Live & Grieve

Allow me to begin by sharing something I wrote… I don’t even know when, only that it was at a time of great loss.

In the midst of life we are in death.
Who told the sun it could still shine?
Or the birds they could still sing?
Or the flowers they could still bloom?
How can the world keep moving as if nothing happened?
I want a dark, overcast day
    with rain to mingle with my tears…
   or be the tears when I run out…
I want silence because there is nothing left to say.
I don’t want hope or even comfort.
I want to wail and gnash my teeth
    at the unfairness of it all.
I want to just be with all of it
    because the pain tells me   
    the love was real and deep and true…
    because somehow the sorrow connects me to them.

And yet life rarely gives us the time to stop and just be with it all. There are things to take care of, bills to pay, jobs to return to, kids to comfort, a house to clean and laundry to do. Worse yet there are happy things to attend to: birthdays, weddings, baby showers.

How do we live AND grieve… or grieve AND live? This is the tension we deal with as we go through life, isn’t it? Even if we’re not grieving the death of a loved one we’re grieving other different, but sometimes no less significant, losses… the loss of a job, the loss of an ability, the loss of a relationship, the loss of our youth.

The teacher Ecclesiastes was a realist who profoundly reminded us that each life will experience both sides of that coin simply because this is what it means to be human. Being human means constantly balancing the building up and tearing down, arriving and dying, hurting and healing, crying and laughing, mourning and dancing (Eccl. 3:1-8). To say that one side of the equation is good and the other bad is to deprive ourselves of opportunities to learn and grow in wisdom, compassion and grace.

What happens if we turn away from the hard task of grieving?

To turn away from the hard stuff is to remain aloof from our feelings, to avoid feeling vulnerable, and to deny ourselves the full depth of love. It isolates us from others, slows or stops the healing process and ensures that our grief will probably come out in other, less productive ways (like anger, depression, cynicism).

What happens if, in our grief, we turn away from the joyful things in life? (I mean this over time, not immediately, although sometimes it is immediately.)

To turn away from the more joyful stuff, as some feel like they should when they grieve, is to deny ourselves the sustenance of life that will replenish us, heal us, feed our very souls with light and life. It is to deny ourselves connections with others, finding purpose in living. And it really doesn't honor those we're grieving.

Paula D’Arcy, in her book When People Grieve, shares that she spent three years deeply grieving the loss of her husband and very young daughter. In her own words she was still “handcuffed to the memories” of what she had lost. Then one day her friend, Paul, confronted her. “You see yourself as a grieving widow and mother, nothing more. You’re not choosing to live your life today. You’ve given up on the person you were meant to be.”

While his words were hard to hear, they were also her wake up call. Deep inside she didn’t want to cling to grief, half-living. She didn’t want the final tribute of her life to be the fact that knowing her husband and daughter had diminished her ability to love. She wanted the legacy of their lives to be that they helped increase her ability to love. And so, she decided to fully live. 

Hopefully, we too will learn to fully live, even while grieving. Remember, grieving has its own timeline for each person and each situation. And sometimes grief comes back again long after we thought we’d moved on. To get through this life that is so full of joy and loss, we need to learn to live and grieve.

I know all too well that this isn’t easy and the best advice I may have to give is to fake it until you make it. Eventually one day you’ll find that you’re not faking it so much anymore.

Let me share a ew stories of living and grieving.

Just this week, I had a woman named Kirsten show up at my door canvassing to get out the vote. She came from San Antonio. A little choked up, Kirsten told me her mother died four months ago and before she died, she told her that she wished Kirsten could vote twice – once for her. Her mom obviously didn’t live to vote herself, but when Kirsten had the opportunity to come to Wisconsin to volunteer, she took it, hoping that in some way she was helping to fulfill her mother’s wish. Live and grieve.

Twenty-one years ago, I had a church organist by the name of Henry. He and his significant other, Mona, often used to play beautiful duets for worship as she was also a gifted pianist. Then Mona had a recurrence of cancer. It wasn’t good, but the one thing that kept her going was the desire to be at her daughter Jennifer’s wedding. As the wedding grew closer, it became apparent that Mona was not going to be in any condition to travel to South Carolina for the wedding, nor was she going to make it to the original wedding date. So, with a ton of help, we moved the wedding here in the span of two weeks. (Never underestimate the power and determination of a bunch of women - just sayin'.) They planned everything – bridal shower, hair and nail appointments, cake, flowers, reception... you name it. It was amazing.

Jennifer and Justin flew in on Friday morning and made it to the hospital to see Mona by about noon. Unfortunately, by that time she was unresponsive. They remained with her until she died later that afternoon. The couple chose to go through with the wedding anyway. Living and grieving held in tension, and allowing a celebration of life to also celebrate her mother and her last desire to be at the wedding.

It would have been nice to be Jewish for that wedding. Perhaps you’re familiar with the Jewish wedding tradition of stepping on a glass and breaking it.

Sharon Brous, in The Amen Effect, shares the story of this tradition. "A generation or two after the great destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, a young couple got married and there was a big, communal feast. But during the course of the evening, the groom’s father, a rabbi, grew increasingly agitated as he saw the wedding guests, including his esteemed colleagues, dancing, schmoosing, and boozing with reckless abandon.

It’s too much! He thought. As if the Temple hadn’t burned at all! He grabbed an expensive, precious white glass; held it high above his head; and smashed it to the ground. It was the sound of shattered glass that sobered them. And they remembered.

The tradition continues today. The logic is that even in that wonderful moment, surrounded by love, you don’t forget that you are part of the rest of humanity, that there is still anguish, aching and struggle in the world and we are all inexorably connected to one another."

Live and grieve. 

As Martha Hickman once wrote, “In the midst of the deepest winter, of the darkest night, what are we to do?  Acknowledge the cold and the dark, the mystery of an unknowable black ocean that seems to stretch into infinity… and then sing!"

Or, to put it another way, she said, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

Love & Light,

Kaye