SOLACE: Soul + Grief
This podcast is sponsored by SOULPLUSGRACE serving the San José area, offering grief support and grief journeying with spirituality. I hope to help you travel through grief with God at your side.
"I am a trained Spiritual Director for those who seek to complete the 19th Annotation of St. Igantius’ spiritual exercises OR seek spiritual direction while grieving. I have also worked as a hospital/cemetery chaplain and grief doula. I believe all paths lead to God and that all traditions are due respect and honour. I take my sacred inspiration from all of my patients and companions–past, present and future; the Dalai Lama, James Tissot, St. John of the Cross, the Buddha, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and, of course, Íñigo who became known as St. Ignatius. I utilize art, poetry, music, aromatherapy, yoga, lectio divina, prayer and meditation in my self-work and work with others. I believe in creating a sacred space for listening; even in the most incongruous of surroundings."
BACKGROUND
- Jesuit Retreat Center, Los Altos, CA -- Pierre Favre Program, 3 year training to give the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius
- Centro de Espiritualidad de Loyola, Spain -- The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola -- 30 Day Silent Retreat/
- Center for Loss & Life Transition – Comprehensive Bereavement Skills Training (30 hrs) Ft. Collins, CO
- California State University Institute for Palliative Care--Palliative Care Chaplaincy Specialty Cert. (90 hrs)
- Sequoia Hospital, Redwood City, CA -- Clinical Pastoral Education
- 19th Annotation with Fumiaki Tosu, San Jose, CA, Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
- Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA M.A. – Pastoral Ministries
CONTACT ME: candeelucas@soulplusgrace.com with questions to be answered in future episodes.
SOLACE: Soul + Grief
Into Darkness: Suicide and Grief
CAUTION: TODAY'S EPISODE DISCUSSES SUICIDE, PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND SKIP TODAY IF THE SUBJECT SEEMS TOO INTENSE.
Today, we explore the concept of "self-death" as an alternative term for suicide, reflecting onmy recent experiences supporting those grieving after suicide. The topic emerges from a week filled with suicide-related grief conversations and the loss of a work colleague, leading to deeper questions about how we support survivors and understand this form of loss.
• Unlike other losses, suicide involves someone taking themselves away rather than being "taken"
• The belief that God embraces those who die by suicide without judgment or limits
• Survivors of suicide loss often report having no safe place to discuss their grief
• The metaphor of "dismemberment" helps frame how suicide severs connections with loved ones
• Modern medicine has blurred the line between life and death, complicating our understanding and empathy
• Certainty lies only in divine love; everything else remains complicated and nuanced
Remember I'm always available for spiritual direction by Zoom to those who are grieving.
Listen every Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music for spiritual direction, art, and workshops shared through Santa Clara University, https://events.scu.edu/markey-center/event/344943-spiritual-accompaniment
You can reach us at: candeelucas@soulplusgrace.com.
SPIRITUAL DIRECTION WHILE GRIEVING IS AVAILABLE
Art: https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
and https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6
Music and sound effects today by: via Pixabay
Welcome back to Solace: Soul + Grief. I'm Candee Lucas, your grief chaplain. We understand that the loss of a loved one can be especially wounding and calls for support. When we started this podcast, that was our goal and aim and we seek to continue to do that. Remember you're always welcome in our circle of healing, love and support. . A caution about today's episode. It deals with suicide and you may find that the topic is too uncomfortable for you, so I urge caution while listening.
Chaplain Candee:I wanted to share a piece today that I found in my notes from the past.
Chaplain Candee:Dismembered. so
Chaplain Candee:So. It has been a week ..
Chaplain Candee:A work associate committed an act of self-death. I think I made that word up, but I was getting bombarded with people's grief about suicides and that word seemed too harsh for that act. Suicide" and that word seemed too harsh for that act seems absent of any compassion for the person choosing self-death. Of course it was bound to come up in my grief group but all of a sudden we had two or three folks where before we had had none. Then in Death Cafe, where the manner of people's deaths rarely comes up, had two or three more. Then this colleague walks in front of a commuter train very near my home ten days ago.
Chaplain Candee:While it seems that all death has a sense of dismembering about it, cast as they are from their dear ones, this "dismembering seems especially harsh. Unlike an illness, it rarely has an ounce of pre-grief about it. So part of the reaction seems to be bound up in the shock both of the event itself and the loss of the person. It gives lie to the sentiment that this person was taken from us. No, this person took themselves. This person took themselves. I wonder where God is in this. I know he is determinedly in the moment with them all waiting, with his arms wide open, holding them in his sweet embrace. But that does nothing to dispel the darkness we experience when imagining what that person was or had to be thinking about just before. I know the church gives a technical overview of a person not being in their right mind or having a mental illness to cover the sin aspect, but I don't believe this is enough for the living to do honor to those who make this choice. That's why the idea of the person committing the self-death as one who takes their own dismemberment in hand seems right to me. I will dismember my life from yours, from the world, from God, if he wishes, I will blink. First O death, first O death.
Chaplain Candee:When I have had to offer up words to mourners of those who dismember, I have repeated that belief of mine that they were with God in a most intimate way in the very moment of their death, not abandoned at all but embraced warmly. I am not sure those words were of any solace to those who remained.
Chaplain Candee:I have been going over in my mind trying to reflect on the way I listened to each of those stories. I was at first, on one level, fascinated, as if this would somehow color my response. I realized I should have been focused on how the person telling the story was reacting, how they were telling the story, what was their affect? Body language. These all happened in a group setting and in that setting I just let people talk as much as they want. They almost, to a person, reported that they are unable to talk about the event to friends or loved ones. Giving them a place and a space to do that seems vitally important. But what place do I go with them next? Do you want to tell the story over and over again until it loses some of its power? Is that even possible.
Chaplain Candee:I have long believed that people with terminal illnesses should be able to reject treatments that unnecessarily prolong technical living. When my own mother was dying of cancer, I know I would have found the drugs necessary to help her die had she asked that of me, but she didn't. M uch like the debate on abortion, medical science has intervened to make things possible that not only were not possible before, but highly unlikely. Babies born as early as 22 weeks have survived and people have lived to 119 years. Each and every day in this country, elderly people with two or more chronic diseases are admitted to ICUs to support a heart or some lungs, until the point where one or more of the chronic diseases will overwhelm the body and there can be no further retreat from death. The temporal physical body, as it shuts down --organ system by organ system--, isn't dead until its brain function ceases. Do our souls lie in our brain tissue, in our hearts? So, hearing about various deaths; sitting through ethics consults and rehashes with hospital ethics committee; that line of death seems less and less sharp, more like the weaving of two edges together, giving way string by string until there is a rupture, yes, but the entire thing does not unravel simultaneously, nor even on a rigid schedule, just over a period of time that may last (who knows how many minutes, hours or days)?
Chaplain Candee:I think I have to understand more than this self-death to be of service to anyone, I want to be of real comfort to those who suffer this type of loss. I want them to be assured their loved one is in the warm, loving embrace of one who loves without limits or judgment. This work colleague of mine had two teenage children. All indications are she was utterly devoted to them and I thought of them the morning I heard the news, knowing they were waking up to the darkest day they will ever have to live in their lives. How could their mother dismember them like this?
Chaplain Candee:I think some darkness sucked her under, a darkness she had no resistance to. That had nothing to do with her children or her God. We live complicated, nuanced lives in fraught times. Others cannot always support us through the harrows, through the harrows that haunt our minds, some dark imaginings. I am certain she is with God now and He is comforting her. That is the end of my certainty.
Chaplain Candee:That concludes another episode. You can find us every Friday on Amazon, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I'm always available for spiritual direction while grieving over Zoom, Please contact me at the email in the show notes. Remember be safe; travel with God. Vaya con Dios.
