My first entry.

We aren’t anywhere close to discussing the topic of grief and loss in the Philosophy of Religion class.

I hate to call it my class! Things have gone so well with Daigan assisting us in our conversations about death and dying. He’s a great facilitator. And it’s more than just Daigan’s experience that is making the class a success: the students are spectacular. It’s so great to have a group (probably close to 50) who are just right there with you. It makes a tremendous difference. Besides my seminars, this has been the most collaborative teaching experience I’ve ever had. Yes, I’m thrilled.

Now back to death! I haven’t experienced a lot of deaths. And I still have to say that I’m grateful for that. That statement alone indicates how uncomfortable I still am with death and dying. But what I do seem to have a lot of experience with is grief.

I suppose the good news is that the people I have loved beyond all measure, e.g., my grandmother, Ga-Ga, and my former teachers such as D.Z. Phillips, have led me to experience tons of grief and a deep feeling of loss.

It’s weird to say “they caused” this. But I’m sure you know what I mean. The absence, the void is still a kind of presence. Perhaps that’s what grief is. I’m reading Simone Weil. I come back to her again and again. This quote is from her Notebooks (Volume 1, pg. 28). It’s available on Google Books here.

To lose somebody: we suffer at the thought that the dead one, the absent one should have become something imaginary, something false.  But the longing we have for him is not imaginary.  We must go down into ourselves, where the desire which is not imaginary resides.  Hunger; we imagine different foods; but the hunger itself is real; we must seize hold of the hunger.

The loss of contact with reality–there lies evil, there lies sorrow. There are certain situations which bring about such a loss: deprivation, suffering. The remedy is to use the loss itself as an intermediary for attaining reality.  The presence of the dead one is imaginary, but his absence is very real; it is henceforth his manner of appearing.

This last bit is so true. The absence is real. But that’s just how the ones for whom I grieve appear to me now. What this way of thinking about grief does, at least what my view on it today is, is that it really throws a monkey wrench into wanting to stop the grief or to blot out the feeling of absence. To say, “Oh, I wish Ga-Ga wouldn’t come to mind” or “I wish I’d stop thinking about D.Z. is to cut myself off from being able to experience them again.

I’m not sure if Weil means it like this, but in a way, the appearing is a form of “enjoyment”. I get to remember incidents that bring me joy. It brings the person back to me. That’s cool. But it certainly leaves the odd sense that his death and  his appearing are “all about me”. It’s almost as though a person’s death is something I do.

Whew! That didn’t hurt too much.