When I think about the future I see ahead for us, how grim it is and what a terrible ending we’re likely to have, I know what I need to do is mourn.
Except I’m really bad with loss and I don’t do mourning well, and in fact…
I’d rather not do it at all.
Which makes me think of those TV programs where the homicide detective tells the family of the victim, “I’m sorry for your loss.” One short sentence and that’s enough of that.
Of course I understand how a murder drama works. The mystery has to get solved and the criminal has to be caught and there have to be a lot of plot twists before the climax so there’s no time for extended mourning. And I understand a detective can’t feel deeply for all the victims and loved ones he encounters because he couldn’t do his job if he took it all personally.
And I understand that those of us at home, witnessing three or four murders in an evening, can’t afford to feel for all those victims and loved ones, either. It would be too much. I get the appeal of that ritual sentence. It lets us skim across the surface of tragedy like a skipping stone instead of sinking into it.
But night after night, as we’re learning so much about murder…
We’re learning next to nothing about mourning.
The five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—are supposed to be the answer. They’re supposed to guide us through wrenching feelings. But when I read On Death and Dying, the Kübler-Ross book, I repurposed it.
I decided maybe I could use those stages to control mourning, keep it at arm’s length, so it wouldn’t really get to me. Maybe I could hopscotch deftly from one stage to the next until I got to acceptance, and once there, I’d graduate from grief.
In reality, though, I take losses hard. Eventually they catch up with me and then I crash down into some place deeper than where the stages can go.
There are therapists who push people to “get over it and move on.” They insist that mourning should be time-limited. They want to give it an expiration date, and if you go beyond that date, they get to diagnose you.
I understand mourning can go wrong, sometimes really wrong. Freud said melancholia, in contrast to mourning, is when you let yourself die inside in response to the death of a loved one. And certainly it’s not a good thing when people freeze into grief and shut their lives down. Nothing to argue with there.
But…
Aren’t there people you want to keep in your heart forever?
Aren’t there losses you learn to live with but never really get over and…
Don’t want to get over?
And doesn’t holding onto someone in this way honor how much that person meant to you, how deeply they were, and still are, woven into your life? So even though they’ve passed on…
You’re keeping your relationship with them alive.
And maybe even deepening it.
And maybe we could call this…
Generative mourning.
And who says that acceptance is the ultimate in grief anyway? Doesn’t it depend? And what exactly are we supposed to accept?
When my dad died, people commiserated, telling me, “You must be so sad to lose him. You must be going through such a hard time.”
But it wasn’t a hard time. Sad, yes, but not hard. My dad lived to the age of eighty-nine and twice in the two years before he died he told me in a mood of contentment, “I’ve had a good life and a long life.” Since he was at peace, I could accept his passing. I didn’t mourn his death.
But I did mourn his life, and still do. He was such a disciplined Calvinist. He lived a life of shoulds.
And then when he was eighty-seven, we had a conversation about belly laughs. He wanted more of those. I wish he could have had them. I wish he could have had more fun. And maybe a wild streak. And a bigger measure of passion. Certainly a stronger sense of himself. And I wish we could have been best friends.
After his death, I thought he’d fade into a receding memory, light and easy to carry. But he was my father and he remains a very real presence in my life, and I’m still working out my relationship with him, so I keep him in my heart, wrapped in sadness.
When I think about us humans as a species, when I think back over everything I know about our past, when I look around the world at everything I know about our present, I feel so much sadder about our life than I do about our coming death. We do so much evil. We cause so much suffering.
And when it comes to our death, I don’t accept it. I could spend years in therapy with a grief counselor and it wouldn’t change a thing, because this is a moral stand for me. I hate that evolution has set us up to fail, and fail so dramatically. And I don’t forgive it. And I don’t want to forgive it.
Human extinction is such a monstrous thing, how are we supposed to take it in and be at peace with it? No more babies, no more playful little kids, no more first loves, no more lifelong sweethearts.
And look at us. We’re not fighting for ourselves like we need to. Not even close. We’re so careless about ourselves. I mourn that as well. Our lack of heart.
If we humans want to be mourned, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. And we’re going to have to do it now because later will be too late.
And what do we call this?
Is this pre-mourning?
I’m an old guy, and I notice that there are days when I mourn my own passing, which could happen at any time now, and which in any case is not too many years in the future. Some days it feels so odd to be doing this, and some days perfectly natural.
As with my dad, I find myself mourning my life more than my death—all the regrets I have, all the things I wish I could have done differently, all the people I wish I had loved better.
This pre-mourning, softens me, nurtures me, take me deeper into myself, makes me want to use the time I have left in the best way I can.
I would like this for our species, too.
And this makes me think that an essential part of being a post-hope activist is…
To get good at mourning.
To get so good we can help others do the mourning they need to do.
And then…
To turn mourning for us humans into a way of life.
Because this will help us…
Feel for ourselves.
Which will help us…
Fight for ourselves.
Happiness is supposed to be the goal of life. We’re all supposed to want it. I like happiness well enough, and I’ll take it when I can get it, but I need my sadness. Happiness buoys me up, but sadness takes me deep.