Digg is usually a place where people post links to things they’ve found on the web, and so it’s a place that naturally falls into my daily blogcrawl. This morning, though, I came across this post which isn’t a link anywhere but is instead a self-comment by a Digg user whose 2-day-old newborn son has just died. He and his wife are atheists, and as they start the unenviable task of deciding what to do and say at a memorial service for the baby they anticipated so much, he’s trying to come up with something to say at the service, given that most of the people in their families are religious. He is frank about the pain that they feel every time some thoughtless believer tells them that the baby is “with Jesus” or “gone to heaven”, or that his death was “God’s will”. He is obviously trying to get the other people in his life to understand his (and his wife’s) worldview while still trying to come to terms with the loss, and I think he’s done pretty well. This is how he concludes, and I think it’s emblematic of the whole thing:
Comfort does NOT have to come from refusing to accept death as the end. The notion of some sort of Supernatural pre-determined written plan of loved ones life is an easy way to accept and cope with the loss of a loved one. To me hearing such things are insulting to my intelligence, science, and are best suited for fairy tales with happy endings. There is no God who would take a two day old life because there is a some sort of plan or some divine will.
I’ve come to realize that grief is an expression of love and Diana and I don’t need a belief in a god or gods to love one another, all of you, and most importantly today… love our son.
This post is “hot” as the Digg regulars vote and argue over it. There’s a lot of comments that feel that he’s using this as a soapbox, but I don’t agree with the accusation, I think he’s trying to help his family members see that grief and loss are bigger than the limited cultural reaction toward death, which is to deny it and to try to soften it with the balm of religion, which always affords the easy way out. In the midst of such a time of grief, he does well to explicate a rational way to look at it.
