MOURNING

Mourning is for the benefit of the living, not the departed.

Every culture has a series of practices to mark the departure of a loved one from this world. These practices are generally referred to as "rites of mourning" or simply as "mourning."

In some cultures, mourning involves a lot of crying and other behaviors generally associated with venting grief. These cultures seem to believe that grief has to come out one way or the other. Better to get it right out in the open from the start. In other cultures, mourning involves a lot of partying and other behaviors generally associated with countering grief. These cultures recognize the pain that is associated with grief and try to redirect it into more pleasant emotions. A little grief may be OK, but let's prevent it from getting out of hand by having some fun. A few cultures stress "maintaining a stiff upper lip." They do not seem to want to recognize grief as a genuine human experience at all. Better to suppress it, and continue with our lives as if nothing has changed.

The common denominator of all these practices is "grief." We either accentuate it, counter it, or suppress it. But we always do something with it when a loved one departs from this world.

But what are we all grieving about? Almost everyone believes that the departed person has gone to a better place. If we believe this, we should be happy for the person. If a person does not believe in the afterlife, he should still be happy when a loved one passes on. After all, a person's suffering in this world stops once he passes on. Why are we not happy about the end of this person's suffering?

If we looked at the situation strictly from the point of view of the person who has passed on, I believe that we would be happy for the person. But we do not look at the situation from the viewpoint of the departed. We look at the situation from our own viewpoint. When a loved one leaves this world, he leaves us behind. Our lives continue but without the comfort and support that the departed person had provided us in the past. When someone dies, he may go to a better place, but we do not. Where we remain becomes a little more difficult to bear because of our loss.

Mourning is for the living, not for the departed. At its best, it brings people together based on their common bonds with the departed person. These old bonds no longer function in the same way that they functioned in the past. No matter what we do, we cannot bring anyone back. But we can forge new bonds with the people with whom we share our mourning. These new bonds may never make up for our loss, but they can make our current experiences easier to bear. At the very least, sharing the grief spreads it around and makes my share (and yours) a little lighter to carry.