A man born in Haiti did a presentation on Good Grief. His experience in that culture brought a new twist, such as how Haitians have a motto to "Cry at birth and laugh at death."

 

Grief is a Pandora's Box of emotions, and they can come springing out like naughty spirits cooped up too long. The speaker, whose name is Emmanuel, gave a list of iterations. 

 

Complex, absent, chronic, delayed, secondary, masked, cumulative, collective, abbreviated, and disenfranchised were some of the variations. I paused over each word, and stared into its dark meaning. The example he offered of delayed grief was when he found out about the death of a mentor the year before from friends who had been processing it all along. Collective grief sounds like the ache of a group of people over a lost colleague, or a sweeping change at work. Perhaps masked grief is the struggle to whitewash a loss with a positive attitude. Chronic grief could be the constant drain from a terminal illness, while it saps your independence. 

 

Emmanuel referred to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and her seminal work on the five stages of grief. These are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Kubler-Ross was deeply impacted by the butterflies carved into the walls of concentration camps by people facing their own murder. She later collaborated with David Kessler, who proposed the sixth stage of grief, which is to find meaning. 

 

I find comfort in the chance to share the burden of grief. Funerals are a way to gather together, and remember. And it matters to me that God knows what I am feeling. 

 

 

"He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." Isaiah 53