TM Prompt #326: Mourning
"Mourning is just extended self-pity."
-Don Draper, Mad Men
Excuse me if I don't take a quote from a character on a show that appears to be sponsored by Jack Daniels very seriously on the subject of how to grieve. I suspect Mr. Draper's solution to the problem would be to have another on the rocks, and I'm afraid that's not something I agree with.
I suppose I can see how some people might agree with that statement - mourning is a period where you turn inward, and yes, you DO feel badly for yourself. But anyone who truly thinks mourning is selfish has never lost someone they loved, because anyone who has gone through that human experience knows that more than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself mourning is a time to miss a person.
And you miss them in a hundred small, trivial little ways that sound stupid when you try to explain to another person. You miss the departed's scent, their way of smiling, the sound of their voice. You miss how they make you feel, certainly, but to reduce our loved ones to merely actors in our personal dramas is, I believe, subhuman. The dead are people. Mourning is remembering them as such, and aching because we can't be with them for a time. More than anything else, that is what mourning is - an ache. A healing ache, maybe, but an ache for all that.
Is pain selfish? I don't think so. I think it's animal, human. It simply is. And I don't think taking a cynical attitude towards changes it's reality in the slightest.
Humans mourn. That's only natural.
-Don Draper, Mad Men
Excuse me if I don't take a quote from a character on a show that appears to be sponsored by Jack Daniels very seriously on the subject of how to grieve. I suspect Mr. Draper's solution to the problem would be to have another on the rocks, and I'm afraid that's not something I agree with.
I suppose I can see how some people might agree with that statement - mourning is a period where you turn inward, and yes, you DO feel badly for yourself. But anyone who truly thinks mourning is selfish has never lost someone they loved, because anyone who has gone through that human experience knows that more than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself mourning is a time to miss a person.
And you miss them in a hundred small, trivial little ways that sound stupid when you try to explain to another person. You miss the departed's scent, their way of smiling, the sound of their voice. You miss how they make you feel, certainly, but to reduce our loved ones to merely actors in our personal dramas is, I believe, subhuman. The dead are people. Mourning is remembering them as such, and aching because we can't be with them for a time. More than anything else, that is what mourning is - an ache. A healing ache, maybe, but an ache for all that.
Is pain selfish? I don't think so. I think it's animal, human. It simply is. And I don't think taking a cynical attitude towards changes it's reality in the slightest.
Humans mourn. That's only natural.