Loss and Mourning – a universal constant

I am not a grief counsellor. I am not an expert in loss. I have little first hand knowledge of mourning anyone. Why, you might ask, am I writing this piece about loss and mourning? Well, it seems that the whole world has been gripped by the unthinkable. Sudden, untold grief has poured over us as we hear story after story of innocent lives, many of them children, who have had their lives ripped away from them by one or many people who feel they have the right to terrorise and to victimise.

This piece began on December 15^th when an armed man held 17 people hostage in a café in Sydney. This is my city and I love my city, but this is not how I want the world to see my city. Unfortunately, this is now part of the fabric of my city, part of the tragic underbelly of the city I love. In the end, 2 innocent lives were lost. Two beautiful, innocent people are now mourned by an entire city.

Photo courtesy of abc.net.au

A floral tribute has sprawled across Martin Place near to where the siege took place. It is the visual expression of a city stuck by grief. For many it is the only way they can display their sense of loss and dismay. The flowers will eventually give way to a more permanent memorial but the spontaneous, beautiful, peaceful tribute that spreads across the ground is somehow the perfect way for my city to define its overwhelming sense of loss and mourning this Christmas.

Just when we, as a city, were beginning to get our collective heads around what had happened in the heart of our financial district, news began to filter through of a far worse loss. In Nigeria, a militant group known as Boko Haram stormed a village, taking over 200 residents hostage and killing over 30.

This was the same group that kidnapped 200 schoolgirls earlier in the year who are yet to be found and presumed dead. The utter confusion surround events such as this is highlighted by the fluctuating numbers surrounding not only how many are being held, but how many have lost their lives as well. How do you mourn an indeterminate number of people?

Photo courtesy of bbc.com

As the number increases over the days, then subsides, then rises again, what do we do with our grief? Does it turn to frustration? Should we be ashamed of our shifting view of the unfolding tragedy? How do we temper our grief with the need to carry on with our own lives? Is our grief limited by distance or sheer size of the group?

Sometime I feel we mourn the one more so that we mourn the many. It can be hard to know how to grieve for a large group and when we were faced with another massacre, this time in Pakistan, it felt like the underling feeling, while still a terrible sense of loss, was “not again”. It was a tragedy that would grip the hearts and minds of every parent, every educator, every citizen with an ounce of compassion, but maybe due to the distance or the overwhelming magnitude of the loss, the mourning took on a surreal tinge.

A normal school day for military families ended in bloodshed when Taliban fighters entered the school and held over 500 people, the majority being children, hostage. Students and teachers lost their lives in the brutal attack that can only be described as a massacre. Reports came through of children witnessing their classmates being executed, of playing dead to avoid the fate they had seen befall so many others and of families devastated.

Photo courtesy of bbc.com

One wonders how a town recovers from a tragedy such as this. Are they united in their grief or does it tear them apart? I cannot begin to imagine how I would feel if over 100 people from my community were taken from me in such horrific circumstances. Even as I write this, thousands of kilometres away, I am fighting back the tears. I did not know any of those who lost their lives, I have never experienced anything remotely as heartbreaking as that which they are going through right now, yet I feel the burden of their grief and I mourn with them as only I can, by sharing their story.

And now, as I sit here writing, the Australian community is trying to understand yet another senseless tragedy. The loss of 8 children in Cairns, possibly at the hand of the mother of some them, is unfathomable. We not only feel the loss as a country, but we grieve on behalf of the brother that found them. We grieve on behalf on the relatives that must someone come to terms with that fact that not only have they lost 8 young members of the family, but that a member of the family may be responsible.

Photo courtesy of abc.net.au

Coupled with the grief are a sense of helplessness and overwhelming anger. In all cases, we are unsure as to how best to help, how best to show our support for those who are left, how best to grieve. We sometimes feel uneasy in our grief, as if we don’t have a right to grieve. We did not know these people, we did know anyone connected to these people, what right do we have to grieve for these people?

Of course, we have every right. It is an expression of our compassion or sympathy or empathy, or all of the above. It is a stand against the crimes that have been committed, a public outpouring of the grief and anger which demonstrates, in the most raw of manners, that we will not let the tragedy be for nought. Their deaths mean something, not just to those who knew them, but to a city, a country, maybe even the entire planet. They will not only serve the living as a reminder of what terrible atrocities have happened, but of what courage humanity is capable of, what generosity of spirit, what selflessness and what this season means regardless of colour, creed, culture or religion.

If you are grieving, mourning the loss of a loved one, then allow it to happen. There is no end point to grief. It is something that we carry with us always and use always as we traverse this path we call life. The pain may lesson, the day-to-day mundane activities may once again take the foremost place in our mind, but our grief allows us to remember, to show compassion towards those that are suffering, to sympathise with anothers loss and to empathise with those whose loss may be so much greater than our own.

Tonight, I will hug my son a little tighter, give him an extra kiss goodnight, and be thankful that I am not faced with the loss of someone close to me in such tragic circumstances as those we have seen this week. My heart goes out to those affected by recent events and, though my grief pales into insignificance beside theirs, I feel their pain and hope they can find peace in their heart in time.