Re-membering

Understanding Grief: Finding Meaning Through Narrative Therapy

30 August is Grief Awareness Day. 

People who have lost someone have a certain look recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness.”

Didion, (2007, p.35)

The stages of grief model of Kubler Ross and David Kessler talks about Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, Finding meaning. 

Case scenario– The long term partner chose not to be with him when he went for MAID- Medical Assistance in Dying as she did not want to increase the conflicts in his family. The step sons, brothers do recognize her, but the ex-wife and related persons would be uneasy by her presence. As she struggled with feelings of guilt, shame, confusion we turned to Narrative therapy informed techniques to deepen the finding meaning.

Background:  Re-membering is a Narrative Therapy (NT) intervention in which we dig deeper into the implication of one’s contribution to the person’s identity, that person’s contribution to our life, how one’s identity would be viewed through that person’s eyes and the implication of these contributions (White, 2007)

Finding meaning

The contribution to each other’s identity conversations led to how he had helped her process her loss when her ex-husband passed away, and she wanted to be there for the sake of her sons from that marriage. Her partner had helped her in that difficult stage and they found meaning in deeper conversations on the processes of family, parenting and life. Her own contribution to his identity was on finding renewed meaning in his connection with his step-sons, after his marriage dissolved. His step sons spoke at the funeral and mentioned how they had seen a different way of relating as their father (the only person they knew as their father- climbed upon him when they were children- as their own biological father had left when they were very small). 

When one views one’s identity through that person’s eyes, reflects upon the implications of these contributions one can find go beyond day-to-day life and have a richer connection.

Exercise

Stop and try to remember a person who has physically passed, and remember the joint energy of that relationship.

An aid could be try to remember a shared moment and see how it felt to be together, what remains from that moment and how you would imbibe that energy in your life.

Share as comfortable.

What was the experience of re-membering and sharing like.

My example: Nature walks early in the morning were a gift my father gave to me. I remembered him on his 4th death anniversary on a walk up the Hills near Haridwar, Uttarakhand India in 2003. That moment of imbibing the joint energy has been imbibed into my life by many such nature walks over the decades. One of his other contributions in my life was to model what a flashcard and a checklist would do to one’s work. In my pre-school years, I saw him make flash cards of important drugs, how they would interact with other drugs and with body systems in different stages of disease (he was an anesthesiologist). Having such flashcards and checklists have been part of my professional identity. 

Re-membering models could see these experiences (nature walks, checklists, flashcards) be revisited by seeing how these experiences contributed to each other’s meaning. As I went into hostel (medical school days-Delhi 1980s) we went for nature walks to the hills of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India and he talked about his younger childhood years, we prayed at the temples which he had visited as a child. Those pilgrimages, museum walks have imbibed in me the spirit of taking my own sons, nephews, nieces to museums, natural areas. 

If his spirit would see/experience this, he would view it as an extension of our walks together in the Western Sahyadri ranges and Northern Himalayan ranges of India.

Key words

Grief,  Finding Meaning, Identity, Definitional Ceremonies, Remembering, Narrative Therapy

References White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. WW Norton & Company.