Meditation and Grief

Caring for a Loved One with Dementia is subtitled “A Mindfulness-Based guide for Reducing Stress and Making the Best of Your Journey Together”.  I’ve begun meditating again – as I have several times in the past.  The author, Marguerite Manteu-Rao, notes that ”Mindfulness can help you not just with stress reduction, but also with providing the best care possible” (p. 15).  How?  Because it helps the carer 

• have “calm, centered presence”
• avoid being “limited by expectations or wishes
• inhabit “being” rather than being task driven
• respond  rather than react
• become aware of the other person
• become aware of the environment
• become attuned to different modes of communication

Meditation is also recommended for my tinnitus.  So I’ve downloaded an app (Insight Timer) and I’m also currently enrolled in an online Wisdom School that focuses on the Christian contemplative tradition and practices.  The course is created by Cynthia Bourgault, a prominent contemporary Christian Theologian working with Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation.  So I'm working at being more of a wise heart than a wise ass.

Photo by

Dingzeyu Li

As I noted in an earlier post, the author focuses on the importance of recognizing and grieving one’s losses and I’ve already offered two posts about the connective and supportive activities that are no longer part of our lives.  In my next post I’ll talk about a third issue.  But right here I want to continue with what Manteu-Rao says about types of grieving.

She divides the grieving into two types:  Intuitive and Instrumental.  

She notes that the intuitive “feel” their grief, experiencing it as waves of emotions.  They tend to be overt in sharing their feelings and run the risk of drowning in their emotions.  Her description made me think of Edgar Allen Poe’s poems about dead women (Lenore, Annabelle Lee, etc).

The instrumental are more intellectual and more likely to “do” their grief.  They tend to show grief by immersing themselves in tasks and projects.  They tend to be a bit more discreet about sharing their emotions.  This description made me think of the male leads in two favorite police procedurals – Inspector Robbie Lewis and Special Investigator Leroy Jethro Gibbs, both of whom buried their grief for their wives under increasing their work loads.

She notes, of course, that these differences aren’t digital but found along a continuum:  “Most often, dementia caregivers combine both modes” (p. 42).

Me?  I’ve done a lot of wailing.  To avoid my misery and numb my response to our circumstances I’ve slipped a few times into marijuana addiction and am currently in recovery once more.  I’ve also done a lot of cleaning up our packrat den-like house, throwing out stacks of saved New Yorkers and cleaning out a closet in which it seemed like he had every shirt he’d purchased since graduate school in the fifties.

 The practice of writing this blog would seem to be a combination of the intuitive and the instrumental:  here I am wailing publicly while doing the work of writing. I’ve even purchased a membership in a beautiful co- working space – The Haven – so that I can view the gift of the Deschutes River while I write about loss.