Grief

My dad died suddenly, four Thursdays ago, from a heart attack.   My dad could do anything.  He was ornery, difficult, argumentative, and when I was little, I thought, scary.  But he could do anything, and I was sure he would live forever.  I wrote an essay in elementary school about how amazing I thought my dad was.  There's a part of me that is still that kid.  I still can't quite believe he's gone.  My inner child and my adult self are having quite a go-round.

When I was little, in the backseat of the car, my dad would rest his right hand up on the back of the passenger side headrest, when he was driving.  I would sit in the middle of the back seat, scrunched between my sister and my brother, and I would stare at his hand, his arm.  I stared at it all the way from New York to Florida, once, and back again.  It was huge, thick, tanned, hairy.  His hand was covered with scars.  These hands built things, fixed things, they could do anything.  He was so strong.  How can he be gone? 

When I was little, I used to tense at the sound of my dad's big boots clomping down the hall.  I was afraid I'd done something wrong, forgotten to put wood in the stove, left his hammer in the woods, afraid he was going to yell at me.  In adolescence, I wrote angry poems about his boots.  When I saw his boots sitting in the closet two weeks ago, I couldn't believe it.   How can he be gone?

The last time I remember hugging my dad, he was wearing a blue short-sleeved button up shirt.  It was in the driveway.  He was really happy to see me.  He gave me his big bear hug. Being hugged by my dad as an adult was like disappearing for a moment into a big, warm, strong thing that smelled wonderful.  When I was little he smelled like cigarettes and beer, but in the last several years, he just smelled like himself.  I know that wasn't the last time I hugged him, but for some reason it's the last time I really remember.

A few years after I left home, I got pretty mad at him, and wrote him letters, gave him a piece of my mind.  He wrote back, tried to apologize in his own way.  But he didn't come to my wedding.  It was a pretty sad affair.  I keep waiting for my husband to ask me to renew our vows.  I keep thinking maybe, somehow, this time my dad will come, walk down the aisle with me.  But no.  He can't.

Three years after I got married, my parents came through town with their RV.  My dad held my baby daughter in his lap, with a big goofy smile. 

I used to come home every day after school, alone.  Later, my dad would get home.  He would just stand outside,  decompressing, staring at the pond, walking around the yard, looking at the flowerbeds, staring at the woods.  I would walk around inside the house, looking out the windows, watching him watching.  I loved my dad so much in those moments.  I wished I could reach him; I always wondered what he was thinking.  I loved the way he looked at the land.  He looked at growing things the same way my grandma used to, had the same way of walking around the garden, like he was visiting old friends.  I carry that in me. 

Two years ago, I visited my parents in Florida.  I couldn't quite put it together, this person without this piece of land to go with him.  They had an RV in a campground.  Who was my dad without the farm?  I couldn't quite put it together.

My mother told me that before he died, my dad desperately needed to go to the dentist, and to get his cataracts removed.  He wouldn't go; he was too anxious and scared.  How could my dad be scared of anything? Hearing, afterwards, how he declined, how he was in too much pain to do so many things, this in some ways is just as upsetting as his death.  How could this happen to my dad?

The thing is, despite all his flaws, my dad is still a superhero in my mind.  A cranky, difficult one, but still: a superhero.  Strong, smart, incredibly capable.  The thing is, if my dad could get old and weak, fall apart, and his heart give out-- if my dad could die, then... oh... there's no hope for any of us.

I mean, of course there isn't; we all have to go sometime-- but now, I believe it.  I mean, I can't believe it... but I do.  It's a sea change.

It's just so profoundly appalling.  A curtain lifted.  Now everything seems very fragile.  My mother, my beloved mother-and-father-in-law, my husband, my children, my sister's family, my nephew with a life-threatening heart condition, my brother (who's sure he's going to live forever,)  my friend whose hair is falling out, friends who will move away, my friend with breast cancer, my cats....me.... all living on borrowed time, slipping away.  I can't believe I'm going to lose people over and over again...or people are going to lose me... it's just appalling.

I'm filled with anticipatory grief for everyone and everything I love. 

Right now, I feel so shut down, like loving people is a recipe for disaster.  Right now, I think the pain of separating--however it happens, whomever goes first-- will be too wretched to bear.  The more I love, the worse it will be. 

What possible evolutionary purpose does this kind of grief serve?

EDIT:  Okay, I googled it.  This makes sense:

Evolutionary biologists think that grief is passed on not because it provides benefit in itself, but rather it is a side effect of having relationships. As anyone who every had separation anxiety as a kid — or who lost track of their parents at the beach — knows, our bodies produce stress hormones when we’re separated from our parents, and the only way for those bad feelings to go away is to come together again. This biological reaction to separation keeps us together because staying together provides an evolutionary benefit. Kids and their parents — the core relationship evolutionarily — rely on one another for protection and genetic proliferation respectively, and so being drawn together and kept together is advantageous.

In more social animals, such as humans, those reciprocal relationships extend beyond parent-child. Our siblings help us survive, as do our aunts, uncles and friends. And, when we are separated, our bodies send out alarm cries to bring us back together. But, after death, the two cannot be rejoined. I stressed out while my hormones pushed me to find Pat. But he isn’t coming back, compounding the stress. “Grief – in its most basic form – represents an alarm reaction set off by a deficit signal in the behavioural system underlying attachment,” writes psychology professor John Archer of the University of Central Lancashire in his book The Nature of Grief.

  ( From:  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/culturing-science/2011/11/11/the-evolution-of-grief-both-biological-and-cultural-in-the-21st-century/ )

I'm not exactly sure what this means: "Grief – in its most basic form – represents an alarm reaction set off by a deficit signal in the behavioural system underlying attachment," because I don't know how a behavioral system physically releases a deficit signal...probably something to do with cortisol and a cascade of hormones...  but the basic idea makes sense.

Here is another explanation I found, which seems pretty clear:

Here are two functions of grief, both of which strike me as highly adaptive.

1. To prevent the loss of a relative, or ally.
Relatives have your genes in them, and so should not be lightly lost, and allies help you spread your genes, and so too should be valued alive. If you know that you would feel grief if you were to lose a certain person, then you will avoid the pain of grief and so prevent their death if you can. A simple example is a mother, knowing that she would feel grief were one of her children run over by a car, who forbids her children to play in the street. She does not need to lose one child and actually experience the grief for this to be a motivation. She only has to be able to imagine how she would feel. This, in turn, I believe, is why people, especially nurturing types like mothers, enjoy sad stories. Nature has equipped them with a way to rehearse bad feelings in a harmless way, so that they are useful even if not experienced "for real" (see my theory on tragedy)

2. So that we instinctively show ourselves to be good allies.
In order that we may make and keep allies, it is good to show grief at the loss of one ally, so that others of our surviving allies see our grief, and thus learn what a true ally we are. If my best friend lost a close friend of his and just said "C'est la vie" and carried on as usual, I would get the impression that he probably didn't care much about me either, and so could not be relied upon were I to have a crisis. I would seek a better friend. Grief, being an involuntary emotion, forces us to show what good allies we can be. Humans cannot be relied upon to fake this sort of thing convincingly.
The emotion of grief evolved. We know this because we today are all capable of feeling it. It is in us, innate. No one teaches us how to feel grief. It has become a human universal because it is very useful. People of the past who felt no grief did not become our ancestors. They didn't look after their children, and they didn't forge strong alliances.
Of course, this knowledge doesn't make grieving people feel okay again. If it did, it would take away the value of the grief. Grief needs to hurt in order to work.

( From http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/evolve/grief.html )

Gordon Neufeld and Easy Parenting

Let me tell you where I'm coming from.  I was raised as a protestant, told in confirmation class that one of the important ways we were different from Catholics is that we might speak directly to god, with no intermediary.  I am no theologist; this is merely what I was told.  Culturally, this stuck.  I come from long, deep lines of farmers-- stalwart emigrants from England and Germany who were protestant, if not literally puritanical.  The cultural message I was raised with is this: what we do in this world, we will do ourselves.  We will overcome adversity by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and soldiering on. We will rely on our native abilities and sense alone. We will speak with god directly and independently.

Thus, I am a cultural protestant, and while life and experience have taught me the necessity of interdependency and the risks and rewards of vulnerability, I confess to you, oh Internet: I remain a protestant when it comes to parenting.

This is to say: gurus, philosophers, self-help books and parenting fads are deeply suspect to me.  The community I tend to surround myself with is made up of wildly independent, difficult people, who, like myself, are leery of bandwagons.  It upsets me to witness flocks of people gathering around a parenting ideology, quite possibly to the detriment of the real, actual child in their home.

Gordon Neufeld is revered around here. His book "Hold On To Your Kids" is regularly cited in homeschool circles.  Neufeld argues that children need to have their primary attachment be to their parents and not to their peers-- an excellent fit with homeschooling parents, and for all parents, perhaps.  That's not at all a bad argument, but he goes so much further than this.

I have read many times that Neufeld begins his talks with the stated goal of making children "easier to parent".  Let's be honest about this.  Making children easier to parent is a nice goal, I guess, but should that be the goal?  Not to make their lives more authentic or fulfilling-- but to make parenting easier?

Underneath all the parenting advice, there is a tacit message about what the perfect, healthy, "properly" attached child is like.  Cooperative, they look up to the parent with wondering eyes, palms spread wide, saying "Teach me, wise parent!  Fill me with your wisdom and show me the way with your example!"  In touch with her "Alpha Instincts,"  the mother leads her children forward confidently, with no argument or contrariness.  All the problems children have today with anxiety, arguing, contrariness, bullying, bossiness-- all can be traced to not being in "right relationship" with their authority figures.  Parents must be in touch with their "Alpha Instincts," and be confident enough in leading that children can feel safe enough to follow. Like magic, all will be well.

You can attend intensives and advanced training in "making sense of children."  You can listen to Neufeld earnestly discuss his ideas all you like.  There's even an Institute! 

"We cannot parent children whose hearts we do not have."  He says this repeatedly.  The idea is this: first you get the child to fall in love with you, to want to please you (this happens naturally in the properly attached child) and then you lead them confidently in the direction of their (your) dreams, like little ducks.

I disagree with this approach.  Some children tend to want to please, others do not.  That's natural variation.  It's not an inherently desirable or undesirable quality.  Why not meet the child wherever they are?  Why not have an authentic relationship that doesn't involve manipulating the child?   Instead of a natural tendency to want to please their parents, I think any person has a natural desire to get their needs met.  Maybe sometimes getting a need met (such as contribution, belonging, or acceptance) can look like pleasing. 

Neufeld talks about taking a year off to study all the attachment theory he could find, putting it all together-- that sounds to me like a fine intellectual exercise; he is clearly gifted in the realm of synthesizing ideas.  I understand.  It's fun to do!  But if one wants to help actual children, one would be better off just spending a year with actual children,  just paying attention.  Believe it or not,  your relationship with your child doesn't have to be based around power dynamics at all.   It's pretty clear that Neufeld isn't in this for the kids, though.  He's in it for the parents, and the parents want their kids to cooperate. 

Instead of treating your child like an ideological problem to be solved-- a heart to be won and manipulated into what someone else tells you is "right relationship"-- I suggest you stop.  Stop seeking cooperation, stop seeking easy parenting, stop seeking peace above all else, stop seeking control.  Begin the uncomfortable process of giving up control, of responding to your child's needs, even if they conflict with your desires.  Respond to the actual person in front of you, who has their own actual thoughts and feelings and schedule for "unfolding" that may not follow the expected  schedule, and respond genuinely, from the heart, without strategizing.  Take them seriously; don't assume you know better what your child needs than they do.  You don't.  Allow them to prove you wrong.  Instead of trying to get in touch with your "Alpha Instincts," try being your child's partner.  Try trusting them more.  If they have needs and opinions that differ from yours, it's okay; if conflict should arise, that's okay, too.  It is possible to work together to find solutions that meet everybody's needs to the greatest degree possible without trying to enact a particular power dynamic between parent and child.  Sometimes the best solutions for everyone turn out to be damn inconvenient for the parent.  Sometimes it isn't easy, and that's okay.

I'm not sure an obedient, "well-behaved" child is a particularly worthwhile goal.  I value authenticity, trust, honesty, clear thinking and communication skills far above cooperation.  It is very difficult, for instance, to be genuinely compassionate toward others without being able to think clearly.  Does our country really need more people who follow authority figures?  Why not nurture a generation of children who have well-developed critical thinking skills, who can question authority, who can connect with some of the independent spirit that makes America unique?  Why not nurture children to develop their own sense of self, instead of feeling safe under the umbrella of their "Alpha" authority figure?  Why not help them to feel safe walking beside us, as equals, but with different levels of experience?  It's a foreign thought for those of us who were the attachment mothers of babies, but maybe attachment theory isn't really all that useful after the first few years of life.  Perhaps there is a natural transition in the years between "school-age" and adulthood, from dependency to partnership.

I really find Neufeld's stance unfortunate.  As far as I can tell, it encourages manipulation for the sake of convenience.   Perhaps it's helped some families stop being so mean to each other, and that's really good.  I'm glad.  But instead of working through the fog of ideology and massive amounts of theory, families would be better off communicating directly, taking one another quite seriously, even if some of the people involved are mere children.

The most popular parenting approaches tend to be about ways to control children, masked as compassion.  It can be very alluring; Neufeld is just the most recent iteration.  I support the idea of working towards co-existence, rather than control.  My role with my children is not that of a leader; my role is that of a more experienced tour guide, resource, and passionate advocate.

If you are a recovering control freak, like me, you might try reading something by John Holt, who was not at all interested in control.  You may find yourself less focused on controlling your kids, and more curious about them, and what you can learn together.