Letter 28: Necessary Suffering

When we're in collective grief

Nov 10, 2021

Happy Wednesday! We’re so happy to have Emily Fleming back with us today.

On a walk this week, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, where Kate Bowler interviewed Richard Rohr. Kate has an amazing way with words and she doesn’t need many to make a lasting point. Father Rohr and Kate were unpacking Rohr’s concept of “necessary suffering.” Fr. Rohr believes that if we “avoid suffering, life will make it happen…it’s going to come your way anyway. You might as well learn what you can from it.”

Rohr’s words reminded me Emily’s letter this week and the powerful lessons she’s currently experiencing as she walks through a difficult time with her children. Perhaps Emily’s letter (and the excellent podcast episode) will resonate with you, possibly even illuminating a time in your life where you weathered your own storm of suffering. — Molly

“Through love all pain will turn to medicine.”
Rumi

Life felt manageable for a minute, so we decided it was time to make it messy again by adopting a new puppy. Cleo came home to us just a few weeks ago, and stole our hearts clean away. She is a three-month-old shepherd mix with the sweetest disposition. Everyone who meets her falls in love, and she is even winning over our grumpy nine-year-old shepherd mix, Waylon. Our kids are totally smitten, and we’ve been settling into our new reality as a two dog family.

We were dealt a heavy blow last week when, during a routine vet appointment, we learned Cleo has a terminal illness. She was born with hereditary kidney disease that is causing severe anemia and kidney failure. She has a life expectancy of a few months, at most.

I have delivered news like this to patients more times than I care to count. Familiarity with death and disease doesn’t make news like this any easier to process. We are all devastated.
With a mix of dread and deep respect, I am preparing to walk with my children down the shadowy path of grief. It is a journey I know well. I have been grieving the loss of my dad for nearly nine years now.

Losing my dad was sudden. This will be different. Cleo looks fine today. She is eating and acting normally…for now. But the numbers don’t lie, and it will only be a matter of time before her organs begin to fail. We will lose her slowly, giving us the gift of more time; a blessing and a curse given the circumstances.

Kids have a hard time with inevitabilities. They are more comfortable with definitive states of being: a creature is either dead, or alive. The concept of dying over a period of weeks is completely foreign to them, and difficult to grasp. They will hope hard that her hanging on is a sign of life, and it will hurt immensely more when those hopes are dashed.

Watching someone else hurt isn’t easy, especially when they are your children. We want so badly to take away the pain, to fix the problem. It’s tempting to offer mindless distraction, or to quip blithely about how this too shall pass, but these misplaced kindnesses can ring hollow. The hurting deserve to be given the dignity of rediscovering hope on their own terms. More than platitudes or proposed solutions, those who grieve need our presence. I once read a Sojourners article that put it beautifully: “What we need in the aftermath is a friend who can swallow her own discomfort and fear, sit beside us, and just let it be terrible for a while.” I have witnessed my children be capable of dwelling in complex and uncomfortable emotional states, and I consider it a privilege to sit with them in their hurt, showing them we can bear it together.

Obviously, the timing of all this is just terrible. Watching a family member—albeit a furry one—slowly die right before Christmas is the stuff of nightmares.

Whether or not Cleo will be with us through the holidays and into the new year remains to be seen, but loving her will have shaped our season either way. I can honor the great love that my children carry for this puppy by acknowledging their grief, showing them my own, and sitting together with them in our collective hurt. Grief and love are inextricable; one cannot exist without the other. Though incredibly painful, grief is the beautiful proof that we loved much, and loved well.

Emily’s Five Suggested Grief Resources

I was the first of my friends to lose a parent. My dad died when I was 29. I didn’t really have anyone I knew who could walk me through it, so when I stumbled upon the following gems, I felt like I’d found someone who really understood what I was going through. This New York Times article rang incredibly true for me, as did this one from Sojourners (referenced both in my piece above, and in the NYT article).
Themes of grief are woven through a great number of works of literature, once you start really looking for them. But these books had me welling up as I realized I wasn’t alone in thinking and feeling the way I did. Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking is just magnificent. After watching this TED Talk from Nora McInerney, I immediately got my hands on every one of her books. No Happy Endings had me savoring the richness of experiencing the complete range of human emotion in a single sitting. In general, comparing sorrows is an unhelpful practice, but I found Viktor Frankl’s recounting of his Nazi concentration camp experience in Man’s Search for Meaning to be both poignant and useful, as it jolted me out of a pit of despair, so to speak. More recently, From Scratch had me sobbing through the pages as I connected deeply with Tembi Locke’s beautiful descriptions of her emotions through loss.
Social media can feel like a dumpster fire all the time, but especially when you’re grieving. That said, there are a few accounts that I’ve enjoyed having pop up in my feed. After Sheryl Sandberg’s book of the same name, Option B is an organization that works to help people build resilience in the face of adversity. I find their posts always strike the right chord with me. I first heard about The Dinner Party on a podcast episode I can no longer remember, but the nonprofit stayed with me, as they seek to give 20- and 30-somethings a platform to connect over loss. I can always count on their timely posts during the holidays to help me navigate my emotions about the empty seat at the table. I have yet to get to experience a dinner party myself, but I love knowing they’re out there.
Maybe some people avoid sad movies, but I lean into them. When you are in need of a good cry, but can’t quite get there on your own, here are a few of my favorites, guaranteed to have you grabbing tissues: About Time, Stepmom, Coco, and The Family Stone.
Forever and always, my favorite album to listen to when I’m feeling low and moody is Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens. Start to finish, it hits all the right notes.