You must not have prayed hard enough....
Religious Gaslighting in Grief....or in other words, kindly fuck right off.
I had no idea that there were people hanging outside the doors of the hospital praying while my husband lay dying inside. It wasn’t until much later that people shared with me that some individuals thought it their task to gather to pray for his soul and salvation. Looking back, my ignorance was most certainly for the best.
At the time, I was about as emotionally raw as a human being can get. Or at least the most torn apart and jagged I have ever personally been. I’m sure there have been far worse situations across the breadth of human experience, but this was my zenith to that point. Had I known people had accumulated outside the hospital that night to perform whatever need they had to express their faith, it’s likely I would have taken the opportunity to unleash my pent up rage.
It would not have been pretty.
A Horrible Little Backstory
This was February of 2022. My husband lay dying in the ICU at the regional trauma center over the course of three weeks. He had fallen ill the first weekend in January, at first a benign set of cold symptoms. I worked from home, so we hunkered down initially, not really worried. At this point, we were well into the pandemic. We both wrongly assumed we had long-ago contracted and built immunity to the COVID-19 virus.
I’d like to think our response to the pandemic in general was pretty balanced, given our overall health, our living situation, and our exposure risks. Early on, it was watchful waiting, as my work as a hospice support nurse in several local hospitals transitioned to me managing referrals from home. My husband worked largely alone at a small manufacturing warehouse, his only co-workers our two dogs who regularly tagged along. Occasionally he would be in contact with others, but it was rare and often outside.
We lived on a farm property in rural New Hampshire with our horses. Rarely did we socialize, or travel, or attend events with crowds. We were basically modern day hermits. The grocery store was our biggest threat. We masked and washed hands and did all the things we were supposed to, for the most part. We did not have people around us getting sick. Most days, we could easily pretend life was going on as usual in our tiny little circle.
When the vaccine became available, we both assessed our risks and discussed it, like rational people do. My employer joined the ranks of most healthcare organizations, and created policy to mandate the vaccine. Off I went to get it. Of course, I was fine.
My husband held out.
Now, I want to be clear on something here. The courage to write about this has taken over three years. The accusations, assumptions, and questions about his vaccination status from people in my grief has been hard to take, and many have dismissed his death more times than I can count, some clueless and some knowingly. Even within my own family the undertones are there. I found myself lying to people, colleagues in medicine especially, about his vaccination status. The shame was real, and still is. Maybe worse, given the current climate.
So, just so we understand. My husband was not an extremist, anti-vaxxing wingnut.
You may have trouble believing this in our purposefully divided world, nowadays. But it’s the truth.
He largely trusted science, medicine, and doctors.
His kids were vaccinated. He was otherwise vaccinated. We vaccinated our animals.
However, he was also a stubborn, often contrary, healthy, generational Yankee who routinely struggled with government over-reach, rhetoric and double speak. He had some serious issues listening to authority, as many of us do.
He watched and he read and he made his own adult decision. Early on he just didn’t trust what was going on or the messages trickling down from the government and the media. His assessment was that his risk was low overall. He didn’t get the Flu vaccine, or the pneumonia vaccine. So, he stayed in waiting mode, never dreaming he would be the person this virus would take down. He was healthy, never smoked, rarely drank. Not overweight. We were active. Young.
Then. Then we got complacent.
The pandemic lurched on, month after month. We both had colds and illnesses; we both repeatedly got better. We rarely tested, I’m ashamed to admit. Like many, we got fatigued. We let down our guards.
I remember the day I had to go to get my booster sometime in late 2021. We were in town together, and I had him stop at the drugstore. Distinctly, I remember asking him if he had reconsidered, and wanted to come in a get a dose with me. Looking back, it was a moment, you know? The kind you look back on and say “if only” over and over again in the depths of your despair. He declined, not with a chip on his shoulder, but more of a shrug. I walked in alone.
Who’s to say if that dose of vaccine would’ve saved his life?
This question was one I wrestled with in fits and starts as he was dying, and then into my grief after. Time after time, I found myself wishing I could go back to that truck that day, and push just a little harder. Knowing him though, nothing I could’ve said would have shifted his view. His rigidity of thought, once he made up his mind, was unparalleled. It’s truly a hard part of his legacy that I have tried to learn from.
When presented with new information, be willing to adjust your opinions…..
Anyway, I had told him stories as I saw them come across my desk. Young, healthy people dying randomly of this virus. I was seeing it on paper. Perhaps if I had been in the hospitals, as so many of my colleagues were, and was witnessing the actual deaths, I would have made a stronger case.
As time ticked on, I don’t think either of us considered that we were at risk. Everyone we knew that had contracted the virus had recovered. Even his mother with late stage COPD. Even others who had chosen not to vaccinate. Life carried forward.
Then, his 90+ year old grandmother got sick, and ultimately died of complications of COVID. We were sad of course, but dismissive of it in the sense that she had been frail. And over 90 years old.
We had not been to a family gathering in quite some time. Two holiday seasons had passed. We decided to attend the funeral. This was that first weekend in January of 2022, and it was bitterly cold. We drove to the church, and were met by multiple cousins he had not seen in years, each having flown in from various places across the states.
They hugged. Outside. No masks. Once again, guards down, trusting the worst was long behind us. As we stood at a funeral. The irony is not lost on me, don’t worry.
This would be his general response to most anything…..
He died almost exactly 30 days later.
His last words to me, basically, were “why didn’t you make me listen”……
One Other Horrible Little Backstory
At the age of about 10, my late husband found himself in cramped trailer in southern NH, living with his mom and younger brother. His father had left, initially to PA then to FL. They were poor, and he managed to make himself known at the large farm across the road, and found some work. And a place of belonging.
As benign as this sounds, this was the beginning of his indoctrination into the world known now as the 2x2’s, or Truth. He had just happened to fall into one of the dynasty families in this cult-like religious world; a family that would envelop him for the rest of his childhood, and into adulthood. And really for the rest of his life.
“The "2x2s," or the Truth Religion, is a non-denominational Christian movement that refers to itself by various names, including The Truth, The Way, or the Church With No Name. It is characterized by itinerant clergy who live in poverty and are paired up to travel and live with members. The group emphasizes its exclusive claim to being the "true" path to salvation, which leads to a strong distrust of outsiders and discourages independent thought among members.”
During a time of great emotional vulnerability as his own family fell apart, he found himself in a community, within a land-wealthy and powerful family, who then integrated him into the deeply private “meetings”, as they call their home based church services.
Not to mention he was a kid.
A moldable, pliable, developing mind and spirit.
Indoctrination gold.
I’m sure it was never sinister. Their motives were likely pure, as far as religious motives can go. He was a poor, struggling kid from a “broken and God-less” home.
They were just trying to save him.
He married deeper into the church in his 20’s, and had his three children, all of whom were raised in the faith. He later deconstructed his faith in his late 30’s, divorced his wife, and faced exile from his own friends, family, and co-workers (did I mention this family also employed him?)…..hearing it now makes me think of indentured servitude.
When we met, he had thoroughly rejected the church, organized religion, their concept of god and subsequent heaven/hell literality, and we connected deeply in shared religious indoctrination and trauma, among other things. I too had left the deeply flawed Lutheran church of my youth amidst misogyny, sexual abuse, and power trips by clergy. We both had spent years digging through the shame, guilt, and fear that shaped our early lives.
Ironically, the 2x2’s are now embroiled in their own sexual abuse and child abuse shakedown, and it remains one of the things I most would like to talk about with my late husband. But I digress. That’s a story for another time….but if you’re interested, Kelly Thompson writes about her own experiences with the 2x2’s, among many others here on the platform.
Anyway, perhaps you understand a little more why he railed against authority. I’m not equating his unwillingness to get vaccinated completely with the church, but his lack of trust in institutions that sell safety and salvation with thin veils of deep control does seem to be a theme.
Back to the Prayers
So apparently, even after years of being on the outskirts of this cult, they heard he was sick and dying, and came to pray for his soul. It shouldn’t have surprised me. At the time, two of his three children remained in the religion actively, along with his ex-wife (who is truly lovely, by the way, as are all of his kids). The family dynasty was still robust, and even though he left their employ shortly after he and I met, he was still connected by multiple threads in the local community.
He had been the black sheep since his childhood, and he described it simultaneously as being asked into the fold, but held forever at edges as an “outsider”. This set up a never ending yearning to be included, to be accepted, and in equal parts anger and rage when he was never quite fully allowed in. Ever the twisted dynamic, and when he left, it felt like it was just destiny playing out. He had never really been good enough anyway.
Personally, I never liked these people, and most everyone knew it. Sure, they were kind enough. No one was outwardly rude to me. Yet the energy dripping off of them was one of self-righteousness and separation, and growing up the way I did, I saw right through it. This cloistered group of people actually thought they had the ticket to heaven. Even now it makes me chuckle, since my own childhood church claimed the same, as do so many others across the world.
I wasn’t laughing though as he lay in a hospital bed hooked to every tube known to man….
Multitudes of people, some within that particular church community, and many others from various other religious traditions, had sent me messages, texts, and even called to say they were praying for him, and for me. As someone who had to walk myself out of toxic religion and spend a lifetime reshaping my world view, let me tell you how that hit.
It made me absolutely fucking livid.
You know how it goes. People say, oh prayer, what harm does it do? People are just sending good energy. There’s no harm. They mean well. They don’t know what else to say.
But, they’re wrong.
Here’s what it says to someone who has suffered at the hand of religious indoctrination and control, left through courageous acts of self-realization, lost their sense of self and community, and are now watching someone who did the same suffer and die a horrible death.
It says, you are not good enough. You. Need. Saving.
So what, “god” didn’t hear the prayers? Or if he did, he deemed him not worthy of saving?
Which is it? Was god not listening? Or does he not care? Or was my husband just an awful person deserving of this fate?
What exactly are you praying for anyway? That my dying husband recover and get better? Or that he avoid eternal hell fire and has some sort of death-bed reconciliation with your god? Either, or?
If your god has a plan, why bother to pray at all? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let the plan work itself out? Wouldn’t that be the trusting thing—the good disciple of god thing to do?
And he didn’t get better, so if that’s what you prayed for, now what?
Oh, god had a different plan? OK then, why bother to pray?
We could go on all day here.
I mean, we haven’t even touched on the platitudes you’ll hear AFTER your person has died.
"Everything happens for a reason”…
"He's in a better place"…
"God will not give you more than you can handle"…
Can you sit there and tell me my husband needed to suffocate and die the way he did? Was that your god’s plan? Or, perhaps it was just punishment for turning his back on god, on the religion, the cult. I wondered more than once at some of the thoughts people had as they sent me their “thoughts and prayers”. Perhaps it’s just my cynical mind, but I doubt it.
Did these people ask if I wanted them gathered outside the hospital, praying for the man I loved? Did they ask what I actually needed? No. They just felt compelled to do so, in some twisted narrative that it was “helping”. That no harm could be done.
Fuck your prayers.
The Damage Done
In the week following his death, in my trauma and grief stupor, a gathering occurred at his mother’s house. In retrospect, I have no idea why I thought this was a good thing for me to attend. Most likely, as I floated along in the fog that is very early grief, I didn’t even consider that I could or should say no and set boundaries for myself. I just went.
Now, his mother never participated in this religion, but she witnessed it for years and lived amongst it, and knew all the players. She too had some sort of false-god complex thing going on with the whole lot of them. When I arrived at her house that evening, who was there but the patriarch and matriarch of this dynasty; the OG couple that owned the farm across the road when he was a kid. I had met them in passing, and they seemed kind in that spooky sort of deeply religious way that I had now come to associate with these folks.
As the evening rolled on, across the room a conversation unfolded that I have been unable to wipe from the recesses of my poor brain since. My youngest step-son, at the time in his early 20’s, sat with his mother and the pseudo-grandmother matriarch of the religious crew. The words that were being said hit me like knives, and sent shudders of disbelief down my spine.
I remember my late husband’s best friend, sitting across from me. I vaguely remember him asking if I was alright. Clearly I looked distressed. My gaze locked on these two women, talking to the kid who just stood beside me and watched his father be extubated, gasp for air, die in mere seconds, and be taken away from us for organ donation. The kid who I had grown close to over the years, who looked and acted like his father in so many ways. The vulnerable mind and spirit of the next generation, being indoctrinated in front of my very eyes.
They were attempting to answer his questions and assuage his fears that his father, an imperfect but very loving and caring human, most likely was not burning in hell as we sat there having a potluck dinner at his grandmother’s house. They were rationalizing that maybe he did have a deathbed re-conversion, or maybe his prior faith had been enough.
Not that he was enough, as a human being who did his best in this life.
No.
These two mortal, imperfect women were attempting to make sense and even minimize their baked in concept of heaven and hell, which had been passed to this innocent son, in an effort to ease his existential panic. A panic they literally had written and created for him over his lifespan to that point. I watched as they walked back their propaganda, for his sake, attempting to rewrite years of ingrained fear and hellfire and make it slightly more palatable for him to swallow. I was aghast.
To this day, the only reason I have for keeping my mouth shut was that the motive was to try to ease his very real distress. For my step-son’s sake I sat rock still across the room, watching. What I wanted to say was “how dare you sit there and pretend to know anything about what or where or how his afterlife is, if at all?” What right does a person have to judge, or even consider this for another person? Where do you get off?
The better question is, of course, why would you ever teach your children such evil and narrow minded views of life and death? Why would your so-called loving god commit anyone to eternal suffering? Or release someone from its grips for the ticket price of a mere confession, after a lifetime of actual awful behavior? Why would you place your child in a situation where they fear eternal torture, both for themselves and for anyone they might love, just because their version of “god” or faith or whatever doesn’t add up to yours? Insanity. Deep and true insanity. One that has taken me a lifetime to leave behind.
Full Circle
In the 3 plus years since, both his ex-wife and his daughter have left the religion in the wake of the scandals. Again, my late husband would have been shocked (and more than a little vindicated, I can easily admit), and those moments of wanting to tell him are almost overwhelming sometimes. His youngest son, the one struggling with his death that night and what it meant in the context of his journey through the universe and his religious education, remains in, but barely.
For my part, I have become slightly better at balancing people’s religious overtures with my grief. Not perfect, but better as the wounds scab over. What I now focus on is helping others with their religious deconstruction needs in their grief, as their taught version of god starts to fall apart in the wake of deep loss. For some, death brings them closer to their god and deeper into their faith community, and for them that is a blessing. For others, it is a final reckoning of all the things that weren’t sitting right to begin with, and the parallel and intersecting roads of grief and religious reassessment can be terrifying to navigate together.
Whatever view of this you stand on, the one caution I have is this—never assume that your ideas are those of the person you are comforting. Offering prayer is not benign, it is not a safe space you can or should fall back on when words fail you or your discomfort grows. Sit with that discomfort, sit with that person. Offer real presence. Gentle touch. True efforts of support. Breathe. Show up, over and over again.
Those are the things that matter.
Leave your religion and concept of death and beyond at the door. If you want to pray, do it privately. That is where it belongs, in your head and heart. If you are performing it for others, or for your god, you missed the mark entirely.
For it is for you, and only you, at the end of the day.
And the harm is real.
PS-If you are interested in religious deconstruction, not only is Kelly Thompson a wonderful resource, I have been DEVOURING Deconstruction by Jim Palmer lately. He is writing wisdom after wisdom, and I cannot get enough. He runs the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality. Someday I hope to enroll in his course work towards being an Existential Health Counselor.
KT Smith is a widow, a hospice and palliative care nurse, death guide, psychonaut and grief care specialist living at 7,000 feet in the high desert of the American West. She is also a writer who explores themes of love, loss, and resilience through the lens of courage, radical authenticity, existentialism and everyday ritual. When she’s not digging for rocks or supporting others through life’s hardest transitions, she’s reading on the patio with the dogs and a cup of coffee, the mountains in view.