Film explores bafflement around ‘normal, natural’ process of grief
It’s sad that we still need a film called “Speaking Grief ” in this day and age of rampant death. But need it we do. As this moving American Public Television documentary makes abundantly clear, grief, despite its universal inevitability, has a way of baffling even the most well-meaning.
“People didn’t know how to deal with me,” says Asia, a Houston native featured in the film whose mother, Rose, died in a car accident in 2006. “People didn’t know how to talk to me anymore.”
I can relate to a lot of “Speaking Grief,” which streams on Facebook at 7 p.m. today, followed by a live Q&A. I recently lost my girlfriend, Kate, to a degenerative brain disease.
So much of the film rings true: the anger underlying the sadness; the feeling that you’ve lost a limb; the friends who don’t know what to say. It’s not really their fault. They’re the products of a society that never figured out what to do with the rippling effects of loss. Or, as the film’s narrator puts it bluntly, “We need to get better at grief.”
To that end, “Speaking Grief ”
rests on the collective shoulders of a wide array of grievers. Here’s Steve, whose son, Nathan, was killed in a car accident: “You almost expect that the world is going to take a timeout for you.”
I vividly remember this sensation, which started for me as soon as Kate got her diagnosis. How could people possibly still be going to work and laughing and talking about new TV shows?
Grief is like living in a torture chamber of suspended animation. You assume it will never end, and in a sense it doesn’t. Ideally, you learn to walk through it and get used to it.
While the grievers do much of the heavy lifting in “Speaking Grief,” a formidable roster of experts makes their passion for the subject clear. These include Megan Devine, author of “It’s OK That You’re Not OK,” whose partner, Matt, drowned in a river accident. Devine isn’t here to talk about that, but she speaks with the authority of experience.
She puts the lie to the idea that one is supposed to be done grieving after six months: “You’re not even out of the initial fog at six months.”
She addresses those who don’t know what to say so don’t say anything at all: “Saying nothing is a terrible thing to do to a grieving person.” And, most poetically: “It’s part of being alive. It’s part of being human.”
“Grief is a normal, natural response to loss,” Frank Ostaseski writes in his book “The Five Invitations.” “It is also natural to want to avoid it completely.” Natural, and impossible. Where there is death, there is grief. We’ll never do away with death. So it is wise to learn how to better speak grief. This film makes a powerful case for doing just that.