The Arc of Grief

Hey you,

I know the trend is to be so open and vulnerable with the world about hard things, but here’s the thing I think. Grief is sacred. I share about it because I have words to say, but most in the moment grieving ends up being private. It just is. It is opening a packet of letters when your sister warned you that it contained a last letter from mom. You don’t open that before heading out to play tennis, even with a dear friend. No. You go play tennis and you move the body and the grief around a little bit to loosen it up and then you go open the letter so you can cry a few rivers to touch something your mom touched. That’s going to happen less and less, you know, so you cherish what you can.

You open it and you cry until your facial features are practically indistinguishable, forgetting because you can’t remember that friends are coming to watch a movie and that they will look at you sympathetically and you will cry again, which you can’t do because it takes too much energy at this point. It doesn’t matter if it’s a close friend or if it’s a stranger. Do you know, I still haven’t told my chiropractor or massage therapist about mom’s death. They’re probably wondering why I’m perpetually out of place and full of knots, and I could tell them it’s what grief does to you but then there would come the knowing. One more person knows you are incomplete. You want people to be there, and you don’t. I just heard this quote by C.S. Lewis the other day, and how had I not heard it before?

“With my mother's death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”

It’s true. So much of the time right now I don't know what the fuss is about with what men or women should or shouldn’t do when it is clear to me. They should live. They should live and not die. There are some things fundamental to life and that is one of them. I am one of the lucky ones. My parents didn’t do anything terrible to me. They made mistakes and they passed some bad character traits along with some wonderful ones. They had a baby in a sin-cursed world, which in my opinion is one of the bravest things anyone will ever do.

Anyway. When you find yourself with eyes irredeemably puffy you pop out your old computer glasses and you wear those. Keep computer or fashion glasses on hand and wear them. It won’t actually hide anything, but you pretend they will and pretending can get you a long way. Especially at work if you need to drip a tear or two but can’t stop to actually cry. No one says you can’t stop, but here’s the thing. The world goes on, and bills go on. That’s not a thing of pity either. It’s a salvation, in a way. Grieving 24/7 would kill you fast.

Work, in a way, was a salvation to me. It was routine. It was something to anchor me in a world which I have just admitted is more or less anchor less. I don’t use many cliches anymore. I don’t say Jesus is my anchor. I’m not leaving him, but I am adrift. Whether or not he will ever fish me out of this sea and back onto dry land is not known to me. My best hope is keeping an eye on him at all times so that when I start to sink I know where to turn and who can save me.

He has a little. I used to be deep down in the ocean. Deep down in the darkness with pale, glowing fish of white tissues balled up beside me. I’m not down there anymore 90% of the time. But I am far, far from land. Water stretches out around me everywhere and a few fins circle, waiting for a lapse of faith to strike me. But I tell the Lord, I cannot keep this up. My faith is weak. As weak as Abraham waiting for those nonexistent grains of descendants to appear. As weak as Sarah, laughing in the tent. A baby this time next year? Bah, nonsense.

So I work, because I want to. I accept a job promotion, because I want to make a difference for people. Many people hate their managers, or if they are too nice to hate their managers they hate their job. Managers make or break a job. I sit across the table from Jesus and I ask him, will I make a good manager. Then I forgot I asked him anything and pray for people and he says, “that’s what good managers do.”

I am lost, but at work I can find things. I find solutions. Better ways to work. Ways to encourage people to be whole-hearted about work and not just go to a job because it pays them money.

The future is not rosy but there is a rainbow. A friend, who at the eve of her wedding had a glorious rainbow stretch across the sky did not claim it for herself, as she ought, but came to me and said, “that is your rainbow.” What does one do with friendship like this? It is unbearable. Talk to me of the cross. Talk to me of hard paths. That makes sense. Do not tell me a rainbow of promise is mine. And yet, this memory is indescribably precious to me, even though I had to humble myself to accept this gift. It is easier sometimes to take up a cross than to believe that God gives good things. The most radical faith of my life is tied up in believing that God gives good gifts when reality wears me down to a nothing. A nobody.

I somehow believe the good gifts of God when I eat a sun-warmed tomato on a piece of bread with cheese and lettuce. It is a little more believable when I consider the house that he miraculously dropped in my life, and which has provided a practical shelter for the past three years through immense stresses. It shows in the smell of roses, and fresh plucked basil. I make myself cook, and I make myself touch things and feel things and smell them because touching the earth and its things is a little like touching mom’s letters. They tie me to my makers. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, and if you are grieving, you should eat off it.

To me, communion is the best act of grief. Eat drink, for in so doing…

You remember. There is something sacred tied up in grief, and there is something sacred tied up in the strange act of communion. It is as if the grieving come the nearest to God’s heart, and yet as a response we are told to eat and drink. Perhaps we do this because we know more than anyone else the darkness of the path through Gethsemane where we are weighed down by grief, despair, sorrow, shame, and horrific pain. No, I do not claim to be equal with my Savior. He bore it for everyone, I only bear it for myself and a little for my family. He took it as a sacrifice, I take it as a terrible life circumstance. There are many differences, and yet, I know. In these last dark months I have stayed with him and prayed. He has been in my Gethsemane with me, and because of that, I am with him in his. Time, after all, to our Jesus doesn’t mean quite what we think it means. A thousand years to him is as a day.

Perhaps I take too many liberties, but those scars… I have felt them over and over.

Jesus, I remember you. What a strange honor it is to be in this place with you.

Love,

L. Raine