AGING IS AN ART: It’s Your Choice

The older we get, the more meaningful and significant the opportunities and inherent power of being able to choose become. I have found that the loss of a loved one challenges the very nature of my capacity to choose.

Miriam-Webster defines choice as, “the act of picking or deciding between two or more possibilities.” Another more emotionally moving definition: “the opportunity or power to choose between two or more possibilities: the opportunity or power to make a decision.”

Since my wife Janet’s death some six months ago, and now as I am approaching my 80th birthday, living alone is one of a myriad of changes I face, changes that feel like I have had no “opportunity or power” to make. Janet’s death has meant the “death of choice” for me.

Those of us mourning and grieving a lost partner have the cognitive ability to understand that the power and opportunity to choose will slowly return — cognitive understanding, yes, but emotional understanding might take a bit longer. We know there will come a time when we must confront that living alone might be a choice, that eating our evening meals accompanied only by iPads or TV will be a choice, that avoiding larger groups of people and often not wanting to do anything or go anywhere will be a choice.

We understand (cognitively) that at some point in the not-too distant future, these somewhat self-destructive behaviors will be made by choice, and that we must own the consequences. They will no longer be part of some highly misunderstood grieving process.

But what we may not have the ability to understand (emotionally or cognitively) is that once we are again able to connect with the opportunity and the power of choice, it may trigger the grieving and mourning process that made choosing difficult to begin with.

Choices require giving up and letting go of other alternatives. Real choice comes with real loss, and real loss may come with intense sadness, anger and fatigue, otherwise known as grieving.

Our mourning behaviors and rituals need to account for this non-linear nature of grieving. As strength and energy return for decision-making, let us not be surprised if making choices triggers new intense episodes of grief.

For those of us grieving the loss of a loved one, self-compassion that includes this emotional awareness is a desirable, if not a necessary, choice.

John Heckel, Ph.D., is a retired HSU theatre and film professor with a doctorate in psychology. After a lengthy illness, his wife, Janet Patterson, died on Dec. 15.

Contact: jh2@humboldt.edu.