Saying “Complicated Grief” is Redundant
I have been writing and leading workshops about grief for years. I started to appreciate the wisdom behind healthy ways of grieving when I was in my Masters program at Harvard Divinity School. I took a course there called the Jewish Life Cycle, taught by a truly wonderful human being by the name of Marc Saperstein. Rabbi Saperstein opened up a place in my heart and experience that has led me home in many ways. More about that in another blog.
As we studied Jewish traditions around loss and grieving, and I compared the wisdom embedded in them with the death-denying culture that surrounded me, I began to write and to ponder. I was also a hospital chaplain at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Only back then it was the Peter Bent Brigham to which I went for my chaplaincy training placement (CPE).
Over the two and a half years that I was in hospital chaplaincy, first as a CPE student, then resident, then supervisor in training, then… gone (another story for another time), I encountered a lot of death. As I have said and continue to say, one does not go to the Brigham for a simple fracture. There are several poignant stories I could share, but the one that stands out right now follows.
I was paged from Children’s Hospital next door to come to the ER. I was not told why, but knew this was going to be challenging. As the only female Chaplain on staff, Children’s Hospital (before they had Chaplains of their own) would call when they had a significant need. When I got there I was met by a weeping nurse who told me that there were two “young kids” (I was 23) in a room where the staff had put them while they waited for chaplaincy support. As I entered the room, I did, indeed, find two young adults sitting in relative silence. The young woman was weeping, the young man was sitting in silence, staring off, his arm around her shoulders.
As the story unfolded, these sixteen-year-olds were each living with their respective families. The young woman had their infant son living with her, and the father was as attentive and active in their lives as he was able to be. They were both in High School and committed to finishing their schooling. That evening, the mother had come out of the bathroom to find their child non-responsive. She tried everything she could to resuscitate him. She got herself and their child to the ER, where the father met them. The infant was pronounced soon after they got there. Heart-breaking. Further, they were concerned for his soul. He was so young, he had not yet been baptized. Would I please do that for them/him?
Um. It took me a few seconds, and I said, “yes.” I went in the hall, asked for what I needed, and for the three of us to be taken into the room where the infant’s body lay, still swaddled for a night’s sleep. I participated in this baptism service, asking the child’s name, shifting the vows they took to accommodate the circumstance, and praying. Inside, I prayed for myself, I confess. Outside/aloud, I invoked God’s compassion and comfort, and every good thing I could imagine and articulate for this young couple. I gave them some time with their son. They came out, reluctant to leave him. I waited as they went down the hall, went back into the room, and prayed some more.
Like any good CPE student, I wrote all this up, and was called into the office of my very unhappy supervisor who demanded to know what I was thinking, doing this sacrament for a dead child? Furious myself, I said this, and I will stand by it today: “I did not do anything for that infant. God had that well in hand, welcoming that child into Universal Love! I did what I did for those parents so that they might be able to move on with their lives, introduced to a concept of God’s love that knows no human bounds.” Episcopal priest versus United Church of Christ member-in-discernment. God won. And I began to encounter up close and personal the realities of “complicated grief”.
