Wedding Favors
|
|
Dying: A Family Rite of Passage
   
|
Eight Ways To Divorce Proof Your Marriage
1) Write a mission statement:
Most brides spend more time planning for their wedding day than for the marriage itself and are unprepared .....
1) Write a mission statement:
Most brides spend more time planning for their wedding day than for the marriage itself and are unprepared .....
Dying: A Family Rite of Passage by Maggie Vlazny, MSW
When my mother lost her father it was sad, but not unexpected.
He was 80 years old, had had that lingering kind of cancer that
old men often get, and there was plenty of time to prepare for
his death.
Not that any of us ever acknowledged his demise or named the
dread disease he lived with for so long. Until the day he died
he spoke of getting well, would not reveal his feelings or let
us tell him ours, and we all aided and abetted his fantasy. He
hid behind the wall of an impossible dream because he needed to,
but that wall troubled my mother long after he was gone. It's
not just that I miss him, she would say. It's not that I haven't
accepted his death. But it feels like there was unfinished
Holiday Tips & Advice - Money Saving,packing & More...
HOLIDAYS - something we all look forward to and something we all feel that we deserve. Of course, some countries realise this and treat .....
business. Something left undone. HOLIDAYS - something we all look forward to and something we all feel that we deserve. Of course, some countries realise this and treat .....
How well I remember the false gaiety of those last visits with
him, the strain of false smiles and tears held in check. It
seemed so unnatural not to acknowledge the obvious. The natural.
But what else could we do? In a society in which every other
bodily function is treated as a group rite of passage, from
christening to wedding to baby showers and on again, the last
one of all is oddly ignored, considering its inevitability. We
are taught to live well and love well, to birth well and parent
well. No one teaches us to die well, or help another person to
do it. When death finally comes we are poorly prepared.
Two years after my grandfather died, my own father was struck
with a lethal, untreatable form of cancer. The doctors could
offer us no type of therapy, no extra time, no hope at all. Here
was the inevitable. Here was the shock. But here also was
tragedy. My father was only 53 years old. At first I wished it
could be any other way. Why not a heart attack, an accident,
something sudden? What could be worse than the horror of having
to just sit there and watch him die? We had so many questions.
Should we tell him, and if so, when? Might it not be kinder to
protect him until the last possible moment from the anguish we
already suffered?
And how would we handle him? We worried less over his imminent
death than over the helplessness which must precede it. How
would such a bull of a man, who hated hospitals and even aspirin
all his life, handle such an indignity? He was not the kind of
person who would allow you to feel sorry for him. He was a giver
all his life who didn't know how to take. Gifts embarrassed him
and so did thank you's.
What would become of our family without our hub, our rock, our
peacemaker who held us all together? It was he we turned to with
all our problems.
The answers, though painful as all growing is, turned out to be
simple. We called a secret, emergency powwow of his brothers and
sisters. It was the last family gathering from which he was
excluded. A very wise uncle settled the hotly debated issue of
whether he should be told by saying: "He'll be leaving you soon
enough. Why put a distance between you even sooner by
Wedding Tips
Weddings are made in heaven, they say, but they have to be organized on earth. For most of us wedding is a once-in-lifetime affair when someone most special becomes yours .....
pretending? You can put all that energy into helping each otherWeddings are made in heaven, they say, but they have to be organized on earth. For most of us wedding is a once-in-lifetime affair when someone most special becomes yours .....
get through this."
Once my father was told we decided together, with him, to treat
his passing as the natural though untimely event that it was. He
would do it at home, among his loved ones. Just as birth is no
longer something that happens to women but a process they
participate in, my father's death did not happen to him. He
died. We never pretended that he would get well, or treated him
suddenly differently because he was dying. More often than not
it was he who comforted us, retaining to the end the identity of
Confessions Of A Female Sub: How Did I Get Here?
Wow. Just how did I get here? To the bottom of my secret garden, down and round the winding path, past the pond and behind the bushes, hidden from .....
the father we'd known and loved. This was a family that neverWow. Just how did I get here? To the bottom of my secret garden, down and round the winding path, past the pond and behind the bushes, hidden from .....
learned to say good-bye. Anyone going away on a long trip would
find, at the door, that everyone had suddenly disappeared. It
hurt too much to take leave of each other. Now, of course, we
had to. We wanted to.
Each of us spent private time with him saying all the things
you always mean to say to someone you love and somehow never do.
And in those quiet, solemn talks, mostly filled with
affirmations, he launched us. We flew.
My young brother came forward with a strength we had not known
was there because we had not needed to look. Two grown daughters
and a wife stopped being girls at last because the man who had
always sheltered them needed women now. We learned to give, and
he to receive. His relinquishment of the outer cares freed him
to undergo a long overdue spiritual journey, a journey he shared
every step of the way. He groped for, wrestled with, and found
his God, and left us with his finger pointed in the right
direction.
We didn't just sit and watch him die. We all participated. It
was intensely painful, but intensely intimate. I learned more
about my father in those last few weeks than I had in 32 years,
or might have in another 32. There was a feeling of wholeness in
his passing with, rather than from, us. It was as if old age and
the wisdom that accompany it had been condensed, but not lost. I
miss him, but not who he would have been.
It could have been worse. Copyright 2000 Margaret Vlazny, LCSW
About the author:
Maggie Vlazny is a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist and
practicing in Florham Park, NJ. Author requests link to her
website, http://www.florhamparkcounseling.com in exchange for
use of article, and notification of same at
maggie@therapyct.com. Thank you,