Let Us Grieve

How many times has someone told me lately, "The Jewish culture has it right..."? Oddly enough, two or three unrelated persons have said this to me about the custom of shiva, the week of grieving the Jews enter when someone has died. "...[T]he visitor comes to the house of mourning, silently, to join the bereaved in his loneliness, sorrowfully to sit alongside him, to think his thoughts and to linger on his loss."¹ Indeed, the Jews are right.

Grief and mourning are uncomfortable in all cultures, but Americans more than most seem to eschew this process with gusto. Let us be "Happy, happy, happy," anything but grieved. Let us paste on a smile and say life is all right when everything is tumbling down around our ears and we feel desperately alone. Let us only close our church services with clapping and upbeat songs. Let us be anything but silent or sorrow-filled. Let us celebrate sunny days, but ignore brooding rain. Let us get over that break-up next week, the death of our child next month, and the loss of our father by the time we return to work. Let the healing be instant. Let us do anything but lament. We're afraid of sorrow. We don't want to hurt before we heal. We rebel and reel because we can't control grief. 

Some friends of my family lost their sweet, college-age daughter in an icy car accident last year. Her death has changed every family member's life. Christmas and New Year's will always be cast with the pall of her final days in the hospital; of praying for a miracle that never came. I don't know why—and I don't pretend to. Our friends don't need us to give stupid, hurtful platitudes. They just need us to sit with them in the ashes. They need us to remember their joyful daughter. They need us to talk about her if they want to, to talk about anything else if they don't. Their other children still need their parents to be their parents. They still need to be recognised in their own accomplishments and lives. And they still need to be allowed to grieve—yes, over a year later... For the rest of their lives.

The loss never goes away. That person once existed in this world and now doesn't—that is a continual loss. Loss doesn't have a time-table. Grief pricks when you weren't expecting it...but it is okay to mourn. Let us weep when we remember someone we have lost to the ever-insatiable monster of death.

It is much easier to say that about someone else's loss. It's so much harder to live the daily emptiness. There are always regrets, things we wish we had said before that final parting... I wish to goodness sakes I had talked with my grandma on the phone when she was in the hospital. She had so many people there I told my mom I'd wait. I lost my chance to talk with her again. Though I had made sure to tell her I loved her when I saw her last, well, that doesn't change my weeping right now. 

It's been two years since her death, and it still bubbles up unexpectedly. I catch myself laughing at things only my family would understand, said in Grandma's voice... "You heard the story, you heard the story!" I catch my breath sharply when I remember, without warning, her saying, "Of all the grandkids, you're the most like me." I catch the tears rolling off my nose at all these memories welling up in my mind and in my eyes. The smell of homemade fried chicken always takes me back to childhood birthdays at Grandma and Grandpa's. For whatever reason, I remember my seventh, tenth, and twenty-first birthdays vividly, there in that Wanamaker house. That house which was their home for half a century, where my dad grew up, and where I learned how to use a slinky—because they had stairs and we didn't. That house which now belongs to somebody else who has no knowledge of its history. That house that no longer holds my family, yet holds so many of our memories.

Like I said, we can't control grief—when or where or how it will punch us. But it will hit with a hard right hook, or that unseen uppercut. Let's be honest, we like to control things. Our appearance to others; how we spend our time and live our days; what we do and what we don't do; what we eat; what we read...but we cannot control sorrow. It leaks out of our hearts and eyes on the sunny days and the rainy ones. When we laugh and when we swallow that lump in our throats. We cannot make the loss smaller, it only grows bigger with all the things our loved ones miss. It only grows sharper when we can't ask their advice, hear them tell a story, or catch their laugh in our ears. That is the nature of a curse. Of the Curse. And we cannot control the force of the sucker-punch. I want to say that what we do in the face of the Curse is live...but one day the Curse will try to annihilate us, too. For a time, the voracious Curse will feast on life. But only for a time.

There is a rumour that one day, everything sad will come untrue.² One day, death will be—finally and completely—eviscerated and defeated. That the grave will have no inhabitants. That death will be swallowed up in life. That God-who-became-man (a Jewish man, no less), myth-become-fact, will complete the redemption process. And all will be made well. L'chaim! To life!

Until then, we weep and mourn. We grieve and lament. We let sorrow chase us into the arms of our Father. We laugh and we live. L'chaim!

Indeed...The Jewish people have it just about right.³ 

___________

1. Comforting the Bereaved

2. “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?" "A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land... (Tolkien, J R R, Return of the King, emphasis mine)

3. Except for that whole not-believing-Jesus-was-the-Messiah-and-crucifying-Him bit. 

Helen

A silver sycamore stands sentinel,
Watches while my soul drips sore
With grief unwonted, unlooked for;
Ache unmended upended my core
This night, all things but one went well...

The Eve had melted to Holy Day,
When I stood for the last time
This visit, the candlelight sublime
Still burned bright on eye's mind,
As I blinked hard, keeping tears at bay...

Two short years ago I was not alone
This night—I walked down the aisle,
By my side a tiny woman with a smile,
Proud to have her family here a while
Nodded to all around—now she is gone...

Gone from slippery wooden pew,
From the lips and the minds of men,
Who are so quick to carry on again—
But a grandchild starts weeping when
Memories come in waves not a few...

Perhaps Christmas Eve must start
With this wretched, Fall-tainted scar
To remind me of that blazing star
Leading the lowly and wise from afar
To seek the Healer of each man's heart.

Remember...

Sometimes special dates slip by, unnoticed in the hustle of other things. Today, even though my family and I spent an enjoyable, full day at the Creation Museum, I knew underneath that what day it was. Today is my grandmother's birthday... The first one we have had without her. She would have been ninety-five if she had not passed away in March. I think it was a hard day for my dad, but he didn't say anything about it; just patiently drove us to and from the museum, treating us to dinner on the way home.

Sometimes I think folks forget that Christmas isn't all joy, peace, and cheer. For many persons, Christmas is a lonely time of year, an angry season, an unmet expectation, or a painful time. We feel more keenly the loss of loved ones, the inability to afford gifts, or the bitterness of disappointed hopes.  

This Christmas in the Midwest feels more like Spring than Winter—with foggy mists, rainy nights, and bearable temperatures. It feels more like a long visit with my family than a holiday. It feels like anything but Christmas. There are a myriad of reasons for this, one of which is the loss of my grandmother. I sat in, or near, her pew by myself on Christmas Eve, holding back tears. Not only was my grandmother's place empty, but my Dad decided not to attend with me this year. I'm glad he didn't, because life has been hard enough for him the last two or three years—he didn't need to be sad on Christmas Eve, too. 

So, I inhaled sorrow co-mingled with the joyous annunciation to the shepherds that a Saviour was born unto them—those rough, smelly, unnoticed men. To them, the ones who lived on the fringes, beneath the lower class, out of the minds of nearly everyone—outcasts. Yet, not cast out by God. He remembered the lowly and forgotten shepherds. He remembers still those on the fringes of society, the edges of church sanctuaries, and the ones separated from everyone else by grief, loneliness, and heartbreak. God remembers. He gently nudges those of us who feel like outcasts, reminding us that all those years ago, the Timeless One stepped into time to be the Saviour of the world. And that is what He is, still. In the midst of the pain and disappointment that separates us from feeling like it's Christmas, God is with us—Emmanuel. 

This Christmas feels more like Spring than Winter—perhaps this is God's physical reminder to us that new life is stirring under the mud and dirt. We must remember that the grave is not the end. Even things that seem dead and buried might be raised to new and beautiful life, like Spring flowers. Perhaps I am naïve, or put too much faith in impressions, but the winds of change seem to be blowing away the ashes of this last year to the four corners of the earth. In the soil of hearts and relationships, the life of the Spirit of God is breathing. He is stirring up the earth 'round the roots of the good seed and bulbs of Truth—life is wriggling beneath the surface of the new year.

New years themselves are the edges of one season blending into another, of one year gracefully giving way to the next in the Great Dance. Sometimes the sadness in our lives slowly fades into joy, without us knowing the moment of transition. And sometimes new life is breathed into dead hearts and relationships. As G. K. Chesterton explains:

"...boundaries are the most beautiful things in the world. To love anything is to love its boundaries; thus children will always play on the edge of anything. They build castles on the edge of the sea, and can only be restrained by public proclamation and private violence from walking on the edge of the grass. For when we have come to the end of a thing we have come to the beginning of it."

Said another way: fringes and edges are where change is occurring. New beginnings are at the boundaries of old endings. The shepherds on Bethlehem's hillside were on the cusp of a new life, of seeing the world turned upside down. Surely they remembered the night that angels rent the heavens with the news of a Saviour in those silent, dark days. So, too, at Christmas we remember the hard, the dark nights, and the loss—but those horizon line is drawing near and we are coming to the first word in the first chapter of a new beginning. Let us remember, and look forward with eager expectation to what Jesus has set before us.

Even in the valley of the shadow the stars shine...

Deep red light streaked across my kitchen panes yesterday morning. In the fog of sleepiness I thought of the line, "Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning," then rolled over for a little more precious slumber. 

When evening came, I honestly have no idea what colour the sky was... I only knew that the red dawn was followed by an evening call. "She's gone." Words I had been anticipating for a week. Words I have been dreading to hear. Words one never quite knows how they will receive until they have to. 

Blindly I walked out into the night, feeling the cool Spring air revive my tumbled thoughts. Revive: breathe new life into... How could I have so much life in my lungs when her lungs were empty now? I walked harder, feet pelting toward the mountain. I needed space. Stillness. Steadiness. 

Clambering up the washed out path, I reached a flat place, panting. Stopping in the darkness, my eyes adjusted enough to look up at the mighty beams of light above me. Mighty, yet so distant as to appear but pin pricks in Heaven's canopy. My eyes traced the trio of beacons in Orion's belt. There sat Betelgeuse, a splendid red orb in the hunter's shoulder. Red. Like the morning sky... 

I reeled, seeking for an anchor in the midst of my anguish. Next to me the rush of snow-melt in the stream sang its joyful, gushing tune. Above me the wind swept through the pines and over my sorrow-streaked face. O'erhead the constellations solemnly trod their seasoned steps. How many times has the earth revolved around the sun? And there are the Pleiades every Autumn (in this hemisphere), peeking above the low ridge, beginning their trek across the sky. My eyes will only see them only a little longer before they visit the other half of the world. Then we will see the Summer crown rising in the next season.

Even in the change of seasons there is a constancy, like the river and mountains, trees and stars, and the continual rising and falling of the sun and moon. Even as the wind brings a change in the weather, it is still the same familiar wind we know from every playful Summer caress, or wild Winter dervish. Even as my dear 'snow season' melts into golden and royal purple crocuses, there is a familiarity in the pattern of the year. 

New hope springs up in me. The ebb and flow of life remind me of the Creator's hand holding all things together, ordering the strides of the universe from day to day and night to night. How much more incredible is it that He orders my daily and nightly steps, small as I am? He Who is acquainted with our grief walks with us through the dark valley of the shadow. 

One day, death will stand on its head and everything sad will come untrue. Because He danced the reel of this earth, and died our death for us, and is so full of life that not even death could hold Him... It had to let Him go into abundant life. This is another grappling hook for my soul... Yet the fullness of Life found in Christ does not mean I am cheerful in the face of death. Oh, the face of my own death, maybe. I am not afraid of what is to come, though perhaps that is because I don't know how truly grave and mysterious and real and joyful it will be. 

But in this shadow before the real, this dream before the waking, I feel the rending claws of death. I see it filling its voracious appetite with unborn children and frail grandmothers, with soldiers and civilians, rich and poor. I shudder at its touch on my shoulder, upon my family. "Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!" cries my soul. I seek refuge under the shadow of the wings of my Father in Heaven. Here I will hide my shredded soul, until the Healer begins –no, continues– His work to remake this fragmented me into something Beautiful. Here I will hide, until a flame rises out of the cold ashes. Here I will mourn, and He will weep with me, even though He knows the end of the story and has told me that all shall be made well. 

Helen Margaret Marie Sophie Byrkett 

27 December 1919 – 17 March 2014

~ Johanna