Grief and Death for Non-Believers

People think you must be religious to deal with grief and death. I don't see why my buying into a fantasy would make any difference. I will grieve and I will die. My father, a wise man and personally religious, made several non religious statements that give me comfort. " To grieve deeply means you had the good fortune of a relationship worth grieving. It is a high cost, but one most people would choose to pay". And while he was actually dying... "Dying is frightening but thinking of being dead is not. Either there is nothing, so I won't experience it, or there is an afterlife which I won't know about until I get there. Whether I believe or not, I am as prepared as anyone else".

Dear Rosyday,

Thank you for sharing your dad's wise words. No truer words were spoken.

Perhaps because I do believe, I have no fears, no anxieties about not being in the human body anymore when it stops breathing. I will be 66 next month if I still am. My Mom had cancer when I was a teen in high school. The week that humans first landed on the moon in July of 1969 she came home from Mercy Hospital after 6 weeks of recovery, having had 25 feet of her intestines removed, complete hysterectomy, a permanent colostomy, several weeks of radiation and some early types of chemotherapy. She recovered fairly well for a few years, but succumbed 4 years later, with other organs having metastasized cancer when she was 58 and I was 21. In those 4 years she did so many sewing projects, cranking out snowsuits for grand kids, Christening clothing for young grand-babies, and bedding for a bassinet, draperies for the house, suits & dresses for herself and me. She sewed like she knew any day could be her last. Dad's Mom, in our house having been taken cared of by both Mom & Dad, & me, died the summer after I had graduated, and before I went off to college. A year later Dad survived with Mom's care from a heart attack, and I moved back home. Dad was doing better, but then Mom began to not feel as well as she was before. The Cancer had re-emerged it's ugly head causing knife-like stabbing pains during the spring of '73. She had a doctor check up and scans - they said it was back, she did not want any chemo again. She felt she had done enough and it was time to go - whenever that was going to be, it was okay with her, she was ready to move onward for she felt she had done all that she could with raising my older brothers and me. Mom was a believer, just not a church goer. Her faith was strong, and it was between her and her God, her Heavenly Father and His Son, and His Spirit. She was never a push it down anyone's throat kind of Christian, she just lived as she thought HE would want her to do so. That is what a Christian should do. Just BE an Example of how one should live their life, so that the Example speaks for itself ...... When a person comes to grips with their selves and what they add up to, usually they will see that there is nothing they can do without God that has any lasting effect on the rest of humanity, only what HE has done to create our redemption & salvation has an eternal effect. Either we will be with Him, or we will not be with Him. We all have our freedom of choice. He does not force anyone to believe on Him. I would rather choose to believe on Him, and in Him, and by that choice I have my peace of mind. What ever you choose, I wish you your peace of your mind, so that you may live in the here and now with confidence and no anxiety nor fears.

Dear lvkdra,

Thank you for sharing your story with us. I appreciate your words. I think in the end that is what I long for the most. Peace. No Anxiety nor fears.

A little levity. Also, 5th one down. :-D

distractify.com/trending/2018/02/27/mMXgq/death-in-gif-form

Gmorning Dorianne, been rereading posts and saw where you were told your mom has 6 months. Big hug💜

Thanks Bella.

I'll come back to the thread in a more serious way, but I'm finding it difficult to dive into the depth of this topic just at the moment, in the middle of organizing mom's palliative care plan. 

Dorianne, I'm thinking of you and wishing you as much clarification of focus and peace of mind as are possible as you move forward into palliative care.

I'm so sick of hearing Sisters' platitude how "God is good" that he let Mom die from her dementia. I want to scream "Your god tortured Mom for years with dementia, diabetes, and spinal arthritis to the point she couldn't even walk and he's merciful for finally letting her die!?" I think my tongue's gone from biting it so much to stop me from screaming obscenities.

(((((MountainMoose)))))

My neighbour at home told me yesterday she'd put my mom in her prayers, and it didn't really effect me.  I guess I'm getting used to it. 

But there's something about adding it into the mix of emotions you get with fresh grief - especially the rage - that makes it extra frustrating to hear that kind of stuff. It's not helpful, and I wish people would think about how they sound sometimes.

Grief rage is real.

I get upset with the the Facebook prayers. I get annoyed with those little FB praying hands. Or those "unspoken prayer requests" or being told "I've added you to my prayer list". I have gotten that so much in the last year I could scream. I want to say if you can't cure the infection in my leg that has been raging for over 3 years - leave me alone.

I am also sick of the internet memes with Jesus standing behind Trump saying a new moral compass for our country. I don't think so.

Lol, social media prayers are kind of like the "Soul Scrolls" in The Handmaid's Tale (book). Machines churning out endless pages of prayers. Meant to make a big display of religious sanctity without anyone having to do anything spiritual.

I think I might violate AC code if I start talking about Darth Trump on here.

Dorianne,
I found a topic on AC about this; Is rage part of grief? by Missouriflower written 2 years ago. (I'm kinda' not too good at giving the link, sorry.) I googled "grief rage" and Missouriflower's post on this board popped up first. You might be interested in the thread. I'm so sorry that your mom is terminal and you have to cope with that.

From grief.com;
"The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief."
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler wrote some good stuff on this very subject. We had to study it as part of our nursing program back in the 70's.

Mountain Moose,
I don't want to make you madder. I probably have no right to post here, as I am a believer and this thread is for non-believers. However, I do not give my views expecting that anyone should believe them.

I, too, am disgusted that my mom has dementia. It seems so unfair that someone looses their mind then slowly dies from it. The same with people dying from other diseases.

IMO, what I've learned about God from reading the Bible, is that God doesn't GIVE people the illnesses and but He ALLOWS them to happen. Yeah, that still sounds pretty mean but I think there's a big difference. What I read was that when Adam and Eve went against God's 1 rule, sin entered the world. And disease is part of sin that people suffer.
Yeah, I know WE didn't disobey God but man's nature is part sinful. Believers and non-believers both reap the effects of sin sealed thousands of years ago. Believers believe that they will go to Heaven, where there is no sin. So, while we won't see a perfect world here, we are promised a sinless existence (for the soul) there if we believe.

I have no problem with whatever anyone believes (or doesn't) and I'll honor your right to have it. I hope you're not offended by what I've said. Just trying to give a different perspective.

Sue - I wouldn't want to close the thread to believers. I guess I'd rather hope, with dialogue, we could all understand one another's perspectives a bit better.

From my perspective, as a non-believer, when someone talks to me about god's role or motives in my LO's illness and death, god's mercy or whatever....it doesn't matter if there are 275 different spiritual explanations for why. When I'm in my moment of fresh grief and loss, it just upsets me, period. I personally don't CARE what god's role or motives are, or whether god wants people to wear black or white to funerals, because I don't believe in god. And when I'm in that overwhelming moment, the last thing I want is to have to engage in a conversation about something I consider false, and then have to find a way not to be rude about it.

What I hear in those moments is someone who has no comprehension of MY experience of grief and loss. What I hear is someone who is incapable of offering me comfort, because they can't understand MY experience. I feel MORE disconnected from the person trying to offer me comfort through spirituality than I did before they attempted it, and now I feel responsible for their feelings on top of my own.

I mean absolutely no offense in saying this. And I'm speaking more from past experience, trying to explain what those moments feel like from my perspective.

MY experience of grief and loss is that of a big empty hole inside my heart and a permanent void in my life. That person (or even animal) is gone to me forever. I will never see them again. Ever. I will never laugh with them or cry with them, touch them or hold them, never share any new experiences with them, never have another chance to atone for mistakes I've made with them. The only part of them I have left, or will ever have again, is the part that exists inside my memories.  And the main source of comfort to me is that their suffering has ended. 

The thing is, I'm totally capable of talking to my spiritual friends, during their times of grief and sorrow, in a way that supports their belief systems, and I can do it without betraying my own beliefs. I can talk to my friends about what the bible says, what this interpretation or that one might mean, what direction their faith might be telling them to go in....I can ask them questions and offer sympathy and encourage them to continue to seek comfort in their faith.....without ever once feeling the need to say, "But, you know, I believe there IS no god, and the dead are gone forever and we'll never see them again, but that's just my beliefs." Because I can imagine how they might feel if I did.

I hope that makes sense. Again, I really mean no offense, and I don't want to discourage you from posting here. I just hope we can all come to a way of understanding one another a little better.



Oh....on the grief rage thing, yeah. I'm experienced, lol. When my stepmother died of breast cancer, the first thing I saw after leaving her hospice was a cardboard "pink ribbon" display in the convenience store next door. The kind designed by the breast cancer "industry" that promotes "awareness," selling overpriced, be-ribboned merchandise made by corporations whose products are part of the cause of breast cancer. My stepmother hated that pink ribbon nonsense, and believed strongly that "Pink Ribbons" was an actual industry built around the premise of profiting from her illness.

No one will ever know how close I came to hurling that pink cardboard display through the window that day.

Also when my dad was dying, and the nurse told me the minister had been to see my father, I whirled around and growled through my teeth, "HE'S AGNOSTIC."

Now that I'm in menopause, I'm pretty sure somebody is going to need to duck on the day I lose my mother.

Grief rage is real!

Dorianne: Thank you for your comments. I had to step away from this thread because I was too angry.

SueC1957: I don't go into the believers' thread to write "there's no shred of evidence of god and if you want to believe a talking snake that's your choice" or "if you choose to worship a god who'd allow a good person to be tortured by disease that's up to you" as that would be rude. I don't understand why a believer would come onto a non-believers' thread to parrot these beliefs.

Wow, I haven’t read all of these messages, started from the front, about what to say to a dying non believer. My mother who passed away three weeks ago didnt believe. She was confused about it all, she questioned everything all her life. While she was dying up until she died , We played her ,her favorite music, and we told her that it was safe to go.
We spoke about the gardens she had made and flowers she loved .
We told her we loved her and that we were there
And I believe that we all have a soul. It is separate to the brain.
And we are alive with our first breath, perhaps that’s when the souls enters and it leaves with our last ( according to my Jewish friends mother) a
And where the soul came from, it goes back to ( according to my grandfather)
And there has to be something greater than us, be it spirit, love, energy
We are small pieces of the bigger part. That’s where we go ( according to me)
That’s how far I’ve got!

Wow..I must say this topic has amazingly interesting answers from very intelligent people!

And Dorianne you open great conversations. I’m a believer (not proselytizing in your thread) but I guess I’m in the middle lane, why? Because I get the feeling that this seems to be divided in two groups, the group of I need to see to believe and the other of I believe therefore I see.

I actually have always believed, but believe even more now because I’ve seen, plain and simple. And I know I didn’t convince myself that I was experiencing something...I was experiencing something, no shadow of a doubt. Like I said I’ve always been a believer, raised catholic and will always be because that’s part of my identity; yet I’ve also always been open to getting to know other people’s beliefs from other religions or no religions. All is so interesting!

Yet, personally I’ve no doubts, and like I said I’m a mid lane type of person in this group, because I’ve been privileged enough to say I’ve seen God’s footprints in my path, tangibly. How situations have been presented in front of me, or changed -drastically, unbelievably!- as a response to my prayer..or even without prayer. Things that otherwise would have no explanation. Thing that make us have that feeling we are all familiar with, believers or not, when we know, we feel, that something is true and is happening.

I had a conversation with my mother not long ago, where she -who’s very, very religious- told me that to be honest she hadn’t been privileged to receive any miracles in her entire life. While I can tell you, in my half-her-life time I’ve experienced at least three tangible miracles...yes, not shying away from recognizing them as such, and that’s not even counting the daily ones that I tend to oversee.

When my mom told me that, I looked at her thinking and realizing that in life what we perceive and believe all depends on our perspective. Because all the miracles I count involved her, yet she doesn’t realize them. Yes, we lived them differently, maybe I got a clear first hand response kind of thing, but she was definitely involved.

So, we each believe and therefore see what we each have set ourselves up to see or believe.

You say Dorianne that you wish you could believe and have faith, and I think that’s completely up to you. Really. It requires a lot of humility to accept that not all that happens in our lives is determined by our human condition, and the epitome of that is exactly the point of your topic: Death.

If we are it, the highest power of existence, then who handles death? Do you all think it is logical that life really ends there, and that’s it? What was the purpose of existence then, just going through the motions of life and then..The End? 
From an strictly  logical point of view, I don’t find that logical!
Actually I find that pretty much more illogical than what any religion may teach, because through their prisms at least life has a purpose.

None of what I’ve shared here is meant to convince anyone to believe or not, that’s a very personal decision. I’ve just shared my reality, not even my faith, but my reality.

As to the core question, I don’t know. Really don’t know what could be said that could provide some sort of consolation, other than maybe being grateful for having had the opportunity to know the person, and love the person -by the way, love is intangible too and defiant of logic, yet we all love!-.

I do believe that most of my agnostic friends are actually great human beings  that do good not because the Bible or Koran or anything or anyone tells them to, but because they like doing good. They are also very intelligent (therefore their inquisitive and challenging nature).

One thing I know religion or spiritual beliefs are not meant to do is to separate. Whoever feels that believing makes them superior, meaning better than others, is mistaken. If anything, we are lucky, very!, because God is an amazing resource to have. But we are not better.

Thank you for starting interesting conversations that get people thinking and sharing ideas, questions and responses. Best way to learn is to learn from one another!

Ps. Very sorry about your mom Dorianne, reading this thread I realized she’s really not well, but I know she’s lucky (very lucky!) having you by her side, walking down this path of life with her! A hug sent your way)

I'm back on page 2, and since that is so far back I'll quote the entry:

cwillie says "I love the "new age" christians, they sort of just make sh*t up as they go along.... add a little of this, subtract a little of that.... kinda like when the head of the united church said it wasn't necessary to believe Jesus is god..."

I don't know anything about the united church and couldn't find much. Is it "new age"? Does it claim to be Christian?

The Unitarian Univeralist Association does not require faith in Jesus or even in God. This is definitely not a "new age" organization. The "Unitarian" part is a claim that there is only one god, and rejects the concept of a trinity. The "Universalist" part embraces spiritual/religious concepts from many sources, including but not exclusively Christian sources.

Most members do believe in god and some members believe in Jesus (as a wise spiritual leader, mostly). But there is no creed that says they must. Saying you don't need to believe that Jesus is god is not in this case "new age Christian" because they aren't claiming to be Christian. No irony here.

There are 7 principles that are the core of UUA belief. Beyond them, members may have differing views of god or gods.

"The United Church of Canada (French: Église unie du Canada) is a mainline Reformed denomination and the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada, and the largest Canadian Christian denomination after the Catholic Church". "The United Church was founded in 1925 as a merger of four Protestant denominations with a total combined membership of about 600,000 members: the Methodist Church, Canada, the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec, two-thirds of the congregations of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the Association of Local Union Churches, a movement predominantly of the Canadian Prairie provinces. The Canadian Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren Church joined the United Church of Canada on January 1, 1968 ". (Wikipedia)

Thanks, cwillie. That doesn't sound very New Age ... has it moved in that direction since 1925?

I have noticed a big schism in the united church between traditionalists and modernists, those in authority in the church seem to be more urban and willing to embrace change (sometimes to a ridiculous degree) , those who are older and rural not so much.

Uh, nope, I was talking about the United Church of Canada - because I am a Canadian and so is Dorianne, and I don't think anyone with any interest in religious discourse in our country hasn't heard about the infamous comments coming from their moderator and since that time from many of their clergy.
Bill Phipps "was elected to the post of Moderator at the 36th General Council of the United Church in August 1997. Only a short time after his installation, he ignited widespread controversy inside and outside the church when, in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen editorial board, he questioned the resurrection of Jesus as a scientific fact, said he was undecided on the question of the afterlife, and "I don’t believe Jesus was God." (Bill Phipps wikipedia)

And by "new age" I was referring to the modern tendency to pick and choose which parts of doctrine to believe, discarding core tenets and often adding in practices and beliefs from completely different religions.

(((((MountainMoose))))) I totally know what you mean about not going into the believers' threads. I don't either, because I don't have anything to contribute and it just doesn't interest me.

And I totally get why you are mad. I think it's harder for believers to understand our experience.....it's often quite alien to believers. We - and especially you folks in America - live in a culture where belief (and in America, the Christian faith especially) is still the norm, so I think trying to explain things in faith-based language (and again, in America, the language of Christianity) comes automatically to believers.

I know you need time to grieve, but I hope, when you're ready you can come in and tell us what this experience has been like for you, what might be more helpful or compassionate to you as a grieving non-believer. We (non-believers, or even just agnostics, which I think is closer to what I am) are the minority in a dominant culture of faith, so it's up to us to educate others on HOW to console or relate to us and other non-believers.

Dorianne: Thank you! I so appreciate your support and your words. You know how to write what's in my heart!

I personally don't understand why this thread or Smashque's thread are allowed to continue. When you read the rules of this site it states very clearly no religious discussions.

I am a strong believer but I have no interest in getting into a discourse with fellow believers or non- believers on the Aging Care website. Privately maybe, but not on a public forum.

Gershun, I didn’t know that. Thanks.

Gershun, I appreciate that. The context is about grief and loss, though, which to me is a very appropriate topic when caring for the elderly.

I don't think it's harming anyone, is it? No one has to read or participate in the threads. People post bible quotes and religious sentiment all over the other threads and I don't get a choice about seeing it in that context. 

To be honest, I started this thread because I was often being consoled or comforted with religious sentiment in other threads - I hoped to encourage other ways to respond to someone's grief and loss.  And I wanted input myself on how to console or comfort a dying non-believer (like my mother).

I think we are being pretty respectful to one another here. 

Do you have any specific concerns about it, besides general policy? 

Yes, your last line in your post. Some of the responses have been proselytizing in the opposite direction as well. Therein lies the problem with discussions based on faith, for or against. It just turns into a religious debate. I don't think you can start any thread where it specifies believer or non-believer without that happening. As I said before, I'm happy to discuss my belief in God privately with anyone, just don't wish to on this forum.

But........................having said that, I don't post on Smashque's thread and I won't post on this thread either. Carry on!

I can appreciate that, Gershun, and I appreciate your input, too. I guess I don't mind the debates, as they've been mainly soft debates and I find the subject interesting. But I do see your point. I try not to tell anyone what to believe or not believe, but I can see where things do get off-message. Hopefully this will be a good reminder to us all to remain respectful of one another's beliefs, or lack thereof. Or at least keep it contained and out of other threads!! :-)

Death, grief, mourning, offering comfort ... those are all appropriate topics for a caregivers' forum. How to offer condolences to a person who you know to be non-believer or whose faith is unknown to you is a legitimate question worthy of discussion. Particularly so since so many people appear to have not a clue!

I've been on this forum for many years. I shared many personal stories about my husband's journey with dementia, and learned from other people's stories. But when he died I was reluctant to make a big announcement of that, because I just didn't think I was up for all the condolences I would get that would be meaningless to me. It isn't that I would be "offended" by being assumed to be a Christian, but that I would feel belittled by the assumption. Hey, it isn't only people who share your beliefs who are worthy of being comforted.

Many of the people who make assumptions about the faith of others are kind, considerate, compassionate. They would never mean to belittle. But they have no clue whatsoever how to offer comfort without putting it in terms of their own beliefs. So I think this is a good topic, but I also think believers and non-believers alike ought to try to educate themselves about it.

BTW, I think the condolence threads have improved a lot here over the years. But I still would cringe if some of the "comfort" were aimed at me.