On grief

Sit with your pain and accept it, remembering that it is a part of life. That’s how one conquers grief.

It was March 14, 2020 when I got a text from my sister that our father—who was suffering complications due to a herniated disc—had died, he was almost 62. A strange feeling insinuated me. 

It’s not sad or angry, but stunned and detached. I thought I felt nothing back then, but I wasn’t really sure. Was it grief? Or perhaps, was that experience of nothing during grief?

I used to think that I would never be affected by grief, but I guess I was wrong. 

That foreign feeling made me feel like Mersault—the protagonist and narrator of Albert Camus’ The Stranger to whom the novel’s title refers, who said: 

“Maman died today. Or yesterday, maybe, I don’t know”, about his mother’s passing. Or in my context, on that day, “Père (father) died today”. 

Since then, for the past two years, I have been struggling with his death, and the foreign feeling of losing and grieving.

Often I found myself being in a daze, unable to focus, or going aimlessly in circles at times. 

I managed to compartmentalize those intense feelings in the back of my head by relentlessly doing reporting projects—which some may consider ambitious—but to me, it's simply an escape from grief. 

I almost felt like I was depressed, or at least angry and guilty about my dad passing. But it took its toll at me when I finished all my projects and those long-held feelings resurfaced abruptly. 

Last November, I decided to quit my job and talked to a therapist about that strong, sometimes overwhelming emotion that I’ve been experiencing for the past two years—although it’s not solely the reason I resigned.

Was it grief? Was it mourned? Or was it melancholy?

The only thing I know is that it’s an unimaginable pain, confusion and loss. It feels like losing the sense of who you are and how your life was or supposed to be, and the worst part is you will never be the same again after the crack left in you, fear of traumas, and trying to resist being a wreck; hardly battling everything in you because you are left in war with your own self. 

And many questions popped into my mind: How does your brain cope with grief, and why does it take time to heal? 

Then I remembered Sigmund Freud’s thoughts on loss: Mourning and Melancholia that I read a few years ago. 

In 1917, Sigmund Freud published one of his most important clinical works, Mourning and Melancholia, which was based on discussions with colleagues at a time when Freud himself was burdened with grief and worries. 

This was in the midst of the First World War and two of his sons and a son-in-law fought in the war. 

In that writing, Freud argues that mourning and melancholia are similar, but different responses to loss. 

In mourning, a person deals with the grief of losing a loved one and this process takes place in the conscious mind. He claimed that it is wrong to regard grief as pathological and something requiring treatment.

While in melancholia, they are unable to fully comprehend or identify the grief, and thus this process takes place in the unconscious mind. He concluded that melancholia is pathological and needs treatment. 

“Melancholia is mentally characterized by a profoundly painful depression, a loss of interest in the outside world, the loss of the ability to love, the inhibition of any kind performance and a reduction in the sense of self, expressed in self-recrimination and self-directed insults, intensifying into the delusory expectation of punishment.” - Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

And the complex of melancholia behaves like an open wound, drawing investment energies to itself from all sides and draining the ego to the point of complete impoverishment. 

Freud said that in grief, the world appears poor to those who grief because the loved one is no longer there, while in melancholia—or depression—the ego has become impoverished, feels morally reprehensible and unworthy of someone else’s love.

I can tell that what I feel is grief, but it is closer to melancholia. Why is the grief I feel so stressful and impacted in my life, in every aspect? 

In the 60s, a pair of psychiatrists, Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe, reported on their development of a scale that quantified the disruptiveness of different major life events. 

Top three events with the highest ratings were the death of others: death of a close friend (with a rating of 37 on their scale), death of a close family member (63), and, at the very top of their scale, death of one’s spouse (100).

These findings raise important philosophical questions about the value of our intense reactions to others’ deaths — about the value of grief. 

Perhaps Stoics—a school of philosophy from ancient Greece and Rome that teaches individuals to maximize positive and reduce negative emotions—that has revived in the last few years can give us some answers. 

According to Stoics, grief is another form of distress, it is an emotion that needs to be managed. 

One of the Stoics, Seneca, once said, it is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. The grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed forever. 

Grief is undoubtedly stressful, indeed. It typically involves weeks, if not months, of tumultuous emotion: the sadness or sorrow that are at grief’s heart, but often other ‘negative’ feelings such as anxiety, guilt or anger.

So, should we wail or should we swallow our pain to conquer the grief? Some would say there is no right answer, but according to those Greco-Roman philosophers, there is a correct answer to the question of how we should grieve. 

And the answer is: we shouldn’t. What is done is done, there is nothing you can do to change the situation—so move on. 

Stoics will ask you to find the positive in the situation, but also sit with your pain and accept it, remembering that it is part of life. That’s how one conquers grief. 

But a Stoic critic, Cicero, challenged this stance. 

After the death of his daughter, Tullia, from complications of childbirth,  in the late winter of 45 BCE, Cicero retreats to his country estate in the Tusculan hills in the outskirt of Rome, and writes his own consolations speech —not for others, as had always been done, but as self-help. And it worked.

He penned Tusculan Disputations, which includes an analysis on grief and endorsement of a mild form of Stoic therapy.

“Whatever falls out unexpectedly is so much heavier,” Cicero agrees. A sudden storm at sea throws the sailors into a greater fright than one which they have foreseen; and it is the same in many other cases. 

“But when you carefully consider the nature of what was expected, you will find nothing more than that all things which come on a sudden appear greater; and this upon two accounts: first of all, because you have not time to consider how great the accident is; and, secondly, because you are probably persuaded that you could have guarded against it had you foreseen if, and therefore the misfortune, having been seemingly encountered by your own fault, makes your grief the greater.” - Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)

As it advances, it brings with it so much mitigation that though the same misfortunes continue, the grief not only becomes less, but in some cases is entirely removed. 

But how will anyone be enabled to bear his misfortunes the better by knowing that it is unavoidable that such things should happen to man?

Cicero gave us several example: A foolish king in his sorrow tore away the hairs of his head, imagining that his grief would be alleviated by baldness; some men, when in sorrow, betake themselves to deserts; some feigned to have been turned into stone, from her never speaking, in her grief. There are others who love to converse with solitude itself when in grief. Is that the correct way to respond to grief?

Grief must be acknowledged, according to Cicero—men take up grief wilfully and knowingly; and this appears from the patience of those who, after they have been exercised in afflictions and are better able to bear whatever befalls them.

He then concluded that the principle of every uneasiness is the same, though they may appear under different names.

For envy is an uneasiness; so are emulation, anguish, sorrow, sadness, lamentation, vexation, trouble, affliction, despair and grief. 

These are those fibers of the roots which must be traced back and cut off and destroyed, so that not one shall remain. 

However, it is important to be gentle and patient with yourself. Slow down and take care of yourself.

Acknowledge that people we love die, people we need die, people we don’t know die, and eventually, we will die ourselves.