So summer is about here, and for many of us, that means a change of direction. We’d love to hear about what you’ll be doing and thinking about.
Your reflections on the past year would be interesting, whether they are about the state of the world or the state you are in.
The hard question: What can one say to help someone in grief after a very sudden and unexpected loss of a beloved partner? Perhaps I should stress: and that one believes is true. (The requirement that one think it true makes it particularly hard for philosophers, I think.) I think some of the psychological literature, like Dan Gilbert’s work on happiness, is helpful. Humans are much more resilient than we tend to think., he maintains.
This question relates to a severe loss a family member of mine has experienced. I was so struck by the priest’s assertion that we were all asking “why?” I certainly wasn’t.
Feminist Philosophers 
In “Love and Death” (Journal of Philosophy 104, no. 6) Dan Moller (U of Maryland) raises difficult questions as to whether there isn’t something to be regretted in the extent of human resilience:
Click to access Love%20and%20Death.pdf
Rob, thanks so much! Moller’s paper looks very interesting. There’s a somewhat related paper coming out in JP; I wonder if they will appear together. The author of the second, whose name I have forgotten, argues against the idea that one is happier if one is somewhat deceived; the claim she addresses is, I believe, related to the idea that depressed people have an accurate view and it’s better to be inaccurate, as it were.
I am not sure what to say about it, and one reason for that is that I have not looked carefully enough to see if we’re thinking of the same things. An odd thing happened at the funeral I went to last week. The widower had looked thoroughly consumed by deep grief; though not exactly catatonic, you could not be sure there’d be any reaction if you spoke to him. Near the end of the funeral, in a packed-out church with 600 weeping people, he got up somewhat unplanned to say a few words about his deceased wife. They were vivid, sometimes humorous and specific about how her grandchildren should remember her. When he finished, people burst into applause, which is hardly usual, I think, in a church at a funeral. Everyone was just so relieved at the sign that he could indeed go on.
So I think of resilience as enabling us to live reasonably intact lives, which i suspect is not Moller’s take. Somewhat similarly, our beliefs about the future to some extent shape it, so I’d be concerned about wanting to be sure one was no more optimistic than the evidence warrants.
This might all deserve a separate post. I’d love to hear you reactions, in any case.
I am not sure you can actually help with such grief.
All you might do is not add to it: don’t avoid grieving people, just drop by, ask if you can help with practical stuff (this is often so underrated, but how often is it that partners each do their own share in their shared household and the other is just at a loss?). You can ask how they are doing and really listen to the answer. You can say that you wish there was something that you could say that would help (this is true!).
And just keep it up, after losing a beloved partner, the grief lasts a long time, and that is just how it is. If there was a general way to speed up that process, I am sure it would be generally known.
Personally, as one who has little difficulty accepting the conclusions David Benatar arrives at in his book “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence” (Oxford, 2006), the task of being both helpful *and* truthful to the bereaved poses great difficulty. I would want to facilitate the operation of the Pollyanna Principle in the bereaved, and by my pessimistic lights I think this is tantamount to working contrary to a commitment to being truthful. In other words, the truth, being so awful, seems to me to require some kind of suspension or softening of the claim to truthfulness a bereaved person might otherwise have upon one (even despite their pre-bereavement insistence to the contrary), and I would expect myself to wind up subject to the same alteration of conditions were I the bereaved.
Hippocampa, I think you are right (or surely largely right) about consoling people who have lost someone.
I must confess I was thinking a little less practically by now. Maybe I could put it as a contrast: we know what the Christian religion tells a grieving partner: she’s in a better place, she’ll be there when you die, she’s looking out for you/over you, etc. AND God’s plans cannot always be understood, etc, etc. This sort of message seems to me a sort of denial, especially if you are not a believer.
So is there anything a non-believing philosopher can say about death and what can give it a place in a view of human life other than utterly tragic? I’m inclined to think there is, but I really was interested in what others think.
Perhaps one thing we can do is to look at life from an Aristotelian point of view, as a whole whose value is not determined by any one point or even at any one point before it is over. From that perspective, I think, pain at a loss does not negate the high value of having a close and loving relationship in one’s life. It isn’t that one’s life becomes meaningless through a great loss, as some people are inclined to say.
I agree with hippocampa that there may be nothing you can actually do that will really help *with the grief*. But there are still things that you can do for the person, things that will help the person in this very difficult time. I think a lot of kind-hearted people often (reasonably) don’t know what to say to someone who is grieving, but the result is that they end up saying nothing/staying away, and that only contributes to the isolation and loneliness of the grieving person. I also think a lot of kind-hearted people often (reasonably) ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?” and they would be thrilled to do whatever was asked for them. But it is often hard for someone grieving to take people up on those generic offers. (Some of us, grieving or not, are bad at accepting help.) So I advise either just taking the initiative and doing something (bringing over a meal, a feel-good movie) or making the help-offer specific and thus easier to accept, “Can I bring you over a meal on Wednesday?” “Can I walk your dog for you this evening?” “Can I pick up some things for you at the store?” “Would you like company when you clear out your loved one’s office?” etc. Also, make sure to check back with the person grieving after a couple of weeks have gone by. The real loneliness of grief often hits worst after the initial flood of attention from friends and family.
Going back to the question of what you can say that is true, and that might have some chance of helping, I would recommend sharing your memories of his deceased wife. Pick a particular anecdote or two that show how much the deceased meant to you. You will add to the survivor’s memories, and it might give him comfort to know how much the deceased was loved and how much her life meant to other people. You can remind him that she still lives on in people’s hearts. (That’s the locution I use when I want to say something true.)
I think unless the remaining partner is *extremely* philosophical, I don\’t think philosophical reflection would help much, at least in the early stages of grief. Although I do like Aristotle\’s perspective, I can\’t imagine it being much of a comfort if I were to lose my partner. As far as what to say, I\’ve found that what you say may not be nearly important as being there for him/her. If I know the person well (as I\’m assuming you do), I\’ve always focused more on asking how she is doing and listening to her answer. I don\’t feel like there is a necessity to use the standard reassuring statements you mentioned–it\’s more important to listen well, be there, and if necessary, reassure them with good memories you have of the person.
Carrie et al,
I think you’ve made a lot of great points. One might not aim to make the person feel better, but rather to try to help with a potentially healing, supportive frame.
I actually do think the Aristotelian point can be comforting, but the one case where I’m pretty sure it was had to do with someone I am not VERY close to. Perhaps for some period, unexpected words are better if they come from a bit of a distance.
There might be something Monty Python about calling up a very close relative with a philosophical reflection every day.
In the short term, it may be more important to avoid saying things like “I know how you feel” — because, you don’t. Simply saying, ‘this sucks and I’m sorry you have to deal with it’ is much better.
A little longer term, raising the idea that the reason it hurts is because they were close and had such a loving relationship. Really, it would be quite sad if the partner had died and the surviving spouse moved on quickly…
Really does any of us grasp if the idea is most probably true that the majority of prostate vibrators protect against prostate cancer?