Thoughts on Grief

On Halloween Day, October 31st 1998, my mother died. I was ten years old. There can be no doubt that this event shaped me unlike any other, in ways which are entirely evident to me, and in ways that remain unknowable. The death of a parent has a peculiar effect on a child; it creates an unresolvable question, an inability to know oneself apart from the grief suffered. Because of course, no ten-year-old knows who they are, they don’t know where life will take them, and they don’t know who they will become. All of which is to say, grief is a key ingredient which is baked into the person I have become.

There is a close relationship between grief and wisdom. Grief affords you insights that others do not possess, an ability to see suffering as an integral part of reality. Suffering is always around us, always in the world, and yet some have become adept at avoiding it. Most of the time, when we are confronted by adversity we’re given a choice, we can either turn away from it, or towards it. Turning away from it is to perpetuate an illusion. The image which comes to mind is that of a person covering their ears and singing loudly; it’s positivity at its worst, a sickly, shallow kind of positivity. This is the antithesis of wisdom. It stunts one’s own development and spiritual growth. A grief visited is an invitation to wisdom, it joins you through an unspoken shibboleth to countless others.

Wisdom doesn’t sit right in the eyes of a child. My experience afforded me an old soul. I was always a somewhat detached child, always aware of myself as a character within a story, and always occupying space at the margins. An experience which to some degree equipped me with eyes capable of perceiving the pain of others. But to be honest, my default assumption, which I’ve become far better at disguising with humor and sarcasm over time, is that I know better. A knowing which I have sought to balance with not taking life too seriously, which has also resulted in an inability to take serious people seriously either.

I think travelling to the edge is a helpful analogy. Grief is a kind of journey to the edge; sometimes we choose to go on such journeys, and sometimes such journeys choose us. We journey to the edge, but we can’t stay there. We ultimately must find our way back to the middle, lest we perish. But perishing is an option. Take Jesus - he “chose” (possibly) to perish on the edge. There is a gentle lie that we all like to perpetuate, that you’ll be fine in the end, you’ll get through it, healing will win out, but that is not necessarily true. In fact, it’s ultimately never true. As a minister I have buried quite a few people over the years, and most of them believed they’d get better in the end. Even pessimists turn towards optimism at the closing of the day. For those of us however, who have chosen to carry on, there is the path of healing, there is the journey back to the middle. This journey does not ignore or suppress what has passed, rather it turns towards it and incorporates it all, it seeks to hold it all in equilibrium.

The reason the death of my mother seems particularly relevant now has to do with the change on my horizon. When she died in 1998 it precipitated a few changes: moving away from Texas, a new home, a new school, and a new life entirely. Forgive me for narrativizing my life a little, but it seems that it can be divided into a few distinct periods: the time up until my mother’s death (1998); the time up until meeting my wife (2008); and finally, the time up until now, moving back to the United States (2022). Let’s say these represent the books of my life, and book four is about to begin.

The end of this period in my life corresponds with a shift within the world at large, a movement out from covid. If this period of Lent in the Christian calendar represents a time of solemnity, it feels like the last two years have been a sort of extended Lent, a period of collective interior soul-searching, a period of grieving, in part due to the grief caused by covid directly (many have lost friends and loved ones), but also a period of reflection for those who have not lost anyone. It has forced introspection in solitude. I don’t want to strike a trite optimistic note; it’s not as if horror and grief passed somehow justify whatever light lies before us. But nonetheless, there are seasons, and the winter does give way to the spring regardless. In terms of the Christian calendar, I think that’s kind of the point, to inhabit each moment along the way, the death in the death, the resurrection in the resurrection. If all you can think about in the death is the resurrection, then you’re not really there in the death at all.

On a very practical point (and if you’ve ever read my previous articles you’ll know I don’t do practical points. I almost always leave my readers to infer application for themselves): but when it comes to grief there is only one thing anyone can do or say, so it seems worth stating it plainly. You must talk about it. All dimensions of it, the who, the how, the why, and the what if. This is the only way back to the middle. The only thing that can be said.

The equilibrium of which I spoke, has to do with finding sufficient gratitude. I need to qualify what I mean by this. I’m no fan of gratitude in the manner that it is often framed within comfortable Christianity. “Let’s go in a circle and say what we’re thankful for,” is not the kind of gratitude I’m talking about, this is most often a performance of sorts. It is performative Christianity. The type of gratitude of which I speak is more of a disposition, it’s not specific. It is both very in the moment, in the now, here in the kingdom present, in this reigning peace, but also at the same time it is grand in scope, relating to what I said about being a character within a story, as if I have been granted this unique vantage within some epic unfolding narrative. Surely, the antithesis of gratitude is that most horrible of things: cliché. To be truly grateful is to resist any conformity, it is to allow the truth of my being to be as it is. It is to be in tune with and follow the deepest contours of the self. Never mediating myself through right belief, custom, opinion. Damn all that. Damn your bandwagon.

This is, as it were, the great counterweight to grief, the truth of me. A truth that lies far deeper than this external persona. A purpose which lies beyond even that trite word ‘purpose’. There is a faith beyond faith, a purpose beyond purpose, grief beyond grief, and a gratitude beyond gratitude, on and on I could go, all these words have been drained of their depth… We must stretch them all to their outer most limits, and then come once again to rest here in the middle. To hold it all. And to be.