At the risk of sounding naive, I struggle with understanding the nature of the grieving process that individuals go through at the death of a loved one. And I am looking for help to better grasp the nature of those experiences and, in particular, the basis for the grieving of those who have a firm belief in the afterlife.
Just to be clear, I am not raising this issue because I have recently suffered, or am about to suffer, a the loss of a loved one. Rather, it is because I continue to find myself reflecting on the mass shooting that occurred in the Florida high school in February of this year. For me the most powerful images, the ones that keep recurring in my memory, are those of parents, classmates, and teachers who were grieving in the immediate aftermath of their loss of loved ones killed in the attack.
Of course, these are scenes that, unfortunately all too often, we see repeated in all disasters, whether manmade or natural. Much of the power of these images, for me at least, extends from my realization that it could have been my loss. I imagine myself in the position of the person grieving. Such disasters represent a stark reminder of the fragility and ultimate brevity of life. When the loss is sudden and violent, those left behind have not had the opportunity to assimilate the loss, and that heightens the intensity of the grieving, though it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the loss.
As best I can understand, the personal grief that I have suffered at the loss of loved ones has had two causes. First, (selfishly perhaps) I have grieved for my loss of the loved one’s companionship. I had become good friends with Frank, my father-in-law, over the years prior to his death in December of 2016. As someone approaching 105, Frank had been stubborn and cantankerous at times, but we had shared a respect and love for one another. And I grieved his death for that reason.
Second, I find great joy in this life and the opportunities that it provides, and I believe that others do as well. When an individual’s life is cut short, I grieve, but not because he will suffer as a result of his death. There is no suffering after death. Rather, I grieve for the individual’s lost opportunity for future experiences in which to find joy. As an atheist I do not believe in an afterlife. Experiencing this one and only life is what we have. That is the essence of our existence. And when we die, our experience of life is over, forever. There are no second chances.
Some years ago I had a colleague whose brother died of cancer in his early 20s. My colleague was devastated, and I could understand the intensity of her grief. There was so much promise in her brother's life that he never got the opportunity to pursue or experience. In contrast, I did not grieve for my father-in-law’s lost opportunities. He had taken advantage of a varied and rewarding life of over 100 years that he enjoyed reliving in the stories that he told me, repeatedly. But the frailties of age had caught up with him, and his opportunities going forward were few. He and I both understood this.
Where I could use help is in understanding better the grieving of those who, unlike me, do believe in an afterlife. Certainly, as with me, their grief includes the fact of the lost companionship of the person who has passed. And, I am sure, their grief also includes the loved one’s loss of opportunity for experiences in this life. But that is where it gets complicated.
A quick check of various Christian denominations’ doctrines reveals that most of them teach that at death an individual’s soul ascends to heaven, where presumably she or he will be in the conscious presence of God and live in perfection for eternity. There are variations on this theme across different denominations. Some believe that the wicked go to hell (literally) rather than to heaven. Some believe that those going to heaven continue to monitor events on earth. Some, like the Seventh-day Adventist church in which I was raised, believe that the dead remain in “soul sleep” (essentially unconscious) pending Christ’s Second Coming. Other denominations are silent on these matters.
But whether one goes to heaven immediately or remains in soul sleep, ultimately she will be reunited with loved ones and spend eternity in perfect bliss. And this is where my question comes in: For those who have a firm belief in an afterlife, what is the basis for the grieving of the loss of a loved one? As adherents to this point of view are wont to state, the loved one is “in a better place.” Yes, the departed are going to miss out on certain opportunities on earth, but they are also going to miss out on a lot of pain. Yes, they will lose the companionship of those they have left behind, but in the context of eternity, this is the briefest of delays, “the twinkling of an eye,” before they are reunited with those loved ones in heaven.
I want to be clear that I do not doubt the sincerity or depth of the grieving of those who believe in an afterlife. What I am trying to do is to understand the reasons for their grieving. As an atheist, I grieve for my loss of companionship as well as for the lost opportunity of the one who has passed. I find joy in this life, the only one that I believe that I will have, and I mourn the fact that a lost loved one has forever lost that opportunity. So it puzzles me when someone, who, in the midst of their grieving, states that the lost loved one has gone to heaven or is in a better place (or it is clear that the person believes that the loved one eventually will be). Do they subconsciously have doubts about the existence of the afterlife? Do they worry that their loved one will wind up in the “other” place? Based on my discussions with various Christians, I dismiss both of those explanations. And certainly they don’t believe that life on earth is better than the one promised for heaven.
I have an acquaintance who believes that everyone, regardless of how they may have lived this life, will find salvation at Christ’s Second Coming. So she will be reunited with them in heaven. She has stated that she would grieve for the loss of the companionship of a loved one, but not for the loved one’s loss of opportunity, even if it were her own child, because, she argues, in death they are simply sleeping and in the end they (as well as she) will be reunited and live in joy and perfection in heaven for all eternity. From my perspective I find this belief set to border on the absurd on a number of grounds. For example, she justifies God’s destruction of all but a handful of humans in the Flood on the basis that all of them will be saved and spend eternity in heaven, so in the end they really haven’t lost anything. As absurd as I believe her point of view to be, is she nevertheless being logically consistent?
I confess that I remain confused by all of this. It has been so long since I had a belief in an afterlife that I have great difficulty in understanding how Christians think about this. Or am I just being over-analytical? It wouldn’t be the first time.
© 2018 John M. Phillips
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