Rediscovering Life: The Cycle of Grief

I sat at my desk one evening reviewing a mailing list. I compared it with addresses in my address book and rolodex. After about an hour or so of double-checking, I counted: since the previous Christmas, twenty-seven people to whom I sent cards last year were now dead. In all but one case, the cause of death was the same: complications due to HIV/AIDS.

That was December of 1988. At that time, I was director of a regional program developing programs and services for people with HIV/AIDS. For about a dozen years, my primary work had been involved with what was then called, “the AIDS crisis.” Given the lack of viable treatments for this syndrome in the 1980s, I found myself overcome with grief and unsure how to work through the process of bereavement.

It’s not that the process of dying and death was new to me. In 1979, I began work as a hospital chaplain. I had worked with many people who died: adults, children, adolescents, and infants. Around the same time period, I was resident in a local church that averaged approximately seventy funerals a year. But my experience of working with people with HIV/AIDS and having many friends living and dying because of this syndrome became more than I could cope with on my own.

With the help of trusted friends and a wise mentor in my doctoral program, I began to study the bereavement process. That led to my doctoral dissertation on the process of bereavement due to HIV/AIDS. In my reading, I found the work of John Bowlby to be very helpful.

As a psychoanalyst, Bowlby ascribed to a model called object-relations theory. He’s best known for his research on how infants bond or form attachment with their mothers. He also did extensive research on the experience of widows who lost their husbands. His research is often incorrectly described by writers as a stage theory. He was clear in his work that the process of bereavement is not linear, but that there are characteristic phases a person experiences. One phase doesn’t just end and the next begin. Instead, one may move to another phase and then some event occurs leading a person back to a previous phase. Later, the person may move back again to where they were. Today, some writers describe bereavement as a spiral. That image isn’t accurate either. I look at the process and think of it as four different characteristic experiences in a process that could last about a year or perhaps up to three or more years – if it ever really does end.

At first, there is a sense of shock or disbelief that the loss has occurred. The overwhelming sense is that the death of the loved one just can’t be happening. Many people describe it in physical terms, like the loss of an arm or a leg, or even as a hard punch in the gut. The initial experience of shock often lasts a couple of weeks. Yes, it can return. But as the initial experience of shock diminishes, intense emotions about the loss often occur. Many people can’t seem to accept that the loss has occurred, so they think they see or hear the loved one, or feel the person’s presence. They may go through routines shared with the loved one, like setting the person’s place at the dinner table, and then realize the person won’t be home for dinner. It’s often in these moments that people think that they’re going crazy. They aren’t. It’s really just part of the process of internally accepting the external loss of a loved one. That process usually takes months. Because it takes a long while, others become impatient with the person in grief.

In time, the finality of the loss is accepted. With this acceptance comes a sense of disorganization and despair. In this experience, a person may feel like there’s nothing left to live for or no reason to go on. Expressions of such feelings are often mislabeled as signs of depression. Treating this experience as though it were clinical depression prevents the person from properly moving through the process of bereavement. The real resolution is when the person is able to start engaging in new activities without the loved one, to create a life for self again. That’s the fourth phase or experience Bowlby described: reorganization. In reorganization, a person finds new ways to live life in meaningful ways without the loved one.

Even years after the loss, birthdays, anniversaries, or other events draw a person back into the experience of bereavement. For example, years after my father’s passing, I find myself in card shops near Father’s Day missing him very deeply.

It was by studying the process of bereavement, by working through the nuances of multiple griefs in the context of HIV/AIDS, that I came to understand myself and this process in a much more expansive way. Knowing Bowlby’s model gave me sign-posts along the way to help me understand what I was going through. But here’s what’s most important: it’s a process that one must go through. This process is a normal part of life. It can’t be rushed or avoided. While it’s very difficult, Bowlby is very clear: the process leads to the reorganization of life in a new way.

In formulating a model of bereavement based on extensive interviews with widows, Bowlby was able to find something truly amazing: that people have the ability to move beyond extremely painful experiences that resulted from the loss of a loved one. At the time their spouses of 40, 50 or 60 years died, these women were sure that life ended for them. Yet, in time they found that they were able to find that life could still be good for them in different ways. The human spirit is resilient.

The cycles of death and rebirth ritualized in the religions of the world are much more than legends or myths based on tales that may or may not be true. Instead, rituals of the cycle of death and rebirth draw us to the truth we hold within us: that even when surrounded by death, as I was in the 1980s, there is the possibility of finding life in new ways once again.

Yes, I continue to miss close friends who died because of AIDS. After more than 20 years, I still speak with some of them in my imagination, like my university class mate Zane or my professor and advisor, Rick. They remain part of me. But life has continued for me in ways more interesting than I could have imagined then. And I am thankful.