At times I’ve considered whether I’m “missing a chip” when it comes to grieving lost loved ones. Over the years I’ve met people, both men and women, that can’t recover after losing a spouse. Time magazine dealt with the subject a few years back. Some of the information and statistics prove daunting.

“Losing a spouse forces people into what is often one of the most vulnerable parts of their lives. The negative health consequences of widowhood can stretch years down the line, but in some cases, they don’t get a chance to. The phenomenon in which both halves of a couple die in short succession is so common that it even has a name: the widowhood effect.”

“How at risk is any given person? That depends on many contributing factors, from their religion to race and even their spouse’s cause of death. But the widowhood effect is generally believed to be a problem primarily affecting closely bonded elderly couples.”

“A study published Mar. 22 in the journal PLOS One finds that younger people—especially men—are even more at risk. Researchers in Denmark, the U.K., and Singapore studied data from almost one million Danish citizens ages 65 and older and found that the younger people were when they lost their spouse, the more susceptible they were to dying within a year. Overall, the researchers also found that in the year after losing a spouse, men were 70% more likely to die than similarly aged men who did not lose a spouse, while women were 27% more likely to die compared to women who did not become widowed.”

That’s a load of consideration to process. I’ve known many people who lost a spouse and think of one man in particular whose wife was killed in a random traffic accident. At the time, he was in his late 60s, and he never recovered. They were a leading couple in the Christian church we attended, and he’d been our insurance representative when my late wife and I were young. His promise to us at the time, because we weren’t wealthy, was that “God always provides.”

He and his wife were extremely close, and she was a charitable and loving force of nature in life. She was one of those people whose faith and love for others did not need to be explained. It was evident in everything she did. I was married to one of those too. That doesn’t mean they were perfect people. It simply means they really loved life. It is tragic when people like that are lost too soon. Whether by accident or disease, we mourn the absence of them in our lives.

Yet grief for them also forces us to make choices. For some, that means immersion in the grief process as it is so often defined. You may be familiar with them.

Denial: This can’t be happening.

Anger: Why did this happen? Who is to blame?

Bargaining: Make this not happen and I will…

Depression: I can’t bear this; I’m too sad to do anything.

Acceptance: I acknowledge that this has happened, and I cannot change it.

If death comes as a shock, then the first five stages of grief also arrive as a life-shuddering force. But if death comes as an eventuality, the people close to the person dying have an opportunity engage in what is called ‘pre-grief’ or ‘anticipatory grief.’ Here’s an apt description from the website Open to Hope:

Anticipatory grief: “This means experiencing the emotions associated with grief before the expected loss actually happens. Rather than grieving the loss of a person, anticipatory grief might be better understood as grieving the loss of experiences, possibilities or an imagined future together.”

In every case with which I was associated with death in my family; my mother (2005) my father-in-law (2012) my late wife (2013) and my father (2015) there were many events leading up to their passing hinting at their passing. For my mother, it was cancer and a stroke. For my late wife, it was eight years of cancer treatments and recurrence. For my father-in-law it was a heart attack and kidney issues. For my father, he was a stroke victim living with his condition from 2003 on.

A coach recalled

It wasn’t that I ever gave up on any of these people at any point. There’s at least one more person I’d add to this list of people that I considered “family” of a sort, and that’s my late coach Trent Richards. He was my baseball coach when I was thirteen, and coached me in track and cross country in my high school years. He smoked most of his life and ultimately lung cancer caught up with him. But he passed from this life to the next in the most graceful way imaginable. While cancer took its toll, he met up with former athletes and even took a trip to Cleveland to watch his beloved Cubs win a game on the way to their World Series win. When Cleveland fans learned of his devotion, they bought him food and drinks even though he was rooting against their team in his Cubs hat and jersey. That’s how life should be.

We all saw it coming for Trent. Before he died he commissioned a painting from me of a runner with wings. That meant a lot. It was his way of telling me that he valued our long friendship that went well beyond our coach-and-athlete days into doing business together and sharing life on many fronts. He was the person that called me after finding out about my late wife’s cancer diagnosis, telling me, “Your whole life has been a preparation for this.” And when it came to his own life, he felt prepared to deal with it. I admire that.

Anticipatory grief works both ways, you see. Some people in the process of dying go about it in that way. Some great minds have considered that reality. Way back in 1970 when George Harrison released his album All Things Must Pass, I sat with my head between two large speakers on our living room floor listening to his music. I was depressed after having moved away from friends back East in Pennsylvania, and Harrison was by then sprung from The Beatles. In some respects he was dealing with the grief, yet he also expressed a sense of relief, it seemed, at being released in some fashion. He wrote an incredible song called The Art of Dying. There’s the link. You should listen to it. Astounding. Here are the lyrics:

There’ll come a time when all of us must leave here
Then nothing sister Mary can do
Will keep me here with you
As nothing in this life that I’ve been trying
Could equal or surpass the art of dying
Do you believe me?

There’ll come a time when all your hopes are fading
When things that seemed so very plain
Become an awful pain
Searching for the truth among the lying
And answered when you’ve learned the art of dying

But you’re still with me
But if you want it
Then you must find it
But when you have it
There’ll be no need for it

There’ll come a time when most of us return here
Brought back by our desire to be
A perfect entity
Living through a million years of crying
Until you’ve realized the Art of Dying
Do you believe me?

I don’t know anything about the reincarnation hints at the end of that song. That’s something I’ll leave to the mysteries of existence. What I do know about the Art of Dying is that everyone of us will get our chance to consider what that means. For those of us looking on from whatever distance we encounter the act of death, there are many kinds of grief. In my book The Right Kind of Pride, I devote an entire chapter to the Goofball’s Guide to Grief. The thoughts we get in our heads are not always rational. Sometimes we even feel free and relieved to no longer be tied to the pain of someone dying. That’s a fair emotion too. I’ve known it myself.

It doesn’t mean we’re unfeeling or callous somehow. Nor does it mean we’re “missing a chip” from some emotional foundation we’re all supposed to have. What it means is that some of us process grief in a quite immediate and present fashion while for others, it is a prolonged process requiring years or even a lifetime to mourn the loss of someone important to us.

A Star Is Dead

Perhaps you’ve even felt grief over the loss of someone you don’t personally know, yet somehow their story resonates with you. I know the death of John Lennon hit me hard. So did the death of Lin Brehmer, a Chicago DJ whose anniversary of passing one year ago was announced on WXRT today.

Once in a while a celebrity of one kind or another will die, and it will me like an emotional brick. Then there’s still the personal stuff. Now and then my late wife will appear in my dreams. She’s a presence in helping me process some current even or emotion, either good or bad. We were married more than 25 years. Why should she not still be a presence in my brain? I loved her. I know she loved me. But I also know that she told a friend before she died that she knew I’d love again after she passed. And that is so.

What it all comes down to is that throughout our lives, we are faced with various forms of grief and choices. It is not ours to judge others, or be judged, with how we face a sense of loss. I mourned my torn ACL years ago because I knew that it meant a form of my youthful activities in ballistic sports was gone along with it. I had it replaced with a cadaver part I called Jake. I did a year of rehab and went back to playing soccer and basketball, but Jake died all over when the ACL popped again.

I keep moving these days in a straight line, swimming, running and riding my way through life. The only time I cut and move is playing with my dogs, which is a joy. But I know that someday they’ll die too. Like the crystal goblet that the Zen Master carries around yet considers it shattered before it ever happens, we must look at life as broken before it occurs. And when we hold the crystal goblet of love for others up to the light, we hope it shines back into our eyes either in the moment or for as long as we hold that memory.