Caskets aren't supposed to be small enough for one person to carry.
The old aren't supposed to bury the young.
Parents aren't supposed to out-live their children.
Tuesday I watched a young mother hold the arm of her husband as he walked down the chapel aisle, holding the tiny white casket of their little girl. First I heard the sound of that mother shouting the words of Jesus, her face raised to the ceiling, saying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!"
"The only thing we are promised in life is pain," she said.
This young family was not without hope. The funeral service was sprayed wide with shimmery hope. But they were also not without grief. The shimmer of hope is sometimes hard to perceive through a sheet of tears.
Grief is an experience we all have but can't always share. Sure, common grief is often shared grief--as the mother wept, so did the father--but even so, the same grief affects us each differently. "I know how you feel" is almost always a lie. A well-intended lie, but not true nonetheless. The truth is, I've never lost a child, a sibling, a parent, even a close friend; I'm 25 years old and I still have three living grandparents. I don't know grief like that. Grief is individual and personal. "I know how you feel" minimizes grief. It's infuriating to be told that your grief is common, mass-market, plastic grief.
I have experienced grief, though, my own grief at having lost relationships, places, things. My grief is a part of me, a part of me that differentiates me from others. It hurts me in me-type ways.
And you have your grief that I don't know and can't understand.
I grieve that life for another is cut short, that her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and sisters will live with the grief of losing her. I grieve that this world is a world where dads sometimes carry their baby girls in hard, white coffins. I grieve that my friends and family also know loss and pain and sorrow. And I grieve for my own losses. I have my grief.
And you have your grief.
I don't know how you feel. But I know grief.
Grief is a gift that strangely hovers over us when things aren't the way they're supposed to be. But grief is also unnatural in a way. It's not easy to grieve well--we vacillate in the directions of despair or denial. And we know we need help. We need help to walk through sticking, mucky grief with any sense of hope. We need help knowing that it's ok to grieve, that hope doesn't have to whitewash every cry of sorrow, that reminders of healing don't have to accompany every scream of pain.
Give Good Friday its due before progressing to Easter.
Acknowledging our grief and the grief of those around us is often the best and only thing we can do. We can't make it better. We can't make them move on. But we can give them time. We can give them room to grieve as they need to grieve. We can be silent with them and for them. Or we can say, "Here is a place to grieve what you need to grieve how you need to grieve it (Because this world leaves us with a lot of loss--of life, livelihood, ability, dreams, plans, and innocence). Here is a place to feel you-type pain in you-type ways." Here is time for sorrow.
And here is a place for grief.
In case you haven't seen it, please read Kay Warren's interview about grief. It's good stuff for everyone.
The old aren't supposed to bury the young.
Parents aren't supposed to out-live their children.
Tuesday I watched a young mother hold the arm of her husband as he walked down the chapel aisle, holding the tiny white casket of their little girl. First I heard the sound of that mother shouting the words of Jesus, her face raised to the ceiling, saying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!"
"The only thing we are promised in life is pain," she said.
This young family was not without hope. The funeral service was sprayed wide with shimmery hope. But they were also not without grief. The shimmer of hope is sometimes hard to perceive through a sheet of tears.
Grief is an experience we all have but can't always share. Sure, common grief is often shared grief--as the mother wept, so did the father--but even so, the same grief affects us each differently. "I know how you feel" is almost always a lie. A well-intended lie, but not true nonetheless. The truth is, I've never lost a child, a sibling, a parent, even a close friend; I'm 25 years old and I still have three living grandparents. I don't know grief like that. Grief is individual and personal. "I know how you feel" minimizes grief. It's infuriating to be told that your grief is common, mass-market, plastic grief.
I have experienced grief, though, my own grief at having lost relationships, places, things. My grief is a part of me, a part of me that differentiates me from others. It hurts me in me-type ways.
And you have your grief that I don't know and can't understand.
I grieve that life for another is cut short, that her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and sisters will live with the grief of losing her. I grieve that this world is a world where dads sometimes carry their baby girls in hard, white coffins. I grieve that my friends and family also know loss and pain and sorrow. And I grieve for my own losses. I have my grief.
And you have your grief.
I don't know how you feel. But I know grief.
Grief is a gift that strangely hovers over us when things aren't the way they're supposed to be. But grief is also unnatural in a way. It's not easy to grieve well--we vacillate in the directions of despair or denial. And we know we need help. We need help to walk through sticking, mucky grief with any sense of hope. We need help knowing that it's ok to grieve, that hope doesn't have to whitewash every cry of sorrow, that reminders of healing don't have to accompany every scream of pain.
Give Good Friday its due before progressing to Easter.
Acknowledging our grief and the grief of those around us is often the best and only thing we can do. We can't make it better. We can't make them move on. But we can give them time. We can give them room to grieve as they need to grieve. We can be silent with them and for them. Or we can say, "Here is a place to grieve what you need to grieve how you need to grieve it (Because this world leaves us with a lot of loss--of life, livelihood, ability, dreams, plans, and innocence). Here is a place to feel you-type pain in you-type ways." Here is time for sorrow.
And here is a place for grief.
In case you haven't seen it, please read Kay Warren's interview about grief. It's good stuff for everyone.