Choosing How to Remember

When it comes to the ongoing relationship with a deceased loved one, how can we go forward in a healthy way?  The most important thing I learned in my experience, conversation and study was that this relationship can be a healthy thing.  It is not, by definition, pathological.  It does not, by implication, make me crazy.

The second thing I learned was that I could make choices about the nature of this ongoing relationship.  Not only could I make such choices.  I needed to make such choices if I was going to move on into life without creating a segregated space of unhealthy fantasies in my brain.

One of the things that jolted me a bit in that regard was the writing C. S. Lewis did in A Grief Observed.  This is one of the few bereavement books that I found useful early on. Lewis wrestled with the temptation he felt to love the memory of his beloved Joy Gresham.  In the book, of course, he refers to her as "H."  He writes, "It was H. I loved.  As if I wanted to fall in love with my memory of her, an image in my own mind!"

That is, perhaps, the temptation we all experience at some point--to turn the memories of our deceased loved one into a sort of idol we worship.  What we discover is that the image becomes a burden rather than a gift.  I was fortunate to see the movie, Inception, at about this time.  One of the many challenges that movie poses is precisely this one--dealing with the temptation to turn memories into reality in order to escape the pain of Reality.

Lewis describes it this way.

"But the image has the added disadvantage that it will do whatever you want.  It will smile or frown, be tender, gay, ribald or argumentative just as your mood demands.  It is a puppet of which you hold the strings...the fatal obedience of the image, its insipid dependence on me, is bound to increase."

The problem with memories is that in the one sense we most desire, they are not real.  So we must choose how we wish to honor those memories and reconstruct the relationship with the deceased loved one that is real.

The first healthy choice is to be grateful.  Gratitude is the chief tool for letting go of the pain of loss and embracing appreciation for what we had.  The opposite of gratitude will be bitterness.  Gratitude, even for the tragic loss itself, frees us to live.  Bitterness locks us in a self-imposed prison of pain.

The second healthy choice is to learn from our memories.  What kind of person was I in that relationship?  What kind of person am I now?  Am I really so different?  What kinds of new starts can I embrace to grow and develop and flourish (we'll look at grief and personal growth downstream somewhere).  I learned about myself and the world through my life with Anne when she was alive.  I can continue to learn about myself, perhaps like never before.  The difference now is in the content of the learning, not the process of learning.

The third healthy choice is to refuse to compare.  Is my life now better or worse than my old life?  That's a painfully useless question.  My life is different.  Some things are worse.  Some things are better.  There is no objective "control" to help me determine an overall assessment.  And what difference does it really make?  I miss some things from the past.  I'm glad to be rid of other things.  That's how life works.

Paul's words in Philippians 4:12-13 are powerful for me here.

"I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

 You have choices about how to build that ongoing relationship.