The term, "Funeral Pilgrimage" slipped into my vocabulary so naturally that I thought a reality check might be in order. I think, with a salute to my damaged memory, that it is a self-coined term. What is, "A Funeral Pilgrimage?"

In the pre-internet 70's, "The Therapy Funeral" was a fad from pop psychology geared toward people, like myself, in critical need of psychotherapy, but zero to counter-productive family support in the healing process. The theory behind the therapy funeral was to get it through my psychosis that my only chances for healing were to embrace, "Healing as an orphan," fully and unconditionally. Formalizing the acceptance with a symbolic funeral ceremony was hoped to ease that bitter acceptance into "Letting go with love." I held my private therapy funeral for my birth family in the summer of 1977 in the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois. Much of the therapy surrounding this therapy funeral centered on the pure symbolism of ^it^. My 10 siblings and 2 parents were still very much alive and future repercussions could and should be expected. Repurcussions such as an actual death and the natural craving to have family where the limb has been amputated.

When my eldest brother committed suicide in 1982, it threw me into a major and extended psychosis. Flashback hell with a helpless 2 year old son to bear witness. I wasn't in formal therapy at the time and gave my talents for denial a vigorous workout. Owie, zowie. . . I am still not certain how I got through that patch. It remains a clouded, painful memory.

In 2005, when my father died, I was working with a Spiritual Advisor at my church. She held that the death of a bonded loved one was the loss of love. Tragic, but well within the bounds of natural expectations. The death of an abuser is the death of hope. She encouraged me to formalize the grieving process. I did, all the way to attending a grief workshop at our church. It helped.

Fast forward a dozen years and my other older brother's death in January slipped through cracks of the estate shuffles of my father-in-law's death a few months before. Physically, this brother was 1.5 years older than I, but he never was stronger, faster or smarter than I. His childish acting out was more of a search for protection than perpetuating the abuse cycle. As teens, he and I went in search of help. I got help. He got profiled and the profiling has only gotten uglier since. Yes, his memory is one of the major guilt points in my own Survivor Syndrome.

That particular herstory is in my therapy journal, right here on this site. Somewhere in the "Fort Defiance" series, I started calling my attempts to tame the symptoms of that episode, "A Funeral Pilgramage." Now that it has been called to my attention, I am wondering if I should review that particular evolution. Perhaps. Probably not this morning.

Thoughts and reality checks welcome.