Grief is a strange friend.
Some reflections on Grief
Grief is a strange friend.
Oft long expected, yet the moment of their arrival always catches off guard.
The catch in the throat, the warmth behind the eyes which teeters on the edge of vertigo, the numbness of disbelief caught in the paradox of acceptance.
What is, was.
Who was, however, remains loved.
How do we do this? We recognise that someone has moved from the present tense to the past and yet our emotions seem to (finally) become real and enduring. It's as though at the moment of separation the past and the future flee each other, leaving us caught in the middle wondering which way to turn.
Of course whether we make a choice or not, we find ourselves moving along in time. The clock keeps ticking, life keeps moving, and we find ourselves one foot at a time making our pilgrimage alongside our strange friend Grief.
If this were a movie, Grief would be robed in black and carry a sickle, perhaps complete with a plague doctor's mask. Somehow Nazgul like they'd exude a cold chill with an ominous vibe, casting a shadow upon the path beside us.
Yet Grief is seldom monochromatic. They tend to wear the faces of those we love but rather than walking ever present at our side they potter around our daily lives, almost intruding in the mundane moments. An echo of laughter as the kettle boils. The satisfaction of a good biscuit. A remembered comment looking out at a view once shared. These moments can be affirming. They are often haunting. Sometimes they lift our spirits such that we are more than ourselves, but become more of who we were when we were with them. Yet at times we can feel like Hollom - first becalmed at sea and then trapped with no means of escape as the waters close in around us as we descend to the depths of our own private hells.
Grief is a strange friend, for in time everyone comes to know them. Yet the commonality of knowing rarely manages to bridge the isolation of knowing.
"I know how you feel," they say to us.
"No you don't," we reply. "No one could."
Even those moments of connection that do occur don't endure. The hug comes to an end. The visitors helpfully place their empty cups in the kitchen on the way out, and as the door closes behind them we are left alone with our thoughts and our hearts. Even those lying in bed next to their beloved find themselves stranded on the desert islands of their emotions - whether they be passionate and intense, numb and dull, or filled with procrastinating distractions.
Tears. Tears are a tricky thing.
Sometimes they fall freely. Sometimes they sting. Sometimes they never come at all.
A metric of grief, tears are not; healing or devastating though they can be.
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
Indeed some tears are Holy.
He had travelled along the dusty roads with fearful and confused companions some 15 or 20 miles. He knew to what he was walking, and on arriving he discovers those present to be already grieving. His friend who had been sick had died. His friend's sisters explain the situation, whilst angrily complaining - "Where were you? You should have been here."
"Show me where you have laid him".
"Come and see."
He follows, and others follow him. Perhaps his chest felt tighter. Perhaps his stomach heaved.
For soon he begins to weep.
Tears of sorrow. Tears of loss. Tears of love.
"See," they say, "see how he loved him!"
In these tears the presence of God amongst humanity embraces our frailty in the recognition of our mortality.
Jesus is grieved.
"Now I know how you feel," he might say to us.
"It hurts," he might say to us.
"This is wrong," he might say to us.
With tears tracing trickles of grief across his dust stained face, Jesus speaks with unexpected resolve: "Roll away the stone."
Questioning him for but a moment they see the strength of his love and open the grave.
Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
Grief is a strange friend. As the bard sings: ! walk a lonely road The only one that I have ever known, Don't know where it goes But it's home to me, and I walk alone. We share a pilgrimage together, we and Grief, a journey on a road that far ahead has gone, And I must follow, if I can. Routines once familiar now have changed. A constancy once taken for granted now felt more keenly than any amputation or medical ailment.
Grief inhabits our bodies and seems at times to wear our own face for us.
Those around us do not see us as we are but us as we are cloaked in the griefs which they recognise from their own but which are not in fact their own. The reflection in the mirror can never quite shake your hand no matter how close it gets to the glass.
Yet though we see as if in a mirror dimly, there is one who sees us face to face. For he has truly taken our place.
Some tears are Holy, I said.
Tears spilled for Lazarus. Tears spilled for Jerusalem. Tears spilled for humanity, in the garden and on the cross.
There is something profoundly unnatural about death for we were created to live, not to die. Yet for our sins (personal and collective) death comes to us all; whether kings, or desperate men. Yet it is not death which makes us equal, but that we each were fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God to live and bring him glory. It is because we are created with his love that Jesus reveals the depth of God's anguish over the death of each mortal that dies. Again and again his signs and wonders are precipitated by the words 'moved with deep compassion, he...' heals the sick, the blind, the lame, the leper, and the dead. Yet healing ad hoc in this way, as miraculous as it is, was not enough. For the saying is trustworthy and true: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
And to save sinners, Christ must die as one.
The sheer impossibility we encounter in the death of our loved ones is, unfathomably, embraced by God himself in the flesh as he dies with us and for us on the Cross. There is a moment first of identification with us, then secondly of disassociation; embracing mortality God does in our mortality what we ourselves could not do and offers once and for all a perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. This reveals to us the fullness and glory of God; who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - a revelation which is unveiled through yet more tears of grief.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
The disassociation with Christ on the Cross becomes for us an invitation which we are intended to accept; for God has divorced our mortal nature from the sin which causes and deserves our mortality and proposes a holy unity between our own spirits and bodies and his Holy Spirit, that repenting of our sins and placing our trust in him we might forego our titles as 'mortal sinners' and become heirs of faith, children of God.
Jesus, in taking our place, extends to us God's grace; a cloak for the journey, and a staff to walk with.
For Grief is a strange friend, who is friends even with God himself.
We walk, Grief and I, through the valley of the shadow of death. Yet even there I shall fear no evil, for the Lord, the Shepherd of my soul, is with me.
I walk and hold before the Lord fresh memories of times recent and times long past. Of laughter, of stories, of joyful introductions. And this night, the first without one who has always been there, I find the bittersweet blur of tears obscuring these very words.
It has been but hours yet the past wrestles with the future, and Grief has come knocking once again.
Yet I thank the Lord that she has simply stepped through the narrow gate, entering into eternal life and treading a path that runs west of the moon and east of the sun.
With every blessing,
Samuel S. Thorp
Written on the 4th of October 2024
In Remembrance of my Gran; Sheila Thorp.
Italics in order:
Hollom - Master and Commander, the movie.
Gandalf, Lord of the Rings.
John 11
Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Greenday
The Road Goes Ever On and On - Tolkien
Death be not proud - John Donne
John 20
The Road Goes Ever On and On - Tolkien