younger, stay healthier, etc. We reward, with praise, those who are viewed as stoic and positive (I call them the cheerleaders for getting on with it), and harangue those who dare to express sadness or grief and even those who are ill. So those in mourning are a bitter pill - a reminder that death happens and they don't want to face the aftermath never mind accept that it will happen to them.So they react with exasperation and advice ad nauseum even daring to express anger (I am shocked by this) at a grieving widow who isn't "performing' to their standards, isn't making it easier for THEM. Selfishness, as if it is about THEM and what would make THEM comfortable.
As a society we've gone mad on advice-giving and know no bounds when it comes to intruding into the lives of others with our opinions. The rise of the Dr. Phil types and how-to-cure-anything books has generated an atmosphere of "everyone is an expert" on absolutely everything. We push ourselves into other people's lives in a manner that is so insensitive and judgmental as to border on cruelty, with the gall to assume we know one damn thing about what is best for someone else.
As a culture we have lost respect for death and mourning. We are given a year off work if we procreate life but only three days off if our spouse dies. The mourning period is not only not observed but it is actively discouraged. Ritual is sneered at or disregarded. We use euphemisms for death and dead (passed away, lost) because that softens the blow for those who don't want to deal with the terrible reality that we all deal with every day. They don't want us to say "He died" - that is too much reality for them to handle. So our pain, if expressed and seen, must be "cured" instantly - for their sakes.
Death has become a dirty word in this health and youth obsessed culture, and that leaves those mourning death as uncomfortable reminders of how wrong they are and, therefore, fair game to be "guided" onto the path of the herd who are, in fact, blinded but have convinced themselves that they know best and have every right to DEMAND you do it their way. What happened to respect for the dead, compassion for the grieving, the understanding that a period of mourning is not only normal but expected?
No one has the right to demand that you change your process. You are mourning and grieving. Your own timeframe for this is just that - your own. They'll find out, one day, and God preserve them then.
We little knew that morning
that God was going to call your name
In life we loved you dearly
In death we do the same
It broke our hearts to lose you
You did not go alone
For part of us went with you
the day God called you home.
You left us peaceful memories,
your love is still our guide;
And though we cannot see you,
you are always at our side
Our family chain is broken
and nothing seems the same
But as God calls us one by one,
the chain will link again
Mr Death
Mr. Death, why do you visit?
Don’t you have enough in your many legions through time?
Your icy presence is not welcome
Why do you spread your gray cloak of darkness over me?
You don’t need them, I need them more.
Are you jealous of what I had with them?
Once those who I loved were smiling, their eyes glowing
Now their eyes are dark, unseeing
Once their smiles graced me with love
You took their eyes, their smiles, their life
You took the warmness they had and replaced it with the stiffness of a statue
And with it, you took my hope, my dreams, my future
So if you must visit again, Mr. Death, don’t take anyone I love
Just take me.
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