There is one lady whose husband has died and, with no children, and no other family close by, she is – as you would expect – feeling very much alone, and scared of everything from pension forms to filling the car with petrol. It's at times like this I wish we had Community Grief Police – a swat team that could swoop in, lead her to safety and show her how the pilot light on the boiler works.
I know many bereaved people have family, friends and neighbours to help them through, and this lady was, perhaps, a sad exception. Although you'll be surprised how many people struggle on their own because 'they don't want to bother anyone', even if they offer to help.
Perhaps we could have some sort of flag system or window sticker that says 'This Home is Grieving', and the whole street then takes it in turns to cook meals, mow grass and make lots of cups of tea.
I know – you're thinking that might be a bad, even tasteless, idea. People don't want the whole street to know their business, etc... But just think, if there was such a system, that would really make death and grief a part of daily life, a part of our awareness on a regular basis, a part of our community. There may be pockets of our fair Isle where this sort of thing happens (without the need for flags or stickers) perhaps in rural villages, like Ambridge (note to self: The Archers is fictional). But what about those rabbit warrens of new housing estates, where everyone keeps to their own little box? Or terraced roads, where your car can cosy-up, bumper to bumper with the one next door, but you don't know the name of the driver.
OK, now I'm starting to sound like The Campaign For Bringing Back The Good Old Days. I'm delirious from staring at my computer for too long. But the point I'm making is this – if you'd lost a loved one and the lady from number 22 popped round with a home-made pie, how would that make you feel?
Couldn't agree with you more. If it takes a village to bring up a child, it takes that same village to support someone through loss. Even Ambridge, which seems to have undergone an awful lot of bereavement lately because it has a homicidal editor.
ReplyDeleteIn much of Britain the bereaved have to undergo a sort of social exile as they sort themselves out stoically and, we hope, admirably. We approve of grief bravely borne. When they are normal once more, and coping, they can take their place in society once more. Death is a private, not a community, event - a species of faux pas, I sometimes think. This may be a lonely time for the bereaved, but one consolation is that they are at least spared the affliction of emotionally needy busybodies.
An idea I a very fond of, one which I have put to undertakers, is that they recruit volunteers of all sorts from the community who can help to see the bereaved through their time of adjustment - which they usually characterise as getting back to normal, for all that it's a newborn normality. People with practical skills who can cook for widowers, cut the grass, explain the mysteries of the boiler settings, help with paperwork and the writing of letters - useful, mundane, physical tasks. I think this would appeal to all sorts of nice folk.
No one's ever taken the idea and run with it. But I still think there's something in it. It's a sort of Big Society initiative, isn't it? Just for heavens' sake don't call it that!
The Archers is WHAT???
ReplyDeleteYou remind us, CB, that the separateness that so often surrounds each life because of how we live, helps create the failure to understand and accept our own mortality, and that is so spiritually lethal.
Well Charles, sounds like you and I share a similar idea here. And as soon as I come up for air, I will most certainly see if I can run with it in some way (hopefully with you cycling alongside and shouting into a megaphone - very Chariots of Fire!). But it certainly won't be known as the Big Society initiative and it won't be launched in Liverpool...
ReplyDeleteI think there are two things I'd like to add by way of response. The first is about responsibility and the second is about respect.
Responsibility - in encouraging 'community volunteers' I don't want this to be seen as taking away the responsibility of family and friends from helping their loved ones through difficult times. Unfortunately, as well a seeing families pull together when someone dies, I've also seen the opposite. And there are, sadly, those who would welcome handing the responsibility over to someone else. It's like the way society has taken away the responsibility of child rearing from parents and placed it on the shoulders of teachers etc. Don't get me started on that one... So, it's about having community volunteers who ADD to the help people receive from their family, or are IN PLACE OF when there is no other family.
Respect - like all the ideas I keep having, and sharing with you, I'm trying to find a half-way house between the out-dated and the extreme. While I think there does need to be a wake-up call within our society around dying/death/funerals/bereavement, I want things to still feel dignified and tasteful, as well as relevant to our ever-changing needs. But as you have said many times, and I wholeheartedly agree, it's establishing what those needs are.
Extremely lethal, GM.
ReplyDeleteSorry if I've ruined The Archers for you. You do know about Father Christmas don't you?
You'll be telling us that the tooth fairy is in the hands of the coroner next!
ReplyDeleteBack to the lonely bereaved, I think that geography is a big factor. A loving and attentive daughter who lives 236 miles away and has a full time job will need to be supplemented. It's the day-to-day, mundane stuff that volunteers can step in to help with. So many suddenly-singles never had a hand in financial arrangements. So many widowers of a certain generation don't know how to boil a kettle, let alone an egg. And there are little niche emergencies - someone to answer the phone when calls come in a flurry in that first phase.
As to respect, yes, I think we see eye to eye. And I think of the most outrageous funeral I led which was punctuated by laughter and applause, and, after the 'committal', everyone stood and danced and sang along to Burn, baby, burn -- it sounds ghastly, perhaps but it was, actually, entirely congruent and absolutely respectful of that particular dead person and of the event. So I think I believe that there are right excesses and wrong excesses, and I would regret it if people felt they had to defer to a notion of respect which then inhibited them. Rupert likes to talk of emotional honesty. Very valuable phrase. It is the true source.
I love the way it says, Your comment will be visible after approval. I often read it as 'risible'!
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought you were a warm-hearted, caring person....
ReplyDeleteI agree Charles - geography is an issue, especially these days. And I love the phrase 'emotional honesty'.
ReplyDeleteSorry GM, Please don't take away my Gloria...