I am nearing an anniversary. It's not one of those WHOHOO! it's our anniversary! types. It's more of remembrance. A remembrance of the day someone important to this world passed into a place where she is much better off, but we are at a loss. I am nearing the date that one year ago my mother went to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus. And I just thought I'd share some of the things I've learned about grief over that year.
I discovered our society just might be doing grief wrong. Someone passes, and what do we do? We are taught to bake casseroles and assure the living we will be there if they "need anything." What they need --what I needed, was someone to say, "Sit your tuchus down and feel this." It's counterintuitive. We don't want those we love to hurt. We don't want them to remain in the pain. And we certainly don't want to stand by helplessly as they do. And as those grieving, we've seen that slippery slope; we know that person who lost a spouse and "was never the same." Digging through layers and layers of loss --the loss of a friend, the loss of the plans we had, the loss of a battle with cancer, the loss of someplace to go a couple times a week (even if it was a hospital), the loss of ties with her family or her neighbors --by taking the time to contemplate the layers of loss, we may prepare our hearts for, at least, some of those twinges we experience as we will go through life without that person. When Mom passed, there was far more loss than I realized. Taking the time to mine the depths of my mother's death might have braced me for the emptiness that threatened to overwhelm me months later. More than just missing the person, I missed everything about life with her in it: visits with her, my friend who visited her with me, Mom's roommates, the staff on her floor, researching activities for those in cognitive decline, reading poetry to her, our walks. As the laundry list of things and places I missed unfolded aside the roaring absence of my mother, the wound got larger and more painful. Perhaps, if I'd been "trained" to grieve --This is how we do this: we sit and cry and sit some more --I would have been more prepared.
It would have helped for me to really listen to the words of comfort spoken over me at the time. As condolences were given, I shrugged and said, "She had a long life." I avoided eye contact with those who showed compassion. I dismissed the sympathies because seeing others uncomfortable made me uncomfortable. Here they are, anticipating a carefree trip to Homegoods, when they bump into me. I'm really sorry to hear about your mom. And they are: I don't mean they are being disingenuous. But, at least for a moment, they are reminded of the frailty of their own parent or the loss of a loved one; for the moment, their outing has been sullied by the reality of life in a fallen world. And the smile fades instantly from their faces as "the apothecary sends forth a stinking savor." I hated that part of grieving. But it is truly necessary. The professionals who said to me, "Tell me what you are feeling," or "Tell me why you say that," were not denying the existence of Mom's presence in Heaven, nor were they trying to psychoanalyze me. They were trying to come alongside me and support me as I began to pay attention to that moment. And those who ran into me in parking lots or at church were doing the same thing in a different way. Those words, those sentiments were meant to heal. Dismissing them was like having an infection and not taking my antibiotic.
Lastly, Jesus teaches us that loss is gain. Paul says, "For me to live is Christ; to die is gain." But loss is also loss. Jesus never meant for us to deny the loss. He wept. He sweated blood in a garden. He overturned tables. He never sinned, and He never denied His humanity. In fact, to deny our emotions would be deceptive, hypocritical; it would declare that what God has created is not good. And, I think, it would make the statement that this person, this mother, this friend, this coworker had no lasting impact on our life at all; that the relationship was impotent, a waste of God's work in placing us together. To feel the loss of another human being in this world is to acknowledge God's power and His plan, to recognize we are all intrinsically linked, responsible for one another. Emotions are the lights on the dashboard, alerting us to the speed at which our lives are passing or the need to be refueled. Emotions signal we are in need of being made whole.
In her work, The Book of Common Courage, K.J. Ramsey writes:
So, let us be upheld by the One who catches our tears, let us be comforted by our Good Shepherd, let us see Him drawing near in the moments we allow ourselves to feel pain and grief, and feel the weight of our aloneness. Let us be human that we might be whole.
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