I'm taking an Intermediate Counselling Course this year at the Harare
Christian Counselling Centre. One of the course requirements is to read 4 of
their (I asked) books and write a book report on it. I planned on it being a
very "check-the-box-done" kind of assignment but, go figure, it
was challenging, difficult and worldview-affecting. Ahem, humility is a lesson I will be learning all my life.
Bereavement: a Shared Experience by Helen Alexander
I found this book difficult to read. As someone who reads,
studies and teaches books for a living, this may seem odd, but it is true. When
I started reading, I appreciated the practical advice and philosophical ideas
about the stages of grief, the right to mourn, saying goodbye and the
importance of remembering/formalising someone’s passing.
But as the chapters became more specific, focusing on the
different kinds of death – sudden, taboo, of a spouse, of a child – I found I
could not read large sections of the book at a time, particularly as each section
included real experiences of real people in real grief in their own words. I
found it draining and emotional. I have been privileged to have never lost a
person close to me, so bereavement is not a process I feel I can personally
relate to. I have also not started my own family yet. The thought, however, of
losing someone who has become an integral and important part of my life, is
terrifying. I found myself questioning the desire and wisdom of marriage and of
children in the light of so many awful, harrowing possibilities of loss and
pain. I do not know how people who have loved so deeply and lived for so long
with another person can survive and move on with their life. And that was,
essentially, what this book was about—listening to, sharing in and learning
from the experiences of those who had gone through, or were going through, the depths
of grief. In all of these, I realised the importance of support, for a long
time after the death—something I feel we, as communities, loved ones and the
church, are often not good at sustaining. In this broken world, when faced with
the hard, confusing, unjust consequences of sin, surely we are called to be
open passages for God’s love to those who need it most, no matter how hard or
painful for us personally? To meet someone in their pain—the way Christ met us
in our pain—to go there with them—the way Christ went there with us and for us—what
greater example and imitation of His love could there be?
In a conversation with my mum about the book and its effect
on my thinking about my future, she quoted Shakespeare: “But, Beks, ‘Tis better
to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’”. I didn’t think much
of this—too cliché! And then I read the final chapter. Thank goodness. Life is
a gift that we should cherish and live to the fullest. This means, I think,
accepting and entering into the suffering that is part of it. We cannot hide
ourselves away from it. Amazingly, strange and contradictory as it may seem, in
that suffering we find a richness of life and love that we did not, maybe even
could not, know before.
And ultimately, most importantly, we have a Hope and a Peace
that surpasses all understanding: death is not the end.
