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YOUR GRIEF MATTERS Newsletter
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What You Need To Know To Heal From Your Losses
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July 8, 2008 |
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Greetings!
Happy Summer to all my friends!
I thank all of you who have recently joined the GRIEFOK family, there are now almost 700 subscribers in all. I have high hopes that we--you and I--will teach and learn from each other about grief and healing and hope, and I am recommitting myself to a regularly scheduled message to you. I will focus this year on tools that I think will help us all in our search for ways to recover from our losses and create a life of joy!
Your comments and responses to my articles are always welcome. Please feel free to send this newsletter to on to those for whom you think it will be helpful. Just click the "Forward to a friend" link on the left.
Yours in healing, hope and the life of joy you deserve!
Mel Glazer
Rabbi Mel Glazer, D. Min.
877-LECHAIM (To Life!)
SOMETHING NEW:
FIRST GRIEFOK TELECONFERENCE
The Empty Chairs
Around Your Holiday Table
How do we honor those loved ones who were with us at last year's holiday celebrations but not this year? I will have some practical advice to to help make this year's celebration a meaningful memory experience for you and your families.
More information to follow
Please save the date!
Date: Weds. Sept. 17,
Time: 8 PM EST
Other time zones accordingly
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HOW DIRTY BUNKS AT SUMMER CAMP
CAN TEACH YOU HOW TO HEAL
When
I was a child and a young adult, I spent twenty summers at Camp Ramah, a
network of Hebrew-speaking summer camps located throughout North and South
America, Israel, Russia and even Eastern Europe. I was a camper, counselor,
teacher, division head, Camp Rabbi and assistant camp director at Ramah in the
Poconos and Ramah Massachusetts. Aside from having a wonderful time learning
all about what it meant to be a "good Jewish boy," I now realize that it was at
Camp Ramah that I learned a valuable life-lesson which would teach me-and you--
how to heal from the pain of loss.
Surprisingly
enough, I learned that lesson from our dirty bunks!
Every
single day, our bunk needed to be cleaned, except for Shabbat, our Sabbath.
Chores were divvied up, sometimes using a daily "job Wheel of Fortune,"
sometime a weekly cleaning assignment, and sometimes the counselor simply told
us what to do. No one liked to clean the bunk, but from bunk clean-up, I
learned my first, and perhaps most important healing lesson: mourners need to
clean out the losses from their lives, to make room for the life of joy and
celebration that is waiting to enter. It wasn't about the clean-up at all, it
was about having something to do each day that would help us reach our goal. We
were never allowed not to have a job, that was not an option. Each day we
had to actually do something, we couldn't just sit on our beds and read
comic books, and we couldn't just lie in bed all day!
Now
I am a man, and I do not see dirt, whether it was in my bunk at camp or in my
home now. But somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I knew then, and know now, that
there was indeed dirt which we needed to clean up and remove. Though I mostly
didn't want to clean, I knew it was necessary.
You
could say that when loss enters our lives, our life-bunks become covered with
dirt. The dirt won't go away by itself, it needs to be swept out. That's why routine
tasks are crucial-they help us get out of bed every morning and tend to the chore
of cleaning our bunks. Or our lives..
If
you're like me, you would sometimes rather not do anything to heal, perhaps
just wait until "the right time comes along." It's too hard, or it hurts too
much, or I don't like making changes so I'll just stay the way I am right
now-as if you could.
I
know people, and so do you, who are still grieving a loss from ten, twenty or
even thirty years ago. I know some one whose husband died ten years ago, and to
this day has still not emptied out his clothes closet. When I asked her why
not, her answer was: I like to feel that he's still here with me. Okay, I get
that, but for her, he is still alive while she is drowning in
sadness, and that is not how life is supposed to be. If she cannot clear out
his clothes, then she cannot ever begin to heal, because for her, he hasn't
truly died, and she has not yet said goodbye to him. It's easier, she thinks,
to do nothing. Except we know the truth. Doing nothing is worse than just doing
nothing. Doing nothing only makes it harder and harder to begin to sweep out
that dirt and let the beauty of life enter into our lives.
So
at camp, the dirt needs to be cleaned up and swept out, or else the bunk will
get even dirtier. The lesson is clear. When loss comes, we need to similarly begin
to clean up, do what needs to be done, and let the healing begin.
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