My in-laws are Mormons and Presbyterians. They're conservative. My father went to a liberal Christian church, an Episcopalian church with a welcoming congregation. He - and his congregation - were liberal.
My father was a church musician first, but he died a believer. He died believing he would go to heaven.
I'm an atheist. I live my life as a scientific rationalist, and I don't get on well with religion, spirituality, or any of the things I think of as "woo-woo stuff." I bristle when the cafeteria lady at school tells me to "have a blessed day" or even when someone says "God bless you!" when I sneeze. When I die, I know where I'm going - into a crematorium so that my loved ones can scatter my ashes to the wind off a mountaintop in Colorado.
Surprisingly, my father, despite his deep religiosity, never pressured me to believe something I couldn't believe. He understood that I was an atheist. Most other people in my father's life, however, did not. I want to talk about some of the things I had to deal with in the weeks and months before and after my dad's passing. Many times, it was something someone said; occasionally, it was something someone did. Almost always, these things were done with the automatic assumption that I believed in a god, an afterlife, or both.
When people die, it's hard to know what to say to the survivors. Over time, social conventions have come into place to work as conversational crutches, or placeholders, so that the awkwardness of the moment is minimized. Things like "It was God's will." Or "He's with the angels now." Or "She's in a better place." And these things comfort those who say them and sometimes even those who hear them, and it minimizes the "what do I say?" anxiety for everyone.
The problem is, for an atheist like me, these phrases are just platitudes. They may comfort believers, but for me and other atheists, they just twist the knife deeper.
In the week before my father died, I was pressured into participating in a religious ceremony and pretending to believe in something that I don't believe in. My father's priest was oblivious to the fact that I am not religious, even after I told him "I'm not a believer." He still expected me to participate in reading prayers and Bible verses. What this did, in the confines of my father's hospice sickroom, was mark me as someone who was making trouble at my father's deathbed. I have no idea what my father thought about it because I was not about to confront a dying man about the pressure I experienced, and the priest wasn't getting it no matter what I did. But it set me apart from my brothers and their wives - who don't go to church either but, apparently, believe - and my aunt, and it made what could have been a very important family gathering at Dad's bedside into a nightmare for me. In a place that was supposed to bring me closer to my family and my father in his extremis, my needs were not being respected. Instead, I was being pressured to be religious or at least fake religiosity. It added to my pain, rather than alleviating it.
On Easter, the first family holiday without my father, we went to my in-laws' house. I have told my mother-in-law more than once that I'm an atheist and that I don't believe in any kind of afterlife. However, upon finding out that I was still missing my Dad pretty badly (it was the first family holiday without him, go figure!) she took it upon herself to tell me that I should change my mind about the existence of a god and an afterlife, because I would feel better - as if it were that simple, to just suddenly start believing in something the existence of which I have no evidence for. Fortunately my husband saw my face and got me out of his parents' house before I blew my top. Again, this incident added to my pain. Worse, it trivialized it.
At the funeral, there were a number of painful moments for me that had nothing to do with Dad and everything to do with religious pressure. For starters, his funeral was an Episcopalian mass - so I had to listen to the priest babble on about how everything good about my father was because of his faith in God. Once again, I bristled - which made it impossible for me to feel connected to my father or anyone else during the service. I spent most of it with gritted teeth, enduring rather than participating, waiting for it to be over so I could leave. And then at the post-ceremony get-together, I had people taking my hand and telling me how my father was with the angels, how he was in a better place now, how he was taken so that he wouldn't suffer, and it was all I could do not to scream. Once again, my pain was increased, not alleviated. The platitudes weren't for me. They were for the people speaking, so that they could say the "right" thing and go on thinking they'd done something positive.
These are the things that make me cry when I think about my father's passing. Yes, I miss him terribly, and I have cried a couple of times over that part of the loss, but mostly what's made me cry is people using his death to tell me how I should think about the world. What's made me cry is that the platitudes assume a belief and a context that I don't share - and insinuate that I'm a bad person for not sharing it. They make me an outsider at something I should have been part of.
The platitudes don't help. And in some ways they hurt me more. Being told "he's in a better place" makes me think "No, he's not. He's dead. He's been cremated. His ashes are sitting in little containers. How is that a better place?" Being told "it was God's will" makes me hate both any god that would will this and anyone who would simply accept it. Being told "he's with the angels now" makes me laugh bitterly, because I don't believe in angels any more than I believe in God. And so forth.
Even being told "he was taken so he wouldn't suffer" infuriates me. He suffered plenty. He died of gangrene brought on by chemotherapy to try to stop the cancer that his doctors overlooked when something could have been done about it. Don't tell me he died so that he wouldn't suffer anymore. He suffered plenty.
People have asked me how I'm dealing with my grief, if I don't believe in God. As if there was no way to grieve if you're not religious. And when I try to explain, I get a puzzled look and then either a headshake or another challenge to my atheism - usually an offensive one like my mother-in-law's little Easter salvo.
Do I mean this diary as an attack on religious people, on believers? No. I'm just asking for understanding - that although religion may comfort the religious, it doesn't help those of us who aren't.
This is how I deal with my grief:
This past Friday, which was the fifth-month anniversary of my father's death, I turned into a raving, depressed jackass and got in a fight with my husband and was generally not fun to be around. I was not dealing well at all. When it occurred to me that I was grieving again, it shocked me. Aren't I a pragmatist, a rationalist? Don't I reject religion and all that woo-woo spirituality stuff? Why was I still grieving five months later? I thought I'd managed it, dealt with it. And yet, here it was again, popping up to derail me from getting my work done and my life in order so I could go on with the things I needed to do.
After about twenty-four hours of this nonsense, I gave in and let myself cry on Saturday. I apologized to my husband for being a raving jackass. He said "Babe, your father died. It's totally understandable."
He didn't tell me "he's with the angels now," or "he's in a better place." He just acknowledged that I was hurting and gave me the reason why.
As an atheist, that's how I handle my grief. I handle it with reason and with simple blunt acknowledgment of what hurts.
And as a result, I understand why I'm hurting, and that understanding helps tremendously. But I don't understand a lot of other things. I don't understand how I've gone on with my life when my father's dead. I don't understand how he could have died so early. He was only 63. Death is natural, but in my mind, early death is not. And I don't understand how anyone can believe in a loving god, or any god, when things like this happen to people like my father.
Unlike the believer, I don't have any handy platitudes to fall back on. I wish I could believe in an afterlife, but I can't.
And the platitudes make me feel like, by not believing, I'm killing my father all over again.
Because of that, they harm me.
First, do no harm. I wish more people would understand that simple concept.
A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
My husband and I have to go get dinner, but I'll be back in about two hours. If someone from the GR group can host until then, I'd appreciate it. (Timing is everything.) - KoSC