It has been a rough day for the Andersons. Every one is tired. With supper over, they are getting ready to relax. Walter is watching television, his wife is finishing up the dishes. Bert, their teenage son, has gone to the community center. Suddenly the phone rings. Walter answers it.
"Hello," he says. He listens for a moment, then he speaks again. "Yes, this the Andersons." There is a pause. Then Walter's face goes pale. "No, it can't be! There must be some mistake!"
He listens for a few more moments, then he hangs up.
"Who was that?" Marilyn calls from the kitchen.
"The police. They think Bert was killed in a hit-and-run. They said it's him because they found his wallet. They want us to come identify the body."
"But it can't be Bert," Marilyn says. "He was just here twenty minutes ago. There's got to be a mistake!"
Walter and Marilyn were just told of the unexpected death of their son. And beginning with that phone call, they began their grieving process. Over the next hours, days and probably months, they will progress through ten distinct phases of grieving (listed below), but not necessarily in the exact order given. Several may happen at the same time; some may return again and again.
1. Shock
2. Panic
3. Denial
4. Numbness
5. Rage
6. Anguish-Despair
7. Bargaining
8. Forgiveness
9. Acceptance
10. Growth-Maturation
These phases of grieving are more difficult to handle than those of an expected death. Because of the violent, tragic type of loss involved, many mourners get hung up on one phase or another and cannot go on. Unless outside help is given, they will likely carry this grief with them to their graves. Those who complete their grieving, either on their own or with help, will one day learn to live and laugh again.
Let's take a closer look at each of the phases before zeroing in on those that cause particular problems for our native people.
SHOCK
The first reaction of family and friends to a tragic, unexpected death is shock. The effect is much the same as a hard blow to the head or sticking a finger in a live socket. The tragic news causes something like this to happen mentally, emotionally and even physically. In fact, it is often wise to take people like this to a doctor. Medication may be necessary to help them through this first reaction to the loss.
PANIC
After the initial shock, panic often sets in. At this stage, people are not able to think clearly. They cannot make up their own minds or organize themselves for action. On occasion, it may be necessary to take them by the hand and guide them through this phase.
DENIAL
The denial phase is almost automatic. Once the news sinks in, the natural reaction is to say it is wrong. Some feel this is a form of protection. By saying "no" to the tragedy, they are able to absorb the facts more slowly, allowing themselves time to adjust.
NUMBNESS
A third phase of grief is numbness. The unexpected tragedy temporarily overloads the emotional circuits. The survivor is left somewhat dazed or numb. Often this reaction may carry them through the burial arrangements and the funeral without any display of emotion.
The length of this phase may be as brief as a few hours or as long as several days, and it is sometimes delayed in happening. In some cases, it may not appear until several months later.
RAGE
Rage is opposite to numbness. It burns and boils and often strikes out unreasonably. Several days may pass before it appears. It is at this point where many Indigenous people get stuck in the grieving process. Their rage continues to churn inside until they either find a way to resolve it or it destroys them.
ANGUISH-DESPAIR
Another phase of grieving that many native people have trouble with is the anguish and despair. This is where pain and sense of loss hit them full force. For many, it is more than they can handle.
BARGAINING
Bargaining is the phase of grief that begins to wrestle with the acceptance of loss, in an effort to get on with living. As the mourner works through his grief, he might say, "I could accept her death if only we had not had a fight before the accident," or "I know he can't come back, but why did he have to be drinking when he died?"
FORGIVENESS
Another difficult phase for those who are grieving over a tragic, unexpected death is forgiveness. During grief, a lot of blame is laid in many directions. Before the mourner will be able to finish his grieving, he or she will need to forgive those he or she has been blaming for his loss. Sometimes it is the person who died. Sometimes it is God or the drunk driver. Sometimes it is himself or herself. Whoever, or whatever, the person feels is at fault must be forgiven or the grief will continue to haunt him.
ACCEPTANCE
Acceptance follows logically once a person has taken the step of forgiveness. Suddenly, at this point, a realization comes that no amount of grieving will bring back the deceased. From then on, life begins to get back to normal again.
GROWTH-MATURATION
Once grieving starts, personal growth and development stops until the grieving process is completed. This is one reason why it is so important for mourners to finish their grief work. When it is done, the person can begin to grow again and develop meaningful relationships. The person will find, that while life may not be as good as it once was, it can still be very, very pleasant.
While all these phases are painful, native people have the most problems with: rage, anguish-despair, bargaining and forgiveness. Let's look at these phases in considerable detail.
RAGE THAT DESTROYS
Whenever I think of this tornado of emotions called rage, one client from a treatment center comes to mind. He was a big, strong male, but as he told the details of the tragic hit-and-run death of his wife, tears streamed down his face. He relived the experience-the shock, the panic, and then the anger. He spoke of buying a gun and bullets. He told how he prepared to go out and get the guy who had run her down. Fortunately, he could not find him.
He spoke of irrational thinking and of unpredictable behavior. He had two small children, but now the welfare agency called to say that they were going to place them in a foster home. This was the last thing he needed. His babies were all he had left, and the authorities wanted to take them away! He threatened to shoot anyone who came to his home. Then he sat with this gun and faced the door, but no one showed up.
Finally, in order to get some measure of relief from the anger and anguish, he began to drink in a deliberate way. He soon realized he could not care properly for his children, so he reluctantly surrendered them to the social services. He carried all of this accumulated hurt, anger, and bitterness within him until that afternoon when he came to see me. With some assistance, he began to do his grief work in my office, and later on in a group meeting.
This man came through the first four phases of grieving, but he floundered on phase five. Try as he might, he could not put this rage behind him. Had it not been for the help he got at the center, he would have been destroyed, a victim of his own grief.
RAGE AND BLAME
In Help for Your Grief, Dr. Arthur Freese draws attention to the intense anger or rage develops as people work through their grieving. He says in part:
There is intense anger-anger with the deceased for dying, anger with the world, anger that is readily turned on the physicians or surgeons (why didn't they do their jobs better?), even anger with God (ministers are very familiar with this). This underlying anger is easily brought out and directed at anyone and anything on the slightest provocation-and can create a host of immediate and later problems.
Another noted professional in the matter of grieving, Paul Tournier, a Swiss physician and counselor, in The Violence Within, wrote about the rage that inevitably develops:
When a man is gripped by violent passion (or rage), it stifles in him all capacity for rational thought, and even his moral conscience; he hesitates no longer, but hurls himself into action. His reason no longer serves to provide him with good reasons to justify his conduct.
Rage brought on by the tragic, unexpected loss of a loved one has been around for a long time. It was so common in Bible times that the Israelites set up cities of refuge to protect those who had accidentally caused the death of someone. They knew that man's natural reaction to this kind of loss was an uncontrollable rage that demanded revenge. Often a member of the victim's family would be chosen to settle the score. If the one who unwittingly caused the original death could make it to the place of refuge, he was protected from the avengers. The provision of these cities made it possible for true justice to be done, rather than irrational, spur-of-the-moment vengeance.
RAGE AND REVENGE
A typical reaction of a person consumed by rage is to place the blame for his or her loss on someone or something. He or she feels compelled to find a place to hang their anger. Edgar N. Jackson in The Many Faces of Grief gives a striking example of this. He wrote of how a tractor turned over, crushing the youth who was driving it. When a physician at the scene pronounced the victim as dead, the victim's brother assaulted the physician.
Over the years, I have heard people tell how they planned to get even with the person they blamed for their loss. I recall one man whose cousin had been killed. He was very angry. The fellow who did the killing was sentenced to prison, but the angry cousin was not satisfied. Nine months after the death, he was finally brought in for treatment. I learned that he had been attempting to do some kind of violent act so he would be thrown into prison too. He told me, "I'm doing my best to get thrown into prison because I want a chance to kill that fellow who killed my cousin."
This was the voice of anger speaking, the voice of consuming rage. This kind of anger holds many of our Native people in bondage. It is a driving force. It won't allow a person any kind of peace of mind or heart. The rage keeps boiling inside until, finally, the person does something. Usually the action is the kind the person will regret or for which he or she will be punished.
RAGE AND RELIGION
Anger is not always directed at another person or some object; sometimes it is directed at God and the church. Indigenous people who are going through the rage phase of their grieving will blame God at least one-third of the time, if not more, for the particular kind of death that happens. Then in the midst of their rage, they turn away from Him and the church.
I firmly believe this to be a major reason why so many native people have opted for other religions or no religion at all. With the percentage of unanticipated deaths so high among Indigenous people, there is a tremendous amount of pathological grief out there that still needs to be worked through. When the church is finally equipped and ready to help our hurting brothers and sisters deal with their grief, I think we will see a revival of interest in biblical Christianity.
RAGE AGAINST SELF
Another frequent target of blame during this time of rage is the mourner himself or herself. I counseled a woman who blamed herself for her father's death, which had happened nearly seven years before. Because of her sense of guilt, she had consumed a lot of alcohol over that period of time.
Her father had died from a brain hemorrhage caused by a fall down a flight of stairs in his apartment building. The father and several friends were drinking, as was their custom, when the accident happened. She had been living in a city 200 miles away at the time of the accidental death, but was taking the blame on herself without reason, thinking she should have anticipated that something might happen and been at his home to prevent the accident.
Once she was given help, this woman was able to recognize her own faulty, irrational thinking. This problem with irrational thinking is typical of people who are consumed by rage. In almost every case I have dealt with, there is some kind of blaming that doesn't really make sense. Without help, this false blame sticks in the person's mind, and twenty or thirty years later, he or she is still blaming himself or herself, God, or that other person or object.
RAGE AND FAULTY THINKING
Rage also affects the kinds of decisions that people make who are in the process of grieving. Because of the fierce anger, their ability to reason is impaired, and their moral judgment no longer functions.
The grieving person seems to be unable to take this loss sitting down. Unfortunately, the steps that are taken would almost never be considered if the individual had full use of his or her senses. This is when the mourner goes out to get the guy who killed his loved one or attacks the doctor who brings the bad news.
On this matter of faulty thinking, Dr. Freese says:
The only protection the bereaved really have here is knowledge-the awareness that they must not fully trust their own thinking. For they think they are being entirely rational in their decisions and actions, when actually they are totally irrational. Neither judgement nor thinking can be fully trusted during any of the stages of grief.
I once counseled a Native woman who had lost a daughter. The daughter had been shot by someone they knew during a drunken brawl. The mother came to my office and we talked about it.
"I don't know what I am going to do with my boys," she said.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "Are they being threatened, too?"
"No," she said, "but they and some of the others all want to take their rifles and get this fellow, and I don't know if I am going to be able to stop them from doing it."
Right away, I could see the uncontrollable rage and signs of irrational thinking. All the victim's relatives wanted this fellow dead.
We talked further, and I said, "You're going to be illogical in your thinking, now, because of the anger that you feel over this. Be careful not to make any major decisions without seeking some outside advice. Don't sell your home. Don't quit your job. And don't move out of the area."
She looked startled. "You hit the nail right on the head," she said. "That's exactly what we were going to do. I was planning to quit my job. We were going to sell our home, and we were going to move back to my home state."
"Do you have a place back there where you can live?" I asked. "Or a job back there?"
"No."
"Well, then, it sounds to me like you have been doing some very irrational thinking."
"My mother-in-law has told us the same thing," she said.
I could see this woman was being given sound advice, so I told her to take it. "For the next year, don't make any decisions without telling her your plans. Then, whatever she suggests to you, you had better listen, because she is rational, but you will not be."
To this woman, and thousands like her, the plans that are made seem perfectly logical. Their normal thinking processes have been disrupted by grief.
Anger, then, is one of the major stumbling blocks for native people, especially those who are mourning over an unexpected, tragic death. The uncontrollable rage, the illogical thinking and the placing of blame have trapped countless thousands of our people in a prison of grief. Wise counseling can be a key to setting them free.
Excerpted from The Grieving Indian. Order your copy from Intertribal Life Ministries (order form on page 18).
