'Restoration' in the Grief Process

Repairing Heirlooms

My best friend and wife (same person) has a new entertainment obsession: the British television show, The Repair Shop. In each episode, master craftspeople receive and expertly, and amazingly, repair a wide variety of family heirlooms, including toys, furniture, household items, art pieces, and tools.

Part of the appeal is the demonstration of incredible skill and creativity to repair broken and heavily damaged items. Another significant part of the appeal is the family members and their stories. Each item in need of repair has a rich history full of meaning.

The ability of the item to carry that meaning has been damaged, limited by its brokenness and sorry state. As family members bring in their items, they are hopeful yet sometimes skeptical. They try to keep their expectations low in order to avoid disappointment in the final product. Perhaps there are some who do feel disappointed when the repaired item is revealed in the end, but if so, they don’t seem to make it to broadcast. The stories which are shown end with expressions of delight, excitement, and gratitude by the family members. It is a family-affirming and heartwarming show.

What is ‘Sympathetic Restoration’?

There is a concept in the show that was new to my best friend and wife and that she shared with me. The concept is “sympathetic restoration.” When a broken or damaged item is brought to the creative experts at the repair shop, the goal is not to make the item “look like new,” as that would erase something important about its history.

The goal instead is to restore the item to wholeness and functionality while retaining the character of its age and experience. Looking at the repaired item, one can see that it is old and has had its miles. It does not look brand new, but it does look whole. Wounded, perhaps, but restored to good health.

Being one deeply acquainted with loss and very familiar with grief, my best friend/wife wondered if this concept of “sympathetic restoration” might be a helpful way to think about the goal of finding ways to live again after loss. As with almost all of her suggestions, I am inclined to agree.

We Haven’t Lost Everything

When we experience a horrible loss through death or otherwise, the life we had before is damaged and broken. How could it not be? It was dear to us, a precious thing, and was a source of comfort, joy, and meaning. Big losses mean big changes—life as we knew it is gone. It can feel like we have lost everything, and that feeling deserves respect. But it’s not true.

If we are still alive and here to feel such devastation, we haven’t lost everything. Something of what was continues though it be deeply wounded or lying in pieces at our feet. When we come to a place where we begin to see and understand that all is not lost, we gather the damaged and broken pieces of our previous life and wonder what is now possible. And we know that whatever may be possible, it won’t be, can’t be, life as it was before.

It is here that the idea of a sympathetic restoration can be a helpful lens. Part of its appeal is the hope that comes with the word restoration. The new status quo of injury and dysfunction need not be our future status quo. Life can be better although it will never return to exactly what we knew and had before—and that hard reality also deserves respect and support.

Restoration Implies Worth

We understand that what was lost cannot be ignored or avoided, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. Restoration suggests that what is left, nevertheless, is valuable and worthy of care and preservation. What remains, although changed, continues to hold potential for comfort, inspiration, and usefulness.

In this healing process of restoration, it helps to have a caring and compassionate approach to what is left. A sympathetic approach which doesn’t try to erase the past. It doesn’t help to hide the scars left behind and the evidence of hard and heavy seasons. That would not be real nor sustainable for the changing conditions the future will bring. We need restoration and we need more wholeness but not at the price of the integrity of what we are seeking to restore. Let’s be honest and keep it real. Our restored life is not a brand-new shiny thing. It is a blending of new and old and should look just like that as we compare it to the wholeness we had before our great loss.

Restoration Believes in Future

Sympathetic restoration offers hope in the midst of realism and realism in the midst of hope. It’s not cheap hope, like putting on a fresh coat of paint to avoid addressing deeper concerns. And it’s not a despairing lack of expectations—why bother because life can never be of value again? It works because it believes in having a future while honoring the past.

The additional appeal of a sympathetic restoration is that it empowers our memories and connections. We see this with family members in The Repair Shop when their sympathetically restored family heirlooms are presented to them. Their new yet old items take them right back to a particular time in their lives and to those dear to them. Their sympathetically restored pieces do that in ways they could never accomplish in their broken, damaged states or if they were presented scrubbed and devoid of any evidence of their histories.

Our lives after great loss need it all. We need hope that a valuable but different life is possible in the future. We need respect and support for the aging and wounding that we have experienced. And we need wholeness that provides present usefulness while maintaining bonds to our meaningful past.

What we need is a sympathetic restoration.

Greg Adams is Program Coordinator at Center for Good Mourning: www.archildrens.org

Read more from Greg Adams on Open to Hope: https://www.opentohope.com/after-a-major-loss-so-now-what/

Greg Adams

Greg Adams is a social worker at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) where he coordinates the Center for Good Mourning, a grief support and outreach program, and works with bereavement support for staff who are exposed to suffering and loss. His past experience at ACH includes ten years in pediatric oncology and 9 years in pediatric palliative care. He has written for and edited The Mourning News, an electronic grief/loss newsletter, since its beginning in 2004. Greg is also an adjunct professor in the University of Arkansas-Little Rock Graduate School of Social Work where he teaches a grief/loss elective and students are told that while the class is elective, grief and loss are not. In 1985, Greg graduated from Baylor University majoring in social work and religion, and he earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Missouri in 1986. One answer to the question of how he got into the work of grief and death education is that his father was an educator and his mother grew up in the residence part of a funeral home where her father was a funeral director. After growing up in a couple small towns in Missouri south of St. Louis, Greg has lived in Little Rock since 1987. He married a Little Rock native in 1986 and his wife is an early childhood special educator and consultant. Together they have two adult children. Along with his experience in the hospital with death and dying and with working with grieving people of all ages, personal experiences with death and loss have been very impacting and influential. In 1988, Greg’s father-in-law died of an unexpected suicide. In 1996, Greg and his wife lost a child in mid-pregnancy to anencephaly (no brain developed). Greg’s mother died on hospice with cancer in 2008 and his father died after the family decided to stop the ventilator after a devastating episode of sepsis and pneumonia in 2015. Greg has a variety of interests and activities—including slow running, reading, sports, public education, religion, politics, and diversity issues—and is active in his church and community. He is honored to have the opportunity to be a contributor for Open to Hope.