There I was, dripping in sweat, the kind that rolls down the side
of your head and innocently into your ear. The still summer evening
was allowing me to hear my own breath and my own thoughts. I was
determined to make this a great hole and I kept digging probably
farther than I really needed to, but on I went. What seemed like
a great deal of sweat was swallowed effortlessly by the dirt in
the bottom of this hole. It was easier still to absorb the tears
I shed.
This hole was to be the home of a tree that was being given as
a memorial to my father, who died a year ago last November. I
had known the hole needed digging, but had put off the task until
now. Now, of course, was just about the last possible time it
could be dug. As I continued digging, I was with my father. My
thoughts raced back and forth to recent events leading up to his
death and back to childhood memories. I remembered his engineering
talents and nature and tried to dig the hole in a way that would
please him.
As I dug, the feelings flowed through me. The sadness of missing
him and his absence, the gratefulness of having been his son,
and the anger and frustration of my powerlessness. All of these
feelings found their way into this hole. The act of digging became
a template for the various thoughts and feelings to arise. Through
the action, I was opened to my own inner world.
I started wondering why I had put off this job. I realized that
I didn't want to do it. Actually digging the hole brought the
death more into reality and a part of me didn't want that. I've
learned to accept this part that wants to deny things. Denial
is not really such a bad thing, and it doesn't go away as quickly
as some people seem to think. I've noticed it has a slow zig-zag
decay that can last a long time. In a way denial can be our friend,
allowing us to slowly accept the reality at hand. I became aware
of the battle going on between the denying part and the digging-the-hole
part. As a friend of mine says, "We have wetware, not hardware."
The tree has since been planted in an emotional ritual attended
by myself and the six men who donated the tree. It became a template
for all of us to delve into our interiors and connect with a variety
of issues from fathers to death. The activity of buying, digging,
planting, and gathering together became a hub for a wide variety
of spin-offs. As we stood around the tree, we all had a chance
to speak and to listen. Somehow having an activity made this process
flow smoothly. It would have been much more difficult to simply
sit in a circle and talk about our feelings. It was through the
doing that we could connect.
The tree now stands in a park that is adjacent to my home. Not
only was the activity surrounding the tree helpful, now the tree
has moved from being an activity to being a place. Each time I
come and go, I see that tree sitting there being itself. When
I see the tree, I am reminded of my father, my grief, and the
men who lovingly honored my father and my pain.
I have found a wide variety of activities that, like the tree,
help me in connecting to my inner spheres. Writing, gardening,
and music are examples. All of these activities can take me into
myself and my grief and joy. Another example is a ritual I learned
about some time ago from the Cree Indians of Northwest North America:
the tree-wounding ritual. The following story describes this simple
ritual and its beauty:
When his brother died suddenly, Jaque was torn by sadness and
anger. Following ancient custom, he went into the forest, selected
a tree and, after uttering a prayer, stripped away a piece of
the bark. Now the tree, like Jaque, had lost something whose loss
caused deep pain. Many times over the following months, he returned
to visit the tree. As the seasons passed, the wound in the tree
healed. So did the wound in Jaque's heart. With the tree as a
visible reflection of his loss, Jaque was reminded that he, too,
was healing. (excerpted from my booklet, Different Paths Toward
Healing)
In this instance, there is also an action and a place. Both action
and place serve as "containers" or "hooks"
for the inner state of the man. As the man performs the action
or visits the place, he is afforded the opportunity to experience
his pain, and as the above example points out, to have his healing
reflected back to him. I have used this ritual a number of times
and have found it extremely helpful. The trees I have chosen are
mostly in my backyard and stand as reminders to me of my grief,
pain, and healing.
Death professionals have long been confounded by the difference
between men and women in visiting gravesites. The men tend to
visit more often. The above ideas should give us a deeper understanding
of why this takes place. Men tend towards linking their grief
with a place, action, or thing. There are many examples: the man
whose daughter died, who wore her ring as a remembrance of her,
the man who carved a bust of his wife after her death, a man who
built a pond in memory of his murdered brother, a man who wore
his father's watch, and on and on. These activities are often
quiet and unseen by most people. The casual observer might assume
that the man is "not grieving," but many times that
is not the case.
The use of activity as a means to connect with one's grief is
not exclusive to men; women also find this approach helpful. The
difference is that women have a strength in connecting their emotions
to their words, and then are inclined to "share" those
words with the people in their life whom they love. This proclivity
fits nicely with the keyword of "intimacy" that Deborah
Tannen used to describe women in her book, You Just Don't Understand.
A woman's world, according to Tannen, revolves around her intimacy
and connection with others. We would expect that when a woman
experiences the chaos of grief, a primary mode of healing will
be connecting her pain with her intimacy to others. Tannen goes
on to use the keyword of "independence" for men. When
independence is your keyword, you are probably less likely to
want to "share" your feelings with those around you.
You will be more likely to seek out modes of healing that will
be harmonious with your interest in maintaining independence.
I know for myself, and for many men, the verbal connection is
facilitated by connecting it with some action, place, or thing.
I am less inclined to simply "share" my feelings with
those around me. I am grieving, but I do it in my own way, a way
that is more quiet and less visible, and harmonizes with my interest
in independence. It is for this reason that it is a dangerous
act to judge a man's grief by how much he "shares" it
with others. A man's pain cannot be judged by outer appearances
or the abundance of tears.
It needs to be said that when we divide men and women into two
distinct groups, we are in dangerous territory. All people are
unique in the ways they find to heal themselves. There are probably
more individual differences in grief than there are gender differences,
but the gender differences do exist and need to be honored.
These differences can often be clearly seen in a married couple
who have experienced the death of a child. Often the man thinks
the woman is "overdoing it" as she openly emotes and
shares her feelings with those she loves. The woman, on the other
hand, sometimes thinks the man "isn't grieving" due
to his difference in chosen path toward healing. Both parents
are immersed in the chaos of grief and have limited reserves to
come to the aid of their partner. This is a tough situation. The
solution is for all of us to honor each other's unique form of
grieving.
