Grieving

Shannon asks:

"a friend and i were talking the other night about how both of us had very christian grandfathers die and grieving was really frowned upon during the service. it was all, they're in heaven now, etc. and so it made me think is this is evangelical protestant thing to frown on grief and other emotions in general (esp. negative emotions like depression, anger, etc) or is this a thing of church history through the ages? if so, where did that come from? i know the verse that says "we do not mourn like those who have no hope," but there needs to be an adequate place for grief. so just wondering your thoughts on that matter."

Shannon, I might go more along the lines of the "evangelical protestant thing to frown on grief and other emotions in general" in explaining this one. I don't have a lot of background information on other cultures, but I read an interesting book a few years ago about western attitudes toward death in the middle ages, etc. You might be interested to know, for example, that before our modern medicine started taking over the deathbed, when people died they were usually surrounded by their family. They would feel death coming, and would make a speech--their final testament--and then lie there and wait until they died. This isn't always how people died, of course, but if you were fortunate enough to die peacefully, this would usually be the way. Now there is more a distance and mystery around death, I think, as we move away from the land, from nature, and people die more often in hospitals or nursing homes rather than at home.

I know people who say things like "I don't want anybody to mourn for me after I'm gone," and I understand the sentiment--they don't like to be the cause of someone's pain. But on the other hand, that's a little like asking people not to love you or miss you when you're gone. If I had a great friend who moved to the other side of the country for her dream job, I'd be happy for her, but I'd still miss her. The funeral, in other words, and the time of grieving afterwards are for the people left behind, not for the person who has died, so they should be places where people can experience and work through the pain of the loss.

In addition to the impulse to cover up or hide pain, though, I think there's also an attitude that children can't handle loss. I don't know how old you or your friend were when your grandfathers died, but there may have been some of that attempt to shield children which is, in my opinion, usually an attempt by adults to shield themselves from their own emotions.