Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

What I have also found is that there are lots of people who want to help you…for a price. I’ve spent a chunk of cash on books, and they are, in fact, the most reasonably priced resource I’ve come across. Plus, so far, I’ve gotten a lot out of all of them but one. It works for me. But everyone has a book to sell, and I mean everyone.

If I knew how to help; if I had the right words that would ease a wounded heart; if I had abilities that allowed me to be able to reassure people that their loved ones were okay on the other side of the veil; if I had anything within me I could do to help folks heal, I’d do it. And I’d offer it for free, because that’s what I think is right. I feel the same way when I learn about drugs that could save lives that are so expensive that the people who would benefit from them must go without. If you could alleviate suffering in the world, how could you refuse on financial grounds to do it? There has to be something in between altruistic poverty and huge profits at the cost of your humanity, and other humans.

I’ve found grief recovery workshops going for $675, plus hotel and airfare. Counseling, in my experience, was $90 for 50 minutes. Meeting with a medium can cost you upwards of a grand. And I won’t even talk about what a funeral costs, but my reading indicates it’s not unusual for people to drop $10K on funeral arrangements. That is insane to me. That’s a college education.

Because, you know, what you want to do when people have had the world pulled out from under them is to gouge them.

I have to say, I find it all more than a little discouraging. On the one hand, I suppose people need to make a living, and there is certainly a niche to be found in the grief industry. You’ll never run out of business. I guess I’ll never be a capitalist, though, because gaining financially on the backs and broken hearts of people who are desperate for anything that will bring comfort, meaning, and potential for healing just seems… well…gross, to me.

There is a school of thought that suggests that the divorce between people and the understanding of death as a painful, but natural, part of life happened when the family and community obligation to tend to those who’ve passed away, and the bereaved thereof, became someone else’s profession; and perhaps that isn’t all to the good, and may have a deleterious effect on our ability to cope with the concept. I don’t know how I feel about that; even when you know it’s coming, that it’s inevitable for all of us, it doesn’t make it any easier to be without those whose company you prize above all others. I do know I wish I’d been there instead of here when they found him, to do what I could to do right by him even at the end. At the same time, I am not unaware there is a gift in the loss of that opportunity, in that the last memory I have of his face is of him alive and smiling. I have been haunted by the vision of others I have seen at funerals, my aunt, my grandfather, my grandmothers, and that is not a memory I would want to have of him. So it may not be better; just different.

I sat through a meeting last Thursday about benefits, specifically the new opportunity to purchase term life insurance, accidental death & dismemberment insurance, and short-term disability insurance. Even in the discussion of the first two, no one could say the words “in the event that you die,” or “upon your death”; not the agents, not the staff members asking the questions, not management. In one case, all other reasons for why you would add or delete someone’s coverage from your health insurance were mentioned except for the death of a covered person, and the omission and the delicate dance around it were so very obvious. I was not looking forward to the meeting, for obvious reasons, but nonetheless, E and I have started looking into “getting our affairs in order,” as it’s called, because we have no children who will be able to do it, no family in town to do it, were the worst to happen, and because I can imagine the toll settling A’s affairs has taken on his family; I’m guessing it’s still ongoing. His passing was totally unexpected, even by him, and he was not the most organized person. If nothing else, both of us need to know what the other one takes care of, and how, and in the division of labor that has evolved between us, we don’t.

But my biggest objection to the meeting, to insurance in general and this kind in specific, is that it preys upon our fears. It forces you to take the bet that you think you’re going to die or become disabled sooner than you want to; the insurance company gets to bet you won’t and they’ll get to keep your money, and the odds are with the house. But it raises the spectre that you could leave your family in penury, which is something no one wants to happen to their loved ones. That is not to deny that there are very real financial concerns that must be considered in families, and most cannot manage if half the family income was lost through disability or death, but again, the sales pitch exploits our deepest, most primal fears. Protection money is what it is: “Pay up and your family won’t get hurt.” The Mob couldn’t do it better.

How can you make a killing on something so intensely personal as death in good conscience? I couldn’t do it.