Grief

Going through grief after a loved one passes away is such an difficult, individual process.  As Rick and I have grieved following Jake's death, we have been hit by waves of sorrow at unexpected times and at unexpected places.  We are reminded daily that Jake is no longer in Arizona with his little family and tears will well up and our hearts will be sad.  We strive to comfort one another and do our best to comfort our daughter and our grandchildren in these hard days, weeks, months and years that lay ahead.  The reality that he is "gone" and we can't see him anymore is a hard reality to accept. Even our understanding of where his spirit has gone and the fact that we will see him again sometime, at difficult moments, doesn't assuage our grief like we would want it to.  We miss him and he know that he absence has left a gaping hole in the lives of so many people who love him, especially Jordan and his children.

A few weeks ago there was an article in the newspaper about a book called "Lament for a Son" by Nicholas Wolterstorff, a Christian philosopher.  I ordered the book and read it immediately.  As I read this book, I found that I have felt many of the same emotions that he felt when his son died in a climbing accident.  He offers precious insight into loss and grief.

He says:  I cannot fit it together.  I can only, with Job, endure...I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and resurrecter of Jesus Christ.  I also believe that my son's life was cut off in his prime.  I cannot fit the pieces together...to the most agonized question I have ever asked I do not know the answer.  I do not know why God would watch him fall.  I do not know why God would watch me wounded.  I cannot even guess.

Not even the best of words can take away the pain...Please, don't say that it's not really so bad. Because it is.  Death is awful, demonic.  If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, its not so bad, you do not sit with me in grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me.  Over there, you are of no help.  What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is.  I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation.  To comfort me, you have to come close.  Come sit by me on my mourning bench.

We took him too much for granted.  Perhaps we all take each other too much for granted.  The routines of life distract us, our own pursuits make us oblivious; our anxieties and sorrows, unmindful. The beauties of the familiar go unremarked.  We do not treasure each other enough.

It is the neverness that is so painful.  Never again to be here with us, never to sit with us at table, never to travel with us, never to laugh with us, never to cry with us, never to embrace us as he leaves for school, never to see his brothers and sisters marry.  All the rest of our lives we must live without him.  Only our death can stop the pain of his death.

Nevertheless, Wolterstorff deems his sorrow precious:

Grief is existential testimony to the worth of the one loved.  That worth abides.  So I own my grief.  I do not try to put it behind me, to get over it, to forget it.  God is appalled by death.  My pain over my son's death is shared by his pain over my son's death.  And yes, I share in his pain over his son's death.  God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers.  Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus because he loved him.

Faith is a footbridge you don't know will hold you up over the chasm until you're forced to walk out onto it.  I will look at the world through tears.  Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see.

In the valley of suffering, despair and bitterness are brewed.  But there also character is made.  The valley of suffering is the vale of soul-making.