The Choice

can be a way of avoiding grief.” Mourning rites and rituals can be an
extremely important component of grief work. I think that’s why
religious and cultural practices include clear mourning rituals—there’s
a protected space and structure within which to begin to experience
the feelings of loss. But the mourning period also has a clear end.
From that point on, the loss isn’t a separate dimension of life—the loss
is integrated into life. If we stay in a state of perpetual mourning, we
are choosing a victim’s mentality, believing I’m never going to get over
it. If we stay stuck in mourning, it is as though our lives are over too.
Renée’s mourning, though it was painful, had also become a kind of
shield, something that fenced her off from her present life. In the
rituals of her loss she could protect herself from having to accept it.
“Are you spending more time and emotional energy with the son who
is dead, or with the daughter who is alive?” I asked.
Renée looked troubled. “I’m a good mother,” she said, “but I’m not
going to pretend I’m not in pain.”
“You don’t have to pretend anything. But you are the only person
who can stop your husband and your daughter from losing you too.” I
remembered my mother talking to her mother’s picture above the
piano, crying, “My God, my God, give me strength.” Her wailing
frightened me. Her ĕxation on her loss was like a trapdoor she would
li and fall through, an escape. I was like the child of an alcoholic, on
guard against her disappearance, unable to rescue her from the void
but feeling that it was somehow my job.
“I used to think that if I let grief in, I would drown,” I told Renée.
“But it’s like Moses and the Red Sea. Somehow the waters part. You
walk through them.”
I asked Renée to try something new to shi her mourning into
grief. “Put a picture of Jeremy in the living room. Don’t go to the
cemetery to mourn his loss. Find a way to connect with him right there
in your house. Set aside ĕeen or twenty minutes every day to sit with