Nick Cave is an Australian singer-songwriter, actor, novelist, and screenwriter who played a prominent role in the postpunk movement as front man for the bands the Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds. He is also the author of the blog, The Red Cave.

Someone recently wrote to him, asking how he deals with the loss of his son, who died from a fall during an LSD episode. Cave’s response gives light to how he survived the loss: he allowed his son to help.  

This year’s holiday season is difficult to celebrate without physical contact with friends and family, but especially hard for a person whose heart has been broken by a loved one’s death.

On Being this week features Pauline Boss, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss, Loving Someone Who Has Dementia, and Ambiguous Loss.

You can read the transcript or listen to Krista Tippett and Pauline on the podcast. I urge you to do one or the other. It will help you better understand yourself, and when isn’t that a good thing?

>Read Transcript

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On Being: The Myth of Closure

There is no such thing as closure. In fact, Pauline Boss says, the idea of closure leads us astray. It’s a myth we need to put aside, like the idea we’ve accepted that grief has five linear stages and we come out the other side done with it. She coined the term “ambiguous loss,” creating a new field in family therapy and psychology. She has wisdom for the complicated griefs and losses in all of our lives and for how we best approach the losses of others.

Aksel Holland, age 17, died on April 10, 2018. Everyone who knew Aksel talks about how warm, loving, and intelligent he was.

His poem sets the bar for all of us.

How it really is

It’s not tragic
It’s not your disease to pity
It’s not something for you to feel lucky
that you don’t have to deal with

It’s an illness. disgusting
It takes people and changes them
Ugly shadows of what they could have been
had their mind not revolted

You sing praises for those who can function
Those who shower, work, talk
And condemn the ones who need help the most
“Look at that crazy homeless man”

If I yell at the air, you draw back
If she bleeds from her arms you recoil. gross.
If he can’t get out of bed, he’s lazy
Illness is only valid when it’s ‘normal’

The only tragedy you are allowed to mourn
the only moment not reserved for us
is the loss of a soul, a life
that couldn’t stay above the current

Do not look at me with pity
do not look at me with disdain
I am just as human, just as real
as you, and I need your help

I am not the storm
We are not who you think
We are fighters, warriors against everything
that you refuse to see

 

A couple of months ago I read an article on the Book of Life website entitled, “Asking for Help.”  http://www.thebookoflife.org/on-asking-for-help/

It hit home.

Why?

I have a passion for art so every Sunday I look forward to reading Eric Rhoads’s blog, Sunday Coffee. Eric is a painter, who was once in radio and now owns the publishing company that markets Fine Art Connoisseur and PleinAir Magazines.

Recently Eric wrote about his trip to Portland to see Sean, a friend who had suffered a stroke. As he prepares for his trip, he moves through all of the questions we all ask ourselves when we know we are going to face a person who has little time to live.

Here are the highlights of Eric’s post, When Moments Matter.

I think there might be something special about Sheryl Sandberg. More than just the fact that she presents well and functions on little sleep.

If you don’t know Sheryl, she is COO of Facebook, known for her cutting edge book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, and having the unfortunate first hand life-doesn’t-behave-as-expected experience of becoming a young widow. With the death of Dave, she deserved privacy, but was given little. Subsequently she co-authored Option B with Adam Grant, addressing how to be resilient in face of loss.

If you don’t remember her from the above, possibly you will remember her recently fielding questions before a Congressional hearing regarding Facebook’s responsibility in Russian interference in the last presidential election. She was no fool: she didn’t serve FB up on a platter, and yet she openly addressed Facebook’s responsibility to society.

All of it impressive.

But that’s not what I am talking about when I say I think there is something special about Sheryl Sandberg.