GRIEVING: CLOSING THE CIRCLE

The Concept of Closure in Grief and Mourning

Therapies for grief and loss have traditionally focused on reaching an endpoint, now popularly called closure. The word closure is therefore used to mean that a certain group of emotions or memories or thoughts have been resolved, that they have come together, and now form a coherent narrative. The fragmentation of both one's emotions and thoughts about the loss ends, and what once felt like a force continually pulling us back, can now be experienced with a sense of tranquillity and understanding. 

Although not quite a story of loss, the child’s bedtime story entitled Ten Bears in My Bed provides us with a simple to understand example of closure. The story sees a small boy come into his bedroom and find that there are ten bears in his bed. He is troubled and there is a look of displeasure on his face, but then he begins to order the bears out of his bed one by one. After all of the bears have left through the window, on the final page, the little boy is seen dreaming of all the bears happily playing with his toys. Closure is achieved because a series of sequences have come to an end, such as the numbers from 1 to 10 having being counted, the child getting sleepy after being awake, and the lights now being turned off. The more events find their rest, the greater the closure.

In life, however, grief is present when closure is not possible. A family member vanishes physically with no verification of whereabouts, a grandmother fades away psychologically from dementia, a close one dies but the circumstances and reasons remain hidden by family silence, secrecy, and lies, or finally a partner leaves us with little to no justification. Mystery persists with ambiguous separations, sometimes forever, and even across generations. People desperately search for meaning in the unrelenting confusion, the mind trying to make sense of the nonsensical. I know this personally in many ways as the suicide of my mother was shrouded in silence and lies, making my search for meaning excruciatingly long and painful. Sometimes the process can drive a person insane. The documentary Nostalgia for the Light weaves its narrative around this very subject, and is a highly recommend viewing. 

People wanted to call me a “widow” right after my husband disappeared; they psychologically resisted thinking of ambiguous loss as anything other than death. They would say, “Oh, Donna, just call yourself a widow. It will make your life easier and no one will know the difference”—except, of course, I was so mindful of the difference. To call myself a widow was diminishing my life experience. It was another way of tucking away what happened under cultural veneer.

Psychological closure is rarely completed with legal declarations of death. When someone we love disappears or dies, we reluctantly accept the legalities, but know in our hearts and minds that such clarifications do not bring complete psychological closure. Divorced people know this, adoptees know this, immigrants know this, and families of the missing know this.

Cultural and Historical Influences on Mourning

More important is understanding why so many yearn for closure though. In the context of the USA, a primary social answer to this question lies in the cultural legacy. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust calls the United States “a republic of suffering” (2008) and documents the 620,000 deaths plus a myriad of missing as a result of Civil War, genocide of the American Indians, the forced separation of slavery for African American families, and the forced uprooting of refugees seeking asylum from the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, and other countries where genocide and kidnappings continue today (Robins, 2010).

Given this messy history of loss, no wonder we deny death and insist on the tidiness of closure. Our historical legacy of unresolved grief and loss encourages us still to seek closure and an end to suffering (Boss and Carnes, 2012)

But as you might guess closure is also a naturally arising desire. Not having closure leaves us to interact with the world as if we were two or more polarized beings, unable to anchor our thoughts and emotions into a psychological account we can be confident exists. We become less able to attach to others and things, and thus deficient in our capacities to provide emotional security. Not having closure, is also at the root of many emotional disturbances such as de-personalisation, identity splits, depressive or neurotic states, and the deep sense of self-alienation that many grind through life with.

Having said this, the continuous use of the term closure among various professions perpetuates a kind of  myth that grief has always a demarcated end, and that it is emotionally healthier to close the door on grief than to live with it. Sometimes, and particularly in more religious regions of the world closure is not expected to occur. Certain societies establish precise timings to this process of closure, enforcing a socially accepted rhythm, through specific rituals, manners, artifacts, and appearances. Within the scope of tribal closely-knit societies these practices reinforce a sense of affiliation. Mourning the death of a husband by wearing black clothes for a year is an ending that is willfully maintained without closure, and that is publicly acknowledged and processed. The individual follows the instruction of the group, diluting his or her responsibility for griefing into the group itself, exorcising in some way the process and rendering it part of a social collective desire to overcome tragedy and loss.

The fact of termination and the sense of psychological closure have therefore been closely linked in history, but with the birth of loose-network societies, as opposed to closely-knit ones, this individuo-collective process has also become a lot more loose, and so perhaps also more difficult to achieve. 

Evolving Perspectives on Grief and Continuing Bonds

Given the vast cultural differences in how, where, and when to grieve, as well as the differences in types of loss, grieving should not be prescribed to end within a set period of time. With ambiguous losses, for example, the mourning process may necessarily continue or re-emerge now and then for years (as with loving someone who has dementia or someone walking out on a relationship without warning and further contact), or across generations (as with slavery, the Holocaust, and other disappearances of loved ones).

Right now, perhaps because of insurance providers, clinical professionals lean toward diagnoses of depression rather than grief. This allows the medical establishment to capitalise on a process they can neatly describe and pathologize. But receiving such diagnoses, for people who have lost someone erodes their resilience. And the existing rule of “getting over it” within 2–6 months is offensive, as the persons now think they have failed because, in their words, they are now also “sick.”

Having said this, in the counseling field, more recently there has been a renewed interest in the ways emotional connections with a significant deceased person are accommodated and transformed so that there is less a sense of an 'undoing' and more a sense of a 'continuing but changing relationship' (Klass, Silverman & Nickman, 1996). These ideas represent a challenge to previous notions of pathology in grief in which attempts to maintain bonds were seen as indicators of pathological grieving and mourning. 

What mourners and family members need, more than medication, is human connection, along with society’s empathy, compassion, patience, and a healthier acknowledgment of the process of change and death.

Wishing you Well,

Your Shrink in Bansko