You only bury your mother once

So thankfully my mother is still alive and doing well, so is her mother so I have good genes on my maternal side at least for a long life.

The title was taken from a comment I heard on talk back radio and a women was relaying how incredibly hard it was for her and presumably most of us when we face that event. She talked of the absolute grief that overwhelmed her and said that two years down the road she felt she was still recovering. She observed at one point that she didn't know how to handle this event because "you only bury your mother once" Now having said that my mother is still alive I like most of us have still faced the death of a loved one and I am sure we can all understand how this lady was feeling.

The host of the radio program went on to observe that "rationally we all know that the person in the box doesn't want us to be sad but at times like this we don't really think rationally" Again I think this is a sentiment that we can all get on board with. Certainly if I was "in the box" I would not want people to be distraught with grief and certainly not for two years afterwards, especially if they were one of the people I loved in life. (OK so there is a small part of our ego who would like people to miss us a bit when we are gone as it validates our time on earth but other than that.)

So the two comments combined lead me to think about practicing being rational because you "only bury your mother once" and so in preparation for that event I wondered if it is important that we practice not letting our emotions overwhelm us and with some practice in the bank this might help us a bit when we face very difficult emotional moments. I am not crazy enough to think we can just rationalise away grief but it should help to realise that our loved one would still want us to be happy, if we remember that and believe it.

We all know that we can find ourselves saying things that we later regret, normally because we were angry or some other emotion has taken control of our tounges. Or that we react to situations and feel foolish later "in the cold light of day" etc. These are all opportunities to try and involve your rational self and put in some practice to help you through the tough times, not to mention the benefits of not having to deal with the aftermath of some ill advised comment made in anger.

The extreme version of this may well be found in the death of Seneca and event that has been much written about and is the subject of a number of famous art works. Seneca at one time was tutor to Nero (famously the emporer who fiddled while Rome burned or perhaps more relevant to this topic had his mother executed)Nero ordered Seneca to kill himself as he suspected him (probably wrongly) of being involved in a plot to kill him. Seneca was a student of Stoic philosophy which helped him meet his fate with calm resolution. This made him the poster child for Stoicism and gives rise to the label of stoic that we sometimes give to "stiff upper lip" types. In a sentance Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions.

So I am not suggesting we all adopt Stoicism but I do think that there is some good in the idea that the rational can help with some of those "destructive emotions" such as fear, anger, depression etc and may help us with our grief when the time comes, as it will, for all of us.