The Month Of November, My Dad’s Death, And Turning Sorrow Into Prayer

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Matthew 5:4

Grief is unique. It has taken me a long time to appreciate that fact. While most of us will grieve at some point in our lifetime, perhaps even multiple times, no individual’s grief will be exactly like another’s. The grief we feel after the loss of someone we have loved is as unique as our relationship with that person.

That fact might appear obvious to some, but for me it has been an important discovery. This is because I have found it difficult to grieve.

My dad took his own life when he was 56 years old, and for many years afterward, I felt numb. I couldn’t think about him or feel the sadness of the loss without also confronting chaotic emotions of anger and denial. So, rather than look deeper into those feelings, I found it easier to ignore them. I moved on with my life and left my dad and the circumstances around his death behind.

For someone who has not lost a loved one to suicide, this coping method probably sounds strange. But after I read After Suicide by Fr. Chris Alar, I realized that I was not alone in feeling this way. Fr. Alar’s grandmother committed suicide when he was in high school and, like me, he admits that the process of grieving his grandmother’s death was fraught with confusing emotions:

…I went so far as to request my parents not mention in her obituary that she ‘committed suicide’ because I didn’t want people judging our family…I don’t even remember my grandma’s funeral. I know I was there physically but I have no recollection of any specific details. I blocked it out.
Fr. Chris Alar, After Suicide

What I found interesting about Fr. Alar’s book was not so much what he says about suicide, but what he says about death in general. Each death is unique, Fr. Alar explains, just as each life is. Every year the Church offers us a way to think about death; not only the death of others, but our own as well. November is the month we celebrate All Souls Day—a day devoted to prayer for those who have died. In fact, the whole month is dedicated to the poor souls.

The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today…

Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction To Christianity

Perhaps because it comes every year, we don’t always appreciate this gift of the Catholic Church.

Learning How To Grieve

Interestingly, it was from some Jewish friends that I started to discover what it means to mourn and to grieve.

A number of years ago, when we spent a summer in Maine, we learned that one of the couples who owned a camp near the one we were renting had lost a son. He had died the previous year in an avalanche in Washington State, where he was a guide. This family is Jewish, and my husband and I spoke to them often that summer.

The more we talked, the more we learned about Judaism’s carefully-ritualized structure for dealing with grief. For instance, during the first seven days of mourning following a death (shiva), an open expression of sorrow is very much encouraged. After the burial, the family remains in the home following certain customs, and after that, a “year of mourning” helps set in motion a process that leads the bereaved gently but firmly back to life and the world of the living.

It was clear to me that this couple, who had so tragically and abruptly lost their son, had been changed forever by death—but there was something else about them that had a profound effect on me. I was surprised by a sort of beauty that emanated from them. I couldn’t help but notice that the effect their loss had on them seemed to be the exact opposite of the effect my own father’s death had had on me.

Throughout that summer and in the months that followed, I began to wonder if I needed to grieve for my dad in ways I had not yet begun to. The truth is that we can learn and appreciate a lot from our Jewish brethren. And yet as Christians, we know that Jesus Christ came to fulfill the Old Covenant and bring salvation. He did this by His Passion and death. Fr. Alar addresses this in After Suicide when he says:

As Christians who follow the true Light shining forth in a world of darkness, a Light that the darkness cannot overcome, we center our existence and purpose in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ…We know this from the seemingly ugly, objective evil of Jesus’ death on the Cross, from which sprang forth the greatest good that humanity could ever wish for—eternal life with God and one another.

The Five Stages of Grief

As Fr. Alar mentions in his book, no two people experience grief or loss in the same way, but there is a universal element to suffering the loss of a loved one. Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has identified five stages of grief that can help us comprehend some of the common effects of dealing with grief. These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Knowing these common stages does not mitigate the pain, but it can help us understand why we need to grieve and the path grieving naturally takes.

In looking back on my own father’s death, I realized that, while I experienced a few of these stages, I had remained stuck somewhere between “denial” and “anger” and never really moved on, even though it had been over 20 years since his passing. I now see that sharing in the pain of another’s suffering, as we did that summer in Maine, and recognizing the power of mourning helped me discover some of the missing pieces in my own grieving process.

Facing the death of a loved one, no matter how the death occurs, is one of the greatest pains we can suffer in this life. The process of grieving, while different for each of us, can be helped in some ways by acknowledging the stages of grief.

Here are the stages and some suggestions to help us grieve, accompanied by quotes from Fr. Alar:

—Denial is not a bad thing when it comes to death. It can be a temporary response to a loss that helps you process it in your own time. It can also allow for a more manageable “pace” leading into feelings of pain. Let yourself and others feel what they feel. Experts say that denial often moves more quickly than other stages, because eventually, the only way to “overcome” this stage is to realize there’s no ignoring or avoiding what happened. Perhaps this is why, in the case of suicide, loved ones can hang on to it longer, because there might be other dramatic feelings such as guilt, regret, or confusion that make confronting it more difficult.

—Anger is a normal emotion. “Allow yourself to feel your anger. Get it out in safe and healthy ways by sharing it with trusted friends, family, spiritual advisers and mental health professionals.” I wish I had turned to God with that anger, instead of fearing it so much.

—Bargaining can present us with questions around “what ifs” and “if onlys,” but don’t assume those feelings are wrong. “It’s our attempt at making sense of the apparent senselessness of a loss…and to find meaning in our life again.” Survivors of those who commit suicide often get stuck here, which blocks the process of healing.

—Depression “can feel like being stuck in a swamp on a gray, rainy day. It can seem like it goes on forever with no end in sight.” Of course, this experience is normal after losing someone, and this sadness might even be prolonged. Take your sadness to the Lord. If it seems excessive, seek out a priest or counselor.

—Acceptance does not necessarily mean “arriving at a place where we are okay.” Fr. Alar explains that acceptance does not occur in any fixed time frame. Patiently turning to God in our pain is often the only way toward acceptance.

A dark cloud hung over me for years after my father died. I now see that I allowed the way my dad died to affect the way I remembered his life, and this became an obstacle to grief. It wasn’t until I properly grieved for him—the man who raised me and loved me, the man whom I loved—that I began to slowly sense the cloud lifting.

Each death is unique because each one of us is unique and so are our relationships with one another. In the end, though, our relationship with Jesus Christ, Who is Mercy itself, brings the only true consolation. We can take sorrow, pain, and grief and turn these into prayers for the ones we have lost. As Catholics, we believe that these prayers can greatly benefit the souls of the departed.

We should never give up on the souls of those we have lost by suicide. We pray and hope for their salvation, entrusting them to God’s mercy.

St. Gertrude

St. Gertrude was a 13th-century German Benedictine nun and mystic who was graced with heavenly visions. Describing God’s love as an inexhaustible ocean of beatitude, Gertrude implored those around her to pray for the souls in purgatory, and her special devotion to the holy souls made her a patron of the dead. In fact, three devotions to the holy souls are associated with her: praying the “St. Gertrude prayer,” visiting a cemetery, and offering Masses for those who have died.

In The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude, it is recounted that Jesus showed Gertrude a vast number of souls entering heaven from purgatory as a result of her faithful and frequent recitation of a prayer which He gave her to pray.

According to tradition, in one of her visions Our Lord told St. Gertrude that each time she piously recited the prayer, it would greatly ease the suffering of those holy souls in purgatory. The prayer, often referred to as “St. Gertrude’s prayer,” is as follows:

Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal Church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.

Many Catholics say this prayer during November when the Church dedicates the entire month to praying for the holy souls—but it can be recited at any time and is easily memorized.

Death is a sure reality for all of us, which is why our Catholic faith encourages us to think about our own death from time to time. This November, let us recall the wonderful devotion of the Church and pray for our loved ones who have gone before us.