Grief

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

- C.S. Lewis

An often misunderstood state of emotion is that of grief. Its complex layers push and pull like the tides of the sea, and leave you imagining that the work will never be done. In fact, it will not. While we are often told that grief is a process, or a place, a doorway to a healed life, it is more like a new layer of skin put on. It becomes a part of you, and the discomfort you feel is the process of adaptation. Some grief is featherweight. Other grief is like a suit of armor. The heavier the grief, the more support you long for - strong hands and steady hearts to hold you up while you learn.

Grief results from traumatic circumstances that usually involve loss. Loss of safety. Loss of relationship. Loss of one you depend on, or one who depended on you. Watching a loved one die. Facing your own death. As good things are given to us and then taken away, our hearts and minds are forced to reconcile the dichotomy of this life. Something in our love bonds us to one another, and that bond can be as reflexive as our breath. It takes magnificent strength to tenderly love another person, or to let them love you. Once that agreement has been struck, it also takes magnificent strength to tear the heart asunder, and to be separated from your love. That kind of injury is at first raw, leaving nerves exposed to the elements. Depending on the size of the gape, it will take a little or a lot of time to close. Slowly the pain will transform from searing to throbbing, and then to aching. Eventually a scar develops where the gaping wound once was, and you realize that you will never be the same. Forward movement must resume, however. The world around you depends on your continuity and seems to ignore your grief. It might help to be aware that the world around you has suffered grief as well.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares. 

- Henri Nouwen

The groundbreaking book published by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, titled "On Death and Dying" was a compilation of her experiences caring for the terminally ill. She noted a common collection of stages experienced by those who were facing their own death, and later she acknowledged that these stages might also be experienced by someone who was facing the death of a loved one. Neither necessary nor specifically ordered, the Kübler-Ross model provides a helpful table at which to sit and observe the movements of the mind as it processes the unthinkable horror of death. Someone facing the reality of their impending death, or the death of a loved one, may experience any of these states of mind:

1. Denial - trying desperately to ignore reality.
2. Anger - picking a target, any target, and unleashing their fury.
3. Bargaining - hoping to make a change that will alter reality.
4. Depression - relinquishing all hope for any sort of redemption. 
5. Acceptance - making peace with the loss and finding hope again.  

 

Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

As you ponder your own or another's grief, paint one more layer of color onto the tapestry: the color of hope. This life is wrought with painful loss, but our tears are counted and recorded. Our pain is safely kept and not forgotten. "You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book." (Psalm 56:8) There is a "one day" in each of our stories. One day the grief will end and the scar will no longer ache. One day all love lost will be returned. One day this will all be made well. Hold loosely to the lovely things of this world, but hold firmly to the hope of the joy in eternity. 

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

- Revelation 21:4