Looking For Closure

 

Closure is a word we often hear in relationship to widows and grief. It’s defined as an end to grief. We look for closure so we can move so-called forward. Closure to heal, closure to say good-bye to the past, closure to put a period at the end of our pain. Closure, closure, closure---well, phooey on all that! According to Nancy Berns, a sociologist at Drake University, seeking closure actually does harm to people who’ve suffered a loss. She says we don’t need it to heal. Instead of looking for closure we should be choosing to carry our grief forward. We don’t need an ending to our grief and in fact, she says closure doesn’t even exist.

Those were startling thoughts when I first heard them but what she means is what we actually need to do is to create a space for joy and a space for grief to co-exist. If we try to keep our grief in a tightly closed box---like the champions of closure say we must do---then we can’t bring forth the memories that make us smile, laugh and warms our hearts. We need to do this with memories and to do it without feeling guilty for not finding so-called closure, not “moving on” as the people around us are always looking for us to do. Guilt for wanting to remember shouldn’t walk hand-in-hand---she didn't say this part about guilt and memories but this is my nutshell interpretation of what she was getting at.

I can sure identify with feeling guilty about bringing Don up as often as I do. I’ll share a memory or antidote and immediately look at the person I’m talking with to see if they are making a judgment about me---looking at me with pity or something worse. Do they think I’m living in the past? Do they think I’m not making a big enough effort to move forward? Do they think I should be able to can carry on conversations and leave out 42 years of my life experiences as if Don was never a part of them? These are all self-doubting thoughts I’ve had and they are perfect examples of guilt walking hand-in-hand with remembering.

Nancy Berns says carrying grief and joy together is liberating. If you keep your grief in a box then you never get to take out the joy that went along with the relationship/person you grief. If you haven’t seen her seventeen minute video titled Beyond Closure, I’ve linked it below. It will give you a lot to think about. There is one thing she said I hope will stick to me if the occasion comes up. She says when you come across someone who is deep in grief the best thing you can say to them is, “Tell me about him/her. What was he/she like?” Instinctively I think I already knew this is a healing approach---let the memories flow, not bottle them up.

I got another envelope in the mail from Social Security this week addressed to Don with a warning in big black letters not open it if I wasn’t Don. When does it stop? It’s been 13 months. In the same batch of mail I got another letter addressed to Don inviting him to look at a new rehab nursing home that promises the place “could help him return back home again stronger and feeling better.” I read it over four times trying to figure out who sold his name to their mailing list. If anyone needs closure it’s the places that should have updated their records and stamped Don’s DECEASED before they sold his contact information.

The “rehab letter” was good for an hour’s entertainment, though, as I thought about various replies I could send them. I would have used the grave plot block number and row at the cemetery for a return address and tell them to “come get me! I’m cold down here in the ground! Make me feel better so I can return back home.” Dumb-ass marketing department…you really have to learn to laugh at stuff like this because if you don’t you’d spend your life crying. And would we really want to live in a world where the data of our lives is so well documented and connected that we couldn’t sneeze without Kimberly-Clark e-mailing us coupons for their Kleenex? Nope, not me, I’m already creeped out enough by Facebook "fingers” every where on the net. So instead I write letters in my head one of which would have said: Dear Dumb-Ass Marketing Director. Find some closure. Don is dead. But if you think you can help him, be my guest. He’s in the cemetery two streets over from your place.©