Twelve years ago, I received a call from my closest life-long friends. I had just finished my theological education, but was still immersed in the real world of clinical medicine.

Their 28-year-old son, a graduate student in molecular biology who was named after me, was found dead in his apartment. He died of an allergic reaction to a prescription arthritis medication.

My first act as an ordained minister was to preach at the funeral of a young man whom I had held as an infant.

I realized quickly how unprepared I was for the task. His parents and I experienced a grief unlike any I had ever known.

We all had lost parents, but that seemed part of the natural order of things and part of a common cycle of life and death. But the senselessness and injustice of the death of a child or young adult is not part of our understanding. Children are not supposed to die before their parents.

Of all the things that affect human lives and their journey to healing and wellness, grief is one of the most important and least understood. And it can drown even the strongest of humans.

We all experience grief at some stage in our lives. The loss of a child is particularly tragic. Studies have shown that surviving parents have much higher than normal incidences of suicides, depression and divorce.

Medical illnesses for the survivors often arise, and with limited psychological and spiritual resources, often take their toll. It seems grief, even when theologically grounded, upsets our biological, psychological and spiritual equilibrium. 

A father’s lament

Nicholas Wolterstorff is a Yale Divinity professor and the author of a book called “Lament for a Son.” It was written about his son who died in a mountain-climbing accident.

He doesn’t sugarcoat his rage, his questions for God, his sense of alienation and suffering.

He wrote:

“Death is the great leveler, so our writers have always told us.  Of course, they are right. But they have neglected to mention the uniqueness of each death — and the solitude of suffering which accompanies that uniqueness. ‘I know how you are feeling,’ we hear. But we don’t.”

There lies the rub. No amount of language, theology or intimacy can prepare us for the kind of suffering that can devastate the best of humans.

I hear words at the bedside to the effect of, “Well, God just needed your son with him in heaven.”

Words like these cut deep and wound suffering parents, and rarely provide the comfort they were surely intended to bring. My own feeling is that God does not ever cause human suffering.  He allows it as a part of our freedom, and it is an inescapable part of our destiny. 

So the question for those in the world of health care is this:  How do we deal with our patients’ grief in our lives as clinicians?

Do we leave the problems to the professionals — the pastors, rabbis, and grief counselors?

That is what we have tended to do in medicine — delegate responsibility to an ever-more fragmented system. But another option that any wise spiritual leader would tell us is to acknowledge the patients’ suffering.

Let them know you are aware of their burden and respect the pain it is causing them.

Do not sugarcoat it with pious platitudes. Do not gloss it over. Do not prescribe medication unnecessarily.

Allow the patient to explore their own wounds and suffering and the impact it has on their bodies and spirits.

When patients are given the freedom to feel their anger, doubts and grief then the real healing will have begun. 

Michael Attas is a local doctor, a medical humanities professor and an Episcopal priest. E-mail him at Michael_Attas@baylor.edu.