The Winchester Mystery House

Up in San Jose is an interesting tourist attraction called the Winchester Mystery House, the residence of Sarah Winchester, widow of William Winchester of the infamous Winchester rifle company.

The Winchester Mystery House is the result of a bizarre reaction to the deaths of Sarah's daughter and husband. She was told by a medium that her loved ones had been murdered by spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles and that if she built and continually worked on this house, she could avoid her own death. So she worked on it for 38 years--doing all she could to trick the spirits from finding her like building a staircase leading to a closed ceiling or a door high near the top of an external wall where there is no opening.

When I saw this my response was, "Wow--this is unresolved grief gone wild." This notion arose due to my own experience of grief during my father's illness and after his death. The grief was so intense I could barely move, and the pain was completely unyielding. I had never encountered anything quite like it. In my search for relief I picked up the book The Grief Recovery Handbook. It was most illuminating.

The book indicates there are countless grief experiences we have all our lives of varying degrees due to loss being a natural part of life. The problem is that our society doesn't teach us how to handle the grief, and so we do what we can to run from it. We think when we are feeling better that we have gotten over it, but it is more the case that we have buried it. As we continue on in our lives, the losses continue and the unresolved grief mounts. For some people there comes a point when they simply do not have the strength to run anymore, and so they finally break down or get a severe illness or injury that forces them to finally stop their running.

The book describes the misleading advice our well-meaning loved ones and friends give to deal with grief, but the advice that I see most often given noted in the book is "keep busy." While it is good to get out and have moderate activity, some wallowing is a part of what needs to happen. Grief is a shock to the system, and the system needs some rest to process what has occurred. It's like you have a mental map of reality, and it's suddenly shattered because an integral piece of that map is gone. From that moment on you must come to terms with the disorientation of having a mental map that no longer mirrors reality. Life then becomes about creating a new mental map in sync with the new reality.

It is a deeply intense kind of work and takes a toll on your whole system. The book suggests that often people do as advised and stay busy only to find themselves exhausted and suffering from adrenal burn-out. Some people find their immune system begins to deteriorate, and they get sick often or develop some chronic illness. You really cannot bypass grief by staying busy. It will eventually catch up with you one way or the other.

Time and again I bring up the frantic busyness of our culture--and I think it is part and parcel to how we deal with grief. For each time a loss occurs, then we have to get that much busier to stay ahead of it. Imagine doing that with all the losses that will occur over a lifespan. At some point we make sure there is no free moment in the day. If any ounce of grief begins to surface, we simply take on a new project. It is not a sustainable way to live--but it also makes for a very surface type of existence. Our life becomes about running rather than living. We cannot enjoy the depth of a quiet moment for fear of that pain rising up. Our relationships too become shallow to skirt any topic that might bring forth the horrible hurt. The medium who advised Sarah Winchester was telling her to stay busy or she would die. This advice was not all that far from the truth, because in a way dealing with grief is tantamount to experiencing one's own death.

Many nights ago while I was up in the wee hours of the morning, a grief surfaced from a very old loss. I could feel the pain--remembering it almost just as it was happening. I knew then it was that particular pain that began to close down my heart and set me on my path of despair. The feeling of that loss was something I had blocked all my life, but suddenly I felt it very clearly. It wasn't anything as traumatic as the horrible things we hear in the news, but the depth of the hurt took its toll.

As I lied there reexperiencing that hurt, it was so excruciating that I wanted to die. It is said that if a pain cannot be tolerated at the time of the loss, the memory of it will be suppressed for the sake of survival. If healing is to occur, the memory will surface at a later date when an organism is strong enough to handle it. I guess I was strong enough to handle it, because there it was. Let me tell you, such grief is not for the faint of heart.

As I lay there, I begged to have it stop. I couldn't take much more of it, and then I went back to sleep. Hours later I awoke and the most interesting thing occurred. I could literally feel this light running through me--and my mind was completely quiet and in total peace. I call that experience Grace, but those who are not religiously-inclined might call it an endorphin rush after reaching a pain threshold. Whatever it was--it was beautiful.

When I think of the pain I endured the other night, I can well understand why we run the way we do. Who has the strength to face that? Who would want to? I know I hated it. It was horrible, and yet I have no choice anymore. I have no choice, because Grace is calling the shots. The end result, I am hoping, is no longer having to run--but to surrender to what was--and begin to fully embrace what is. You cannot do that when you feel that grief is hiding behind every bush ready to pounce on you.

We all are doing the best we can with our grief. One way or the other it will have to be dealt with. Often it happens at the end of our lives. In my training in hospice I was told of a spiritual pain that comes near the end as we wrestle to resolve that which has remained unresolved. Having seen my patient go through that, I can tell you the pain of it is often worse than the patient's terminal illness, but the nature of our inherent healing process requires resolution. Near-death experiencers report back that they go through a life-review, so apparently even folks who undergo sudden, unexpected death still cannot avoid this resolution process.

And so we go on with our lives with much buried until the time is ripe for our healing process to take over and force us to face the unresolved. It may be at the end of life or prior to the end, but it will happen. Until that time we only know to do what our friends and family instruct us--to run from death by building our own versions of the Winchester Mystery House.