24 August is the death anniversary of Elisabeth Kubler – Ross who died in 2004. The Swiss American psychiatrist is known for her contribution to the establishment of a model for dealing with grief, especially through her book titled ‘On Death and Dying.’ During World War II, she became an assistant in a refugee camp in Zurich in her native country. She worked in the infamous Majdanek Concentration Camp in Poland, an experience that greatly affected her understanding of the passion and resilience of the human spirit.
She is relevantly remembered now because of the grieving in our country due to two instances of human suffering, both collectively and individually, one at Wayanad in Kerala and the other at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital at Kolkata. The first was a tragedy in which people of a whole area died and the area itself was devastated. The second was the tragic death because of a heinous crime by a reprehensible transgressor and offender. If the first immersed people into deep grief because of a natural disaster, the latter plunged the whole nation into individualized grief because of a manmade disaster.
Nature’s responses are always authentic. Sometimes they are gentle like the wafting of the intoxicating fragrance of flowers or the rewarding hug of a mildly cold breeze that offers soothing comforts or the visions of resplendent and moving colours of the setting or rising sun or the rippling sounds from the flow of crystal-clear water over small rocks or rounded pebbles.
At other times, they unleash destructive fury, ripping away every possession, every shelter, and every protective barrier that once provided safety. Most heartbreakingly, they even claim the lives of those dearest to us, the ones we loved, cherished, and held close. This is what happened at Mundakai and Chooralmala in Wayanad, Kerala.
The whole nation wept for the people of Wayanad. Despite succour flowing down to the upper hills of Wyanad, the grief of the common people could not be addressed as easily. There was this haunting image of a father cremating what was left of his daughter – her hand, identified by the ring on her finger with her husband’s name on it. The husband was likely swept away by the gushing waters and mudslide.
The discovery of one hundred and seventy-nine different parts of bodies at different places downstream, not to mention several others not accounted for at all, pricked and continue to pierce and puncture the already fragile hearts and minds of dear ones who were left behind.
The sight of a man standing alone amidst the rubble where his home once stood, recounting the loss of his wife and children while he survived only because he was away, brought tears to the eyes of many.
Thousands of people, not only from Kerala, but from various states in the country and also from across the world, participated in the assuaging of the grief of people who lost everything. The collective consciousness of the people made them stand with the grieving people and do whatever was possible to assuage their grief. This collective consciousness made social, cultural, political, and administrative people share the grief. The best image of how grief was assuaged after the tragedy, remains that of the Prime Minister of our nation standing next to a child in the hospital while the child played with his grey beard, making such a scene the symbol of humanity flowing over to the grieving people and representing the willingness to share the grief of the sufferers by the people of the nation whom he represented.
The cruelty meted out and the consequential death of a lady doctor at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital is haunting. Though it was a single death, its brutality makes it all the more disturbing to remember. Unlike the responses to the Wayanad disaster, here it was more resolute and rebellious. What emerged was not simple compassion or sympathy, but an expression of anger. Doctors, not only of Kolkata, not only of West Bengal but also of the whole country protested against the monstrous crime. There were also violent outbursts that represented the disapproval of such an abominable act and the need for the security of young women who toil for the reduction of pain and suffering of people. The collective consciousness of the people of the country stood with the protestors.
Grief and its manifestations
Expressions of grief are manifold. The two instances described show two different reactions. If one was sympathy and concern, the other was disapproval, that even turned violent. Undoubtedly, both tragedies shocked the nation. Yet, while one led to tears rolling down the cheeks of people, the other made such cheeks red with anger and disapproval. If the first stretched out the hand to lift people from their grief, the second made the same hands express their anger. If the first was sociological, the second easily became political. If the first was connected to poverty and misery of a large number of people and the services needed, the second was connected to a single offence, and the justice required.
Also, if in Wayanad there were no political manipulations involved as the Chief Minister of the state and the Prime Minister of the country stood together for the amelioration of the suffering of people, this was not the case insofar as the Kolkata incident was concerned. In Kolkata, the rebellion represented the organized, the affluent, the powerful and the upper class of Indian society. The doctors’ strike across the country could only be pacified and brought to accept the reality that action would be taken to address their concerns, through the intelligent intervention of the Indian Supreme Court. It has to be mentioned here that the rape and murder of the nurse from the Uttarakhand – UP border and that of a twelve-year-old girl in Palghar in Maharashtra did not produce such an angry rebellion because they did not belong to an organized, affluent, powerful upper class. Therefore, they did not turn political. The poor and the unorganized always remain poor and unorganized even in the worst of grief that visits them.
Dealing with Grief
It will be worthwhile to examine the model prepared by Elisabeth Kubler Ross on dealing with grief, especially with the stress on the response of the collective consciousness.
There are several stages that an individual or a collective goes through to assuage their grief. The first stage is an awakening to the reality of grief. This is because there is a shock coming out of the fact of a loss or suffering that hits the person. Sometimes there could also be anticipation of something additional happening and the shock stays for some time.
Shocks are followed by denials. When unexpected incidents happen, like the sudden death of a member of a family, people refuse to accept it. They deny it because they cannot believe such a thing could happen. The human ego is such that it always believes that it is great and nothing will happen to it. In the shock of an unexpected happening, people not only deny the possibility but even isolate themselves and get into the deeper part of their own personality which does not allow reality to come anywhere near. In his book ‘The Ego and its Defenses,’ Henry Prather Laughlin mentions how people keep reality away to protect themselves from suffering. Denial naturally leads to the defenses of one’s ego to isolate oneself and create a pseudo-protection from grief.
Normally, the next stage of grieving is anger. Daniel Goleman in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ refers to anger generally as a byproduct of disappointment or even loss. He goes on to say that anger can even get directed towards a person or anything else or even a place. The tragedy of anger is that it takes the person away from grief and identifies targets. This powerful emotion can also drive an angry person to act and function very differently from normal. Just as denial or isolation does not help in getting out of grieving, anger also does not bring a person down to the reality of grief.
There are possibilities that grieving people bargain for some sort of peace to reduce the grief. Proximity to other people or simple substances or certain memorials can reduce grief. There are occasions when a person may keep something dear to a person who has departed and find consolation from it. A person may bargain with the doctor to save a sick relative just as a person may provide money to another who had been injured by him as compensation for a bargain.
Some people go into depression which is an indication that all defenses to save oneself from suffering are consumed. It is a reaction of a mind that has become aware of the reality and the seriousness of the possible hereafter. There are temporary depressions from which a person jumps out by her or his own efforts. They will come out of it only when they understand that they cannot escape the situation and there isn’t any solution. This leads them to reality. However, there are intense depressions which would need scientific support to negate them.
Grieving becomes less only when a person can accept the reality of the loss or suffering that is the cause of the grieving. True enough, all cannot reach this stage which will provide not only a sense of relief but also the beginning of peace. Grieving people understand the reasons for the grief but they take time to accept the reality. When it comes to the death of people, especially when it was never expected, and more especially when there are descriptions of tragic moments of the life of an individual coming to an end, most humans duck under and fall into the abyss of what looks unredeemable suffering.
It will be useful here to mention the book ‘How To Be An Adult’ by David Richo where he speaks about types of human struggles and how they take a heroic return to overcome grieving, a return to wholeness through one’s own efforts. He says that intimacy and relationships will create a return to normalcy from grieving and being ineffective.
Spencer Wells the man who wrote ‘The Journey of Man’ has a short paragraph at the beginning of the book in which he states the story by Edith Hamilton from the Greek epics. In this paragraph, he refers to a gift of a box given by Zeus, the king of Greek gods to Pandora, the first woman created by the gods according to the mythology, with a promise from her that she would not open it ever. Pandora could not control her curiosity and opened the box one day. All sorts of evil jumped out; cruelty, suffering, misery, evil and even death. However, she soon closed it and only one thing remained and that was hope.
So, whether it is Wayanad or Kolkata, the only thing that can reduce human grieving, especially that of the collective consciousness, is hope. One eternally hopes that things will change and humans will learn how to respect nature and how to respect each other and live peacefully on earth with such never-ending immortal hope. That indeed is the sublimity of hope.
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Prof. Sunney Tharappan, is Director of College for Leadership and HRD, Mangaluru. He trains and writes and lives in Mangaluru.
Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash
