How to celebrate death and heal after a loved one dies.

How can we prepare for the death of a loved one? How can we get through our grief?

A chat with Jill Townsend and Fiona Whitmore

FIONA: There is usually a deep grieving process that goes on after we lose somebody we love. Dr. Kubler-Ross discovered seven layers of grieving during her years of work with the dying, (she created hospice.) Before Dr Keubler-Ross, there was no real understanding about dying and those who were dying, often left to die in uncomfortable places. Kind of thrown away. She discovered that most people went through these stages of grief after they lost a loved one.

Her seven stages or layers of grief are described as:
— Shock or Disbelief
— Denial
— Anger
— Bargaining
— Guilt
— Depression
— Acceptance and Hope

These stages are seen in most people, no matter what culture and belief systems. Though this is the usual order, it seems we can skip about from one to another…staying with one level sometimes longer than others, moving between one another and backwards and forwards.

The first reaction when we experience the death of someone is shock or disbelief. It is followed by denial. We might feel that it’s not true or can’t be true. We might feel that it can’t be happening to me or there must be some mistake, perhaps it’s a dream? “But I just saw him/her…I just talked to her/him!”

Not surprisingly, we often feel angry and resentful, and sometimes we can be full of rage at someone or something. We might feel that, ‘this is so unfair!’ In this stage we can also blame someone or everyone.

Next we might begin unrealistic bargaining. We might offer, ‘I’ll never do this or that again, if you just bring them back to us’. In our Western culture, this is normal behavior. Don’t blame yourself. There’s nothing wrong about bargaining, it’s part of our grieving process.

JILL: Guilt can be a way of making sense of what is happening or has happened. It makes us feel as if we have some control. “If only I had or hadn’t done …” is very common. Just remember: it can’t bring them back.

Once the reality of death sets in, often people feel overwhelmed and can become depressed. This stage of grief differs according to cultural beliefs. Some cultural beliefs feel that the ‘leaving’ of someone they love or admire is truly to be celebrated as the loved one is now free… is ‘home’…is in “paradise” unless it was a calamitous death.

FIONA: If people feel supported and have someone with them who accepts the inevitability of their death, it helps them begin an acceptance of this stage of life and it can be a powerful freedom. Saying it’s ‘all going to be okay’ denies their experience and is, therefore, unhelpful. ProactiveChange.com says “Acceptance of reality need not be synonymous with capitulation, humiliating defeat. And acceptance need not mean losing your integrity — it can sometimes be quite the opposite. Acceptance is not betrayal.”

The stages can be layered. We can feel grief and then the next layer, anger and then grief. That’s how it can go. So, we often find ourselves absolutely grieving and distraught and then just furious. And then back into the grief.

JILL: One of the things that can really help break these cycles of grief and rage is focusing on celebrating the gift of that person’s life. Losing somebody, especially when they’re young or the death is completely unexpected, can be especially hard. Yet celebrating their life and the gift of who they were can be so healing. I remember going back east for a funeral of a little one, the first baby that was born to this family and who died in the birth process.

That was of course terribly sad for everybody. So we fly back east and we go to the church to do the ceremony before taking the tiny little coffin to the gravesite and funeral home gave us a little tiny room to hold the ceremony. Over 200 people came! The funeral home had to open more rooms up and, and they were irritated about how many people arrived! And I thought, no, no, it doesn’t matter how short the life was or how long the life was. It was and it is a life!

One way to turn the desperate heartbreak into a celebration — especially when there’s that deep grief like that one, is to get a large helium balloon with a long string on it. Take a sharpie pen and ask everyone to write a message on the balloon to the departed. So in this case, back east at the interring of this infant, the balloon was filled with messages of love. After everybody had signed the balloon and the little coffin went down into the grave, I gave the string holding the balloon to the infant’s parents. They both held onto the string. I said, ‘so when you’re ready, let it go. And when you let it go, I want you to watch it until you can’t see it anymore. ‘ All our eyes then turned upwards to the heavens and watched the child go home.

That shifted everything from downward to upward. It lifts your heart. Whether it’s daytime or nighttime, it’s the same. At my dad’s ‘lift-off’ celebration, it was at nighttime and that white balloon — with all the messages written on it — just disappeared amongst the stars. It was fabulous. And with this little infant being put in the grave, when everybody looked up to follow the balloon, their hearts went up, their spirits went up and oh look! It was such a healing for all!!! Watching that balloon. It’s so much easier on the grief process if we can find a way of celebrating.

FIONA: I’ve always been so far away from my family in Australia — so every time a family member dies — my two sisters and my mum and my dad — wherever we were in the world, those of us remaining, each bought a dozen roses and went to an ocean or a body of water. With each rose, we spoke from our hearts and then we offered the rose to the water/ocean, speaking to our loved one. Watching these beautiful roses floating in the water was an incredible healing and a celebration of them.

JILL: For a cremation, planting the ashes underneath a tree is also a beautiful way to celebrate the life of someone who has passed. Tending the tree, visiting the tree, knowing that the roots take the ashes to feed and heal the earth is wonderful! There will always a place you can go and watch the tree grow. It is so healing…as if life goes on yet in another way. We don’t feel so much like we’ve been left behind.

FIONA: I think that finding something that makes sense to you is so important, whatever your cultural belief. In the Jewish tradition, they sit Shivah. I’ve never been to one, but I’ve been told that they sit and talk and they can cry. That’s actually very helpful to sit together with family members and people who have cared about them and share feelings and stories.

JILL: The Irish do it a different way — it’s a Wake — and it’s always about celebrating the life of the person who has passed and there is the joy for the Irish in celebrating with alcohol! I think the idea of having ceremony with people after a death is very helpful because people feel very alone when somebody dies.

My parents, especially my father, had such a hard time at the death of my sister. That was really hard to witness, the grief of a parent. When he came to the ceremony to celebrate Claire’s young life, he was in the grief stage of anger. I could see it in the clenching of his jaw. And he was so impatient with everything. As people arrived, I gave them each a packet of fava beans to sow into Claire’s garden to nourish the soil. I like the idea of keeping life going, you know, by planting seeds. I had asked everyone to bring a dish of food that reminded them of Claire — or a dish of her favorite food. I had ceramic bowls made with her favorite colors, so that everyone could go home with a bowl with her name on it. After planting the seeds, we filled our bowls of wonderful food and then we all sat in a circle and shared our favorite stories of Claire while we ate. Some of these stories were hilarious and that did more for my parents than anything else. They were sitting there in such grief. And then to hear my dad say “I never knew that about her! I never knew that about her…. I never knew that about her.” So for me, it’s finding a way to allow people to be together — like the sitting Shiva, if you want to cry, that’s totally acceptable to. You’ve got people around you. I like to try shift the pain. My dad was a changed man afterwards.

FIONA: That’s helpful and when you’re in a community it’s much easier than when you’re on your own. It’s a good idea to reach out to someone in your community. It can also helpful to start writing down everything that you can ever think of that was really funny or a wonderful experience with the person who’s died, because that will lift you out of the grief as well.

Yet It’s good to go into the grief but not so good if you can’t resurface. I know, for me, when someone dies and the grief comes, I totally go into it, experience it completely. Then breathe, stand up, go for a walk… I do cycles of that for as long as it comes up and then the grief is gone. I don’t avoid the grief or anger I just let myself go completely into it. It doesn’t last for long that way. Then you can remember them and not suffer anymore.

Actually, and surprisingly, it passes really quickly and it’s so much healthier for you to do that because if you try and clench down on it, it becomes so much worse. I know I had a relative who had been with her husband for maybe 60 years — they were companions. So when the companion died, she plastered the entire wall with pictures of him. She said that really soothed her because everywhere she looked there was his face. Now that might not suit everybody, but it suited her and she found that she didn’t feel so alone.

JILL: I know after my sister’s death and then my father’s death a few years later, I created a ‘picture gallery’ wall in my mother’s bedroom. It was like the family tree. There was a picture of her as a baby and a picture of my father as a baby. And underneath those pictures were ones of my mother growing up on one side and then Dad’s childhood photographs and then their wedding photos and then photos of their children. So she just had to look at the wall and there was her life.

FIONA: So the idea really is then to look at How Can I Celebrate This Life? I know someone who, when she knew she was dying, created a big party. She wanted to be there while she was still living, so that everybody could share love, stories and happiness together. She could barely walk, but she organized this and she danced the whole night even though a few days later she died. But what a great party! What a great idea! Everybody was able just to tell her how much love they felt for her. And I think that was really beneficial for her and everyone else. . If you can do it, even if you’re still in bed, it would be amazing. Get friends to help!

JILL: Great way to celebrate! Sharing wonderful stories about what you’ve done together, the celebration, and again, not to negate the grief and what goes with it, but the celebration of their life is such an incredible gift. At the passing of a friend, I like to write a weekly letter to their companion relating a funny or beautiful experience I had with them…a funny story or an adventure, so that they have something to look forward to which really helps in the initial stages of grief.

FIONA: When we lose somebody, we have to ask ourselves: what is it that I don’t have now that that person helped me to find, and it’s always the same thing, which is love. Love helps us to connect with the wholeness of who we are. When hugging someone, we create this wonderful connection. Together we create an energy field that enables us to relive how it felt to hug them. Because in a hug, what happens is we just melt into each other and together we can feel that vastness within us…which is whatever you felt with them. These hugs and time together were like keys or bridges to who you are They were the key into you.

JILL: I also want to go back to what you said about if a loved one passes and we are feeling the loss. Because when you share a life, you give each other so much. That part doesn’t go away. When my Dad died, I got Mom the biggest, softest teddy bear and she has it in bed with her every day…something to cuddle.

FIONA: When we have something that is soft and cuddly, it brings us into Alpha state and that helps us to feel relaxed, easy more of our inner love.

JILL: That’s interesting! Mom is 96, blind and with dementia and she loves to hold soft things in her hands. So we give her soft napkins or a piece of cloth. Even though she’s blind and she can’t see what she’s holding, what her hands are feeling brings her a memory of something.

FIONA: So, perhaps we can ask ourselves how would I like to celebrate the ones that are departing or that have gone? Maybe you can do it together in life. I know that when my niece Elizabeth was dying of cancer at age 24, she orchestrated her whole funeral, gifting us with a wonderful celebration of her life. She had a part in creating everything and how it was going to be done. It took her all of her attention, in the most creative way and it helped other because they felt that she was there at the celebration. She had created it and now they shared it.

JILL: My friend did the same thing. She organized everything. And when we all got together after the funeral for the luncheon, oh my goodness! It was absolutely wonderful because she had even picked out the food and who was going to talk. She was there with us in our grief! She brought us so much happiness! It was really a wonderful gift she gave us. I do, however, want to stress what you said before about when you grieve, that grief is real. Grieve and cry. Take a breath. If you can, when you get angry, just scream into a pillow. Or get into your car or your room and scream as loud and as hard as you can. Then, open the windows and release the anguish to the outside. After the release of grief and anger, we are more open to the celebration.

FIONA: This is Earth Tribe Radio talking about celebrating death, celebrating life, because in fact, when we think of it, life never ends. It’s just the body that drops. Yes, it’s a space suit. We just step out of our space suit.

JILL: This is Earth Tribe Radio…your home on Planet Earth here at www.earthtriberadio.com and also on ITunes!