There is a measure of grief that will always be with us
From D.W.: This Friday will be the second anniversary of Rachel’s death. It’s nearly impossible for me to actually conceive of that. It simply doesn’t have a place in my dogma. And yet it’s a real and true thing that exists. And so, here we are, wrestling with that reality.
I don’t want to indulge too much in exposition about how I’ve dealt with, or not dealt with, my own grief these past two years. It would too likely just become a list of platitudes. I will say, though, that this practice of reading her work for this site has been a consistent source of healing. It’s difficult to do every week. Make no mistake about that. But there are few things that I’ve found more comforting than her words.
So this week I’m posting something she wrote that was very explicitly designed to be a comfort in times of grief. Back in December of 2014 she composed this Grief Pamphlet. I honestly don’t know who, if anyone, it was for or where, if anywhere, it was published. I assume Forward Movement, but if you know for sure, please let me know. But I love the thought that this could have helped people. It’s helped me. Maybe it can do the same for you.
I’ll mention one thing that I particularly like about this pamphlet. One of the things that frustrated me the most in the early days after she died was hearing some version of “Just lean on the Lord and he’ll comfort you,” or “Remember that God does everything for a reason.” If you offered this to me, let me say, I appreciate the gesture. Sincerely. And I know it came from a place of earnestness. But in those moments the very last thing I wanted was for my grief to be somehow washed away by the “everything will be fine machine.” In those moments I didn’t want the grief to be gone. It was one of the only things tying me to this world. It was incredibly painful, but it was real. The alternative is just hopeless emptiness.
And Rachel understood this. Instead of offering a Jesus that takes the pain away, she offered one that feels the pain along with you. A Jesus that can share your pain because he’s felt it, too. And that is maybe the most comforting thing that can be offered.
December 3rd. 2014.
Grief Pamphlet
“We are an Easter people, and alleluia is our song.”
Saint Augustine offers us this motto, echoing Jesus’ resurrection and foreshadowing our heavenly redemption and rest. There’s no mystery as to why this is included in the Episcopal celebration of a funeral. At our lowest emotional ebb, we remind ourselves (and our community gathers to remind us) that death (whether it’s the physical death of a loved one, infertility, the loss of a job, the death of a relationship or pet, etc.) never has the last word, no matter how final death feels to us in our deepest moments of crisis.
This pamphlet isn’t meant to be a cure-all for grief—grief is an intensely personal experience. It’s also one that is best shared in a community, precisely because it is such an intensely personal experience. Taking a few minutes to briefly think about grief and how we share and bear it can help each of us in our own personal experiences, as well as giving us some tips for how to better support others who are grieving.
In some cases, the emotion of depression (which is an absolutely “normal” feeling to feel after a loss or as a part of grief) may become a larger medical and mental health issue that takes the form of depression as an illness. This is a particularly important thing for a community to be aware of, so that depression can be addressed and managed from a medical perspective. Depression is nothing to minimize, blow off, make light of, or otherwise try to make disappear. It’s also nothing to be ashamed of, or something that should ever be used to shame another person. If you or someone in your family or community suffers from depression, please contact your healthcare provider for resources on dealing with and recovering from depression.
The swirl of emotions following a death has often been described as “the fog”. It descends quickly and wraps us up in shards of immediate and insistent pain. Time goes all wobbly. We may forget to eat, or proceed to mindlessly consume an entire bag of Doritos. We can’t sleep or we may sleep for days. We cry ourselves dry or we can’t squeeze a drop or make a sound. We forget everything about the world outside our ache, or we maintain a razor-sharp and rigid focus on everything in our line of sight. We may talk to a friend or family member for hours or we may not be able to say much of anything to anyone. We may throw ourselves into a frenzy of busyness or we may find ourselves unable to get off the couch or out of bed.
Feeling grief is hard, and expressing it in healthy ways isn’t something many of us are good at doing. It’s hard to accept grief as a burden we must carry, and harder still to accept that we must find a way to share it in order to bear it in a healthy way. As with all things in this life, it’s helpful to look to Jesus as our example for both expressing and sharing the pain that comes with loss. Jesus, just like you and me, experienced the full range of human emotion—joy, sadness, excitement, grief, hunger, fear, hope...all of them. And just like you and me, Jesus felt those feelings right out loud and in front of people.
Jesus was angry when they cut off John the Baptist’s head, and he wept at the news of Lazarus’ death. Even his understanding of grace, mercy, resurrection, and goodness didn’t keep him from feeling the grief that comes with loss. Losing someone we love is profoundly difficult, even for Jesus. Jesus struggled with every temptation we struggle with during times of grief and loss—we can imagine he had days when he didn’t spring sprightly out of bed, when the smell of something familiar would bring a tear to his eye, when a favorite holiday would roll around and memories of people he loved but saw no longer would mix the bitter taste of tears into the sweet treats of the festive occasion. Jesus was...and is...just like us in that way.
The pain of death, of the Good Fridays in our lives—the large and small deaths we all grieve, can make us forget to be hopeful. In our pain, we may forget that the sun is still rising and setting, that God is still doing a mighty work in our lives. But God’s grace and mercy pardons our forgetfulness. Easter always comes into every Good Friday in our lives. Good Fridays can look like many different sorts of losses—loved ones, relationships, jobs, pets, homes, etc. Those days level us, remind us of our fragility and how thin the margins can be between life and death, and the weight of that knowledge can simply level us, emotionally. We find ourselves like Mary Magdalene, lurking around the Garden Tomb, searching for any sign of life, any sign of hope. And that is a hard place to be. But there is never simply Good Friday, all alone and black and stark. Good Friday is always paired with Easter, shining and holy and restored to wholeness.
In one of his most instructional moments, Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount (you can read it in either Matthew’s gospel, or Luke’s) and tells us that those who mourn are blessed by the comfort they receive. This is one of those moments when Jesus invites us to take an active role in being blessings to the world, and to also allow ourselves to be blessed by the world around us. Engaging this mandate is a way for us to take grief from being a solitary and painful experience into being a family or community process. On one hand, we are invited to uncover our pain, tell the story of our hurt, and to be comforted by those around us. With the other hand, we are invited to hear the story of hurt, to look at the nakedness of pain and grief, and to comfort the one who is mourning. We are invited to share grief, and to bear it together.
It’s helpful in any discussion on grief to reference the brilliant work done by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Her five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are important signposts in dealing with our own grief, or in helping comfort a friend or family member. Being careful to remember that the five stages of grief aren’t a linear approach to understanding grief, but rather a continuum to orient and help us process what we or another may be experiencing is also helpful. Very few people are ever really able to “get over” a major loss, and the stages of grief may continue to cycle through a person’s life for years.
There may be expected times when grief will rise - anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, the first day of school, etc. And there may be times and moments when it flashes completely unexpectedly -- with a whiff of perfume, the yellow Volkswagen that just drove by, at the checkout in the grocery, reading the latest novel, the smell of steaks on the grill, or while eating grandma's apple cake. Those feelings of loss and bereavement seem to grab us by the collar and demand recognition. The true facts are that there’s no controlling when or how those moments come, and trying to shove the tears or the sobs or the memories back down into ourselves isn’t going to make our hurt go away. In those hard moments, we may feel shame over not having gotten past the hurt, at not being able to simply count our blessings and be happy. There is no shame in crying, in seeking comfort from our family and community. Our mourning will be blessed. There is no game-clock running that tells us when we are “done” with our grief.
When we reach out to others because we are mourning, we should remember that we don’t have to justify why we are sad or feeling out of sorts. When other reach out to us for comfort, we should remember that our job isn’t to take the grief of another, but to hold it with them—and sometimes that looks as simple as listening well, offering a hug, and sharing a prayer. There is a measure of grief that will always be with us, until Jesus comes back and restores us all to what we are meant to be.
We have a hard time with discomfort—especially grief. There is a particular urgency we may feel about “fixing the problem”. But grief is not a problem—it’s a symptom we feel over having loved and lost, and unless and until we make the radical and harmful choice to not love, it’s a symptom we will feel throughout our lives. Some people make radical life changes—totally remaking family holidays, selling or renovating a house, trading in a car, gaining or losing weight, changing hair colors or styles. It’s hard to sit with the discomfort we feel in the midst of grieving a loss, and sometimes we may feel as if we simply must DO something to make things better.
It’s difficult, as either a griever or comforter, to come to the understanding that grief is something that we must learn to sit with, learn not to rush, learn to use in ways that are life-giving. As a personal example, for a long time after my father’s death from brain cancer, I carried my grief very close, curled up in the sadness I felt over his loss. I couldn’t find anything to be thankful for in that experience. And one day, after confessing this to a very good listener, I came to understand my grief as a gift. I knew what it was to lose a parent at a young age. I understood how to navigate hospitals and talk to doctors and have difficult conversations, and I realized that I needed to share that understanding with others who were hurting. Some people make quilts or learn to throw pottery. Others may write about their feelings or take up painting or marathon running. There are so many different ways we can share our grief, our stories—the burden of loss with the world in ways that lift our eyes to the horizon and remind us of our connectedness to the world.
