MOURNING AT A WRITERS CLUB

“They tell you to keep busy or even to move out of your house. But in my experience, remembering the past makes hoping for the future possible.” --Alan D. Wolfelt “When you are sorrowful look again into your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” – Kahlil Gibran The Central Lions Seniors Association has a Tuesday morning writers club. We members write at home and read our writing together. My companions in this endeavour are an eclectic lot. They write about all sorts of interesting things: a mistress of Louis XV; the rise and fall of polio; attending a Rose Bowl game in Pasadena; the extraordinary dietary preferences of cats. With a few exceptions I usually write about one thing: my experience of reconciling with grief. I’d like to write about other things. Maybe someday I will. Those who write about grief and bereavement tell us our society is intolerant of grief, impatient for us mourners to move on. With this in mind I tend to approach the Tuesday musings with a cautious suspicion. This is the first time I’ve gathered with the same writers, week after week, month after month. I notice, in their passing comments, that the members worry about boring each other. I worry about that too. Can the day be far off when a weary listener will jump up screaming: “All right already! Get over it!” Alan Wolfelt is a renowned authority on grief. He differentiates between grieving and mourning. He says grieving is what you feel on the inside. Mourning is the outward expression of the grief. Mourning is the thing you do in order to reconcile with grief. Spoiler alert! He says the grieving may never stop and the mourning can go on for a long time. Sometimes I ask myself why, when I was looking for activity to fill my time, I chose to join a writers club rather than a grief support group. The people in a support group would have been sympathetic. They would have expected expressions of mourning. The leaders would have encouraged me to share my pain. So why choose a writers’ club? The answer is: I didn’t compare the two. I joined a writers club because I like to write for fun. I figured I wouldn’t need a support group if I was having enough fun. I didn’t have any topics in mind. I expected to make a few people laugh a little. How was I to know that my journey through grief would show up in almost everything I wrote, exposing my pain to a captive audience of unsuspecting strangers? Alan Wolfelt writes that mourners have six needs: acknowledge the reality of the death; embrace the pain of the loss; remember the person who died; develop a new self-identity; search for meaning; receive ongoing support from others. From my perspective, some of these needs take care of themselves. Others are more dependent on action from me. Some people have trouble acknowledging the reality of death. I’m having no difficulty with this. We spent several hours with David’s body after he stopped breathing. I’ve got the paperwork to prove it and his clothes are long gone. As for the pain, it does not wait for my embrace. It holds me in a hammer lock. After 47 years of closeness in David’s company, it’s quite an adjustment to accommodate the fact that other people don’t need to remember him as often as I do. I am working on that. Things get even more complicated when it comes to developing a new self-identity and finding meaning. That’s going to take a while. As for seeking ongoing support from others, that support can come in many forms. It might come in the company of close friends, or in a group united by a common thread. Grief support groups unite around the process of mourning. Is there any reason to take it elsewhere? Grief, I have found, is more persistent and more flexible than you might think. It is welcome in a support group, but it doesn’t need one so much if you can find other places to take it. It will tag along wherever you choose to go. Writers clubs unite around the process of writing. With little choice but to listen, the members of our writers club have graciously made room for my pain. It holds its own alongside the fascinating variety of topics others bring. Mourning is not a stable condition. The commitment to present writing to a group on a regular basis has helped me shape it in ways that offer some encouragement to me and possibly some entertainment value to us all. Grief doesn’t have to show up at a writers club naked and shivering. You can dress it up in stories. In recent weeks I have written about choirs, marshmallow parties and even Groundhog Day. Each story holds some quirky progress, the documentation of something getting better. Writing is a solitary activity. You explore topics of your own interest. You make your own meaning in your own words. A writers club gives you the added benefit of group support when you share that meaning in your own voice. It disappoints me some to discover that I have no choice about whether to grieve. I expected to be moving on by now. But I do have some choices about how to mourn. Mourning is not so bad if you can make it playful. Playfulness is welcome among writers. Perhaps that is the best defense against the possibility that some fellow writer will stand up and shout: “Enough already! Get over it!”