Passionate Sadness and Liquid Love by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. of Counselling, PhD
Nov 2012
Nov 2012
"Becoming upset is actually a sign you
are going uphill – and it's a very difficult haul. But you can make it. Tears
are a healthy display of passion. They are liquid love," so says the well
respected grief counsellor, Mal McKissock. I am moved by these words and my own
recent loss to write about grief.
A few weeks ago my beloved and very
beautiful cat, Paschie, passed away after a week of terrible convulsions. It
was not toxicity, nor epilepsy, nor an illness that brought it on, but an
insidious space occupying lesion in her brain. Paschie was something of a
therapy cat for my patients preparing to climb down the stairs to my consulting
room. She sat on the bins near the top of the stairs and offered her sweet
softness to them. Now she is no more.
I miss her, mostly at night when we used to
sit together breast on breast, sometimes sharing our breath, as animals do. Now
she shares the mango tree where my father’s ashes lie.
I have given sacred space to her where she
used to eat. A small ceramic tri-coloured cat (Paschie was a grey-white-ginger calico
cat) bought on a journey to Heidelberg, Germany, sits there with a little
Buddha, and soft grey china dove (for I called her “little bird” sometimes) and
some flowers. I change the items placed there as I’m moved to do so. This is
not a shrine with things and memories stuck in space, but a celebration of her
life. One day I shall sweep the space clear.
My friends welcomed the posting of her
pictures and her stories, and I have felt wonderfully supported by them. With
this generous love, I know my own feelings of passionate sadness, that
admixture of tears and laughter, and feel in my tears my intense liquid love; a
liquid love that melds my love for cat and father and all those others I have
known who have passed on.
Elisabeth KΓΌbler-Ross’s five stage model of grieving (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) is
not something I relate to, and I am not alone. The journal Scientific American (22/10/2008) reports that there is no
scientific basis of this grief model. The linear quality of the five stage
model is rejected by other grief counsellors, most notably Mal and Dianne
McKissock who run a centre called the Bereavement Care Centre in Sydney, who
instead see the rising, the falling, the interrelatedness, the fluidity, the
intensity and lightness of grief in the same way as meteorologists consider the
weather: using the model of chaos theory. Here there are no first things, no
endings, either; what arises is created from a range of unpredictable dependent variables (time,
relationships, context, lie of the land, day of the week, etc). The key point
is the unpredictable dependent variables that do not follow any stage theory.
Of course, the idea of a stage theory seems
to offer a linearity and predictableness that affords a sort of short circuiting appreciated by the medical
model of health, but which doesn’t take account of the rich complex of stories,
of tears and laughter, of sensing the presence of a person or animal in memory,
footprints, fur on chairs, photo and ceramic artifacts, of the sharing of love
between friends and family, nor even the playfulness of dreams. Death is final,
but only in a single sense. As life is interconnected, so a passing is more
than a physical absence. We are “more than” and it is in this “more than” that
we grieve and celebrate and tell our stories. It is in this “more than” that
healing takes place.
Our society has an anxiety regarding grief
such that some wont even look into the eyes of the grieving person and some
will even cross the road to avoid encounter. Some will say, in the case of
death of loved one (whether cat, child, friend, or even partner), and very
cruelly, “Oh well you’ll have another one,” thus diminishing terribly the
nature of love, for love is not merely having, but sharing. It is a shocking
thing that the discomfort around grief means that many have to conceal their
passionate sadness and in concealing it seek medical help and medication for
the pain that then gets called “depression”.
We, nevertheless, celebrate Anzac Day, and
allow grieving. We do not say of this day that all those who do grieve haven’t
worked through their grief. We allow the grieving to tell their stories, and in
their stories, relive their experiences. This is an important process, which
should be welcomed into the rest of the year and the rest of us our lives.
I encourage sharing through stories, art,
sacred space, and conversation the ongoing presence of departed loved ones for
whenever a person desires it. I encourage the expression of liquid love, for being upset is not a
sign you’re going downhill; in fact is a sign you’re healing. Know that you’ll
not get stuck nor paralysed in your grief, but instead move through – back and
forth – maybe throughout all life, feeling sad, feeling happy, and knowing this
is the quality of love, and your unique capacity for relationships.
