Mourning

It occurs to me that mourning requires a slot, perhaps a cylinder, or a channel, which goes up and down.  It needs to be fed and watered, but it does not spread out.  It is inherently a personal, not a social process.  I would this is true even for social losses, like 9/11.  Everyone mourns in their own way, in their own time.

Mourning was a topic we focused on in graduate school.  The professor who taught the required “intro” course was Peter Homans.  Here is his obituary: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/peter-homans-religious-scholar-who-examined-transformative-power-loss-psychology-1930-2009

I also took a course on religion and death, and learned a lot.  I remember particularly a book we read on rural Greek mourning traditions.  At the time of the writing they still kept ossuaries, which is where a deceased person is buried, mourned ritually for a specific period of time, then after a further passing of time, disinterred, and their bones placed in what almost amounts to a grave closet with other bones of the community.

There is something about mourning which makes us human.  It means we loved.  It means we ARE loved, when we know we will be missed when we are gone.  You cannot experience loss without a sense of presence.

I suppose I am mourning something myself, something complex.  I could give it many names, but at this precise moment it does not want to be named.

This up and down, though, versus sideways, is an important emotional image.  I feel that strongly.

I might phrase it like this: some days are better than other days, but all days spent mourning are YOUR days, and no one else’s.  They are your relationship with your grief.  You are at the top, and the grief is at the bottom, and you both slide back and forth.  Again, this is what I feel.