You'll get over it - The rage of bereavement by Virginia Ironside, published by Penguin (1997; ISBN 0 14 023608; £6-99). Reviewed by Nicholas Albery.
Virginia Ironside started this book on bereavement whilst in deep mourning for her father, 18 months after his death, and writes in a postscript (three years after his death) that "looking back, yes, of course it was 'too soon' ".
In the book she derides Barbara Ward's assertion that "Grief is like a butterfly cramped up in a cocoon. Once it breaks out of its confining shell it opens to the light and is transformed".
"No, no, no" is her response. "Grief ... if it does emerge, is ... a slimy, black, poisonous beetle. Grief and bereavement are miserable, miserable emotions. Leave them where they are, real and raw."
But by the time of the postscript, the author has mellowed sufficiently to admit that "maybe grief is like a butterfly and I'm still in the cocoon ... My father's death [may be] a merciful emotional release for me, too, in the end."
The primary message of this book is that most of the writers on bereavement have got it wrong, with their detached and patronising perspectives - there are no 'stages' to be worked through and in no way is bereavement an enriching experience - she quotes Toby Young with approval: "Death is a truly terrible thing and any ritual or technique that helps you to accept it only does so by disguising its true nature."
If death is a gift from God, as Elizabeth Kübler Ross would have it, then, says Ironside, "Some gift. A subscription to 'Child Abusers Weekly' would be more acceptable to most of us."
Hers is not a 'how to' book, she maintains, but she does end by offering a few practical hints, such as:
- Don't clear out the dead person's things all at once, do it a little
bit at a time, "even if it's only 20 minutes a day".
- Make no major decisions for a year.
- Give friends specific tasks such as to ask you round once a week for a
meal.
- Don't drive just after a death.
- Accept invitations.
- Some people may like to make a ritual of the anniversary of the death
as a "focus for grief, which stops it building up and exploding at
some other, less organised time".
My regret about this book is that although Ironside says she has read widely in the literature on bereavement, she does not seem to have come across the studies (summarised in The New Natural Death Handbook Rider, 1997, page 267) that undermine the old 'stages of grief' models - and studies which have found that between a quarter and two thirds of the bereaved are not greatly distressed; that the absence of extreme distress can be a sign of resilience; that those who are most upset after a loss tend also to be among the most upset a year or two later; and the finding that those who tended to "let their grief feelings out", as widely recommended, had more physical symptoms and negative emotions 14 months after a death than those who "repressed" their feelings. Nor does Ironside mention the work of Tony Walter who has argued in favour of those cultures where the essence of grieving is for the community of people that knew the deceased to talk and talk, and to remember this person's life together, to integrate the memory of the person into the life of the community.
Ironside does, however, highlight another possible avenue for consolation, by quoting a wise story from Viktor E. Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, about an elderly doctor overcome by the loss of his wife:
"What would have happened" Frankl asked "if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?"
"Oh." he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!"
Whereupon Frankl replied:
"You see, doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering; but now, you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her."
The man, Frankl recounts, "said no word, but shook my hand and calmly left my office. Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."
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