Grief, Mourning, and the Myth of Closure

Separating grieving from mourning and thoughts from an expert on the grief experience, including why you may never find closure.

Oct 20, 2023

The Storyville Stompers march in a New Orleans Second Line. I don’t remember what website I cribbed this image from.

I’ve always loved the idea of the Second Line. Now, here’s mourning in action. A parade led by the family and coffin through the streets of New Orleans from the church to the burial grounds. Behind the family are bands, followed by the community of mourners and whoever else wants to join. It’s a tradition that dates to the African slave trade, where songs, dancing and pageantry celebrated the life of the person that passed away. The blending of non-white cultures in New Orleans — African, Caribbean and indigenous — provided the breeding ground for the practice.

As it was explained to me on my most recent visit to New Orleans1, the band starts slow and mournful, building in momentum and joy to a crescendo of faster rhythms and happier beats. Sure, there is sadness but the mourning is channeled into celebration, so much so that strangers join in the parade as it passes by their homes. It’s the community pulling together for one of their own, celebrating their life and harnessing the collective energy of those gathered into the spirit that keeps their memory alive.2

This was the second line for legendary New Orleans musician Dr. John3:

Pretty fucking cool, right?

Now think about the last funeral you went to. There’s no way it was all that fun. I doubt there was a horn section, unless you count that one uncle who blows his nose too loud.

I think we have it all wrong. I’ve been to a lot of Italian wakes and funerals over the years, due to my heritage, and I liken them to the first day of nursery school. A lot of people dressed nicely that are crying and wailing performatively. There’s a lot of consoling by family and strangers. And, there are the few souls sitting quietly staring off into space not knowing what to do. They aren’t celebrations of life, but ritualistic fits of self-flagellation where we end up feeling about as bad as the guest of honor did at the end.

Mourning is grieving turned outward, just as anger turned inward is depression. But, mourning and grieving are two very different things.

That wailing Italian grandmother may mourn, but it’s possible she might not grieve4. My daughter began her grieving in advance and still seems to be grieving her grandfather. She mourned as well.

Social media has changed how we mourn and grieve, and I don’t believe it’s for the better. Sometimes, people post something heartfelt about a parent, sibling or spouse who has passed away. There might be a photo of them with that person, or just the person who died. That seems like a healthy way of dealing with it.

Unfortunately, social media is the ultimate look-at-me platform, so many times we get performance and attention seeking. There’s been more than a few posts over the past few years by people I know that reek to me of “my _____ died, but let’s talk about me.”

But, as I said in the first edition of this newsletter, I’m not an expert on death, grief and mourning. So, I decided to go find one.

What’s Your Grief: A Q&A with Eleanor Haley

Eleanor Haley and I have have a couple of things in common. We’re both from Central New York (me from Liverpool, she from the eastern suburbs of Syracuse) and our mothers both died from pancreatic center — the motherfucker of all motherfuckers — her’s at 57, mine at 52.

She is one-half of What’s Your Grief, an online community centered around grief and loss. Eleanor, who has a master’s in counseling psychology from Loyola University, worked as a family bereavement counselor before embarking on What’s Your Grief with Litsa Williams. Together, they have written a book What’s Your Grief: Lists to Help You Through Any Loss.

Eleanor was more than gracious in answering my questions about grief, through both her personal and professional lenses.

* * *

I originally wanted to write a piece on finding closure through grief after reading about this book. As I was researching, I ran across your blog post on the myth of closure in grief. Your thesis is that grief never ends. Can you expand on this?

When people abstractly think of grief, they typically think about the days and months following a loss. We often refer to this period as "acute grief," when grief feels the most intensely disorienting, overwhelming, and excruciatingly painful. It would be untenable for this part of grief to last forever, and it typically does not. The intensity of grief should lessen as people find ways to make sense of their world in the context of life after loss and to cope with the pain of it.

But significant losses stay with you. It changes you. You don't just forget and move on. Instead, the role grief plays in your life will evolve and change, as the intensity of painful grief-related thoughts and emotions dulls, and there's more room for things like peace, comfort, and warm memories.

You may also continue to connect with the person who died. If you are grieving someone you care deeply about, for example, you aren't just going to stop loving that person. You will still love and miss them and, in many respects, continue to connect with them despite their physical absence. In that ongoing love and connection, there will be warm memories, thoughts, and feelings. However, there will also likely be grief from time to time because you miss them, and you feel sadness about all they are missing.

During the fall, when the leaves change, I remember the October my mother died, and I'm filled with sadness and longing.

You write that people expect closure in grief and that "people think that completing a set of stages or tasks, or just letting time pass in general, will lead to closure in grief." In my own case, I don't remember the moment where I feel like I found closure, but as I sit here 25 years since she died from pancreatic cancer, I feel like I've achieved it. Is the myth of closure the result of people desperate to find something and assign a label, rather than letting closure find them?

I think our language around grief can sometimes create unnecessary confusion, and words like “closure” and “acceptance” are prime examples. Whether grief theorists and professionals intended it or not, using words like these left many people believing that the goal of grief is to eventually come to a finite place where they wrap their grief up with a neat little bow and close the chapter. This idea of achieving some sense of doneness, where you never grapple with another grief-related thought or feeling again, doesn't ring true for many people.

However, this is not to say that closure isn't a part of grieving. There are many grief-related experiences a person may find closure with, and in doing so, find greater overall peace. For example, someone may discover closure for unanswered questions. Or they may find closure with complex thoughts and feelings like guilt, regret, shame, or blame.

You mention that your mother died when you were in your early 20s. You're a couple of years younger than me so that would have been right around the same time my mother died. After 25-ish years (give or take), have you found closure or, at the very least, a place where you can coexist with your own grief?

Yes, I've had a long time to process grief and understand its role in my life, and I've reached a place where I know my relationship with grief and my mother's memory will always be both happy and sad. During the fall, when the leaves change, I remember the October my mother died, and I'm filled with sadness and longing. Other times, when I'm sharing a song or a story with my daughters that my mother shared with me, I feel more gratitude and warmth. A part of being human is experiencing beautiful things like love and painful things like loss -- and I'm content to coexist with it all. I don't know how it could be any other way.

In thinking back, I have gaps in my memory about the services for my mother. I don't remember the funeral service or much of what happened around the wake and funeral. I remember these odd little instances like the police escort from the village of Liverpool to the cemetery in Eastwood. What do you remember about your mother's passing? What do you think about what we retained from those days?

Our memory and what we retain is so interesting. Everyone responds to loss differently, and many factors impact memory, especially when you consider acute stress, lack of sleep, unfamiliar environments and experiences, etc. I bet my sister would say she remembers every detail of my mom’s death, while I remember very little. I was pretty checked out and put a lot of physical and emotional distance between myself and everything happening then. I'll always regret not being more present during my mother's illness and death, even if that means carrying more difficult memories of it with me now.

What do you think about Dr. Lois Tonkin's idea about growing around grief? Do you think that grief can shrink or is her theory about our lives growing around the grief is true?

To me, this idea is a perfect example of how subjective our individual experiences of grief are and how no one conceptualization encapsulates it for everyone. We received a huge response when we wrote about Tonkin’s thoughts on growing and grief. Clearly, this idea speaks to many people. But I'll be honest: no matter how I look at it, I don't see it that way because that's not how my personal grief feels. So my answer is that this theory feels very accurate for some and not for others -- and that's okay.

Can you talk a little bit about grief monsters? What do you call yours and what has he/she helped you realize?

Grief monsters started as something we discussed to help kids look at their grief from arm's length – though I will say that we’ve found it helpful for adults as well. The idea is that grief can seem like the monster hiding under your bed or in your closet, waiting to jump out at you when you least expect it. But no matter how you try to tip-toe around and avoid the monster, it isn't going anywhere. So the best way to handle it is to invite it in, look it straight in the eye, and realize it doesn't want to hurt you.

When you look at your grief monster you see it’s just big grief feelings and wanting to remember the person who died – all things you can relate to and understand. You’ll also see that if you let it into your life, you'll find it's easier to live with it than to tip toe around it. Anyway, there's much more to it when we write about it and teach it in workshops, but you get the picture.

I've developed some opinions around social media and grief, which is to say that I distrust a lot of it. I think it's one thing to post something heartfelt about your loved one dying and how you will miss them. I think it's another thing to see a steady stream of posts because I naturally go to a place where it's seeking attention or making it all about them. Am I just being a curmudgeon and misreading this? Can healthy grieving be found on a Facebook wall?

Grief on social media is a big topic for many reasons. I've also become a curmudgeon, but about different grief-related social media issues, so perhaps that's what it does to us all! But your question concerns personal grief expression on social media, so let's stick to that.

When grieving, a person typically has to rely on a toolbox of coping skills and many different coping outlets. For many people, social media meets certain grief needs in a constructive way. Of course, there are definite drawbacks and considerations for sharing in a place where everyone can comment back, share their opinion, or choose not to engage -- but this is a larger discussion.

Questions about people who post a lot, or share a lot, come up often. I think because we all have different comfort levels with sharing and because we don’t always understand the ways other people are using social media. Personally, I think it’s helpful to give the person who posts a lot the benefit of the doubt. Here are a few reasons why:

Grief expression is different for everyone, as is a person's relationship to social media. Some people feel far more comfortable sharing all of life's mundane details, so it makes sense they would treat grief the same. Ultimately, whether to share or not is up to them.
Attention-seeking gets a bad rap, but it usually comes from a place of having an unmet need. So, if a grieving person posts a lot, it may indicate they have a grief need that they want met -- like the need to feel seen, to be less alone, to share their loved one's memory, etc.
Many people don't get the grief support they need from their support systems IRL, so they turn to the Internet.

Now, there are a few exceptions where I wouldn't give the benefit of the doubt. I'll name two. First, if a person has ulterior motives and blatantly uses tragedy and loss to get more likes and followers — that stinks. Second, when the person posting is far removed from the loss but frequently posts details and reminders that might be difficult for the close family to see. It’s not that I don’t think a more distant connection can grieve, I just think it’s important to consider how the things we say and share can impact those living the loss on a second-to-second basis.

Read Eleanor’s work at What’s Your Grief.

An appeal…

I’m always looking for people to step up and join the Griever’s Digest family. Bare your soul to strangers. I promise, it’s fun! Seriously though, I’m interested in the grief journeys of others and want to hear yours. Drop me an email at jaredpaventi at gmail dot com.

Final thoughts on finality

"You don't exactly ‘get over it’, an offensive phrase under any circumstances, but the grief, in time, does turn into a nostalgic ache that is almost comforting."

- P.J. O'Rourke

Grief, Mourning, and the Myth of Closure

Separating grieving from mourning and thoughts from an expert on the grief experience, including why you may never find closure.

What’s Your Grief: A Q&A with Eleanor Haley

An appeal…

Final thoughts on finality

Discussion about this post