an inconvenient grief. www.alisonward.me
Numbness.
I feel mixed emotions:
sometimes deep longing.
It’s all ok.
Courage.
Deep pain, even anguish.
Relief.
‘We fight to live
And then we fight to die’
CS Lewis observed that grief feels so much like fear. I would agree, except to say it feels like raw fear without the anxiety that I have always attached to fear. I want to be left alone yet I am not brave enough to be alone. I want to rest yet I want to be active. I want to lie down and die, yet I must go on. Grief is so many different emotions rolling and emerging from the soup of the soul. It’s pain, fear, longing, joy, relief, guilt, anguish, courage, numbness all bubbling up at different times and then at the same time. And then when tears are over, it’s calmness and satisfaction and the Comforter is there, wrapping my soul in the arms of Jesus this side of heaven just as Steve is in the arms of Jesus on that side of heaven. Oh, we grieve with hope! Just like these words:
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
1Thess 4: 13-18
On the 24th Sept 2020 real life or death experience happened in my life. My husband of 44 years died. On the same day, I received multiple emails into my inbox just like on every other day, but this time my to do list was really life or death, not like the daily tasks I usually feel are so important they can’t possibly wait till tomorrow. This time, it was all in perspective. This was life and death. A real moment, the second most important. The moment of my husband’s death, next to the day of his birth. Steve would often say to me, when I was worried and hassled by life’s little things, “is it life or death? Will someone die if you don’t get that done today?”Now, it was real, time to press pause on everything ‘normally normal’ and pay attention to what was the most important current event. A really important, significant day. A day that would change my life for the rest of it.The day of my husband’s death. Yes, death is the only way we will get out of this life, the only way it will end. He knew he would die a painful death from prostate cancer that had spread to the bones, yet he embraced it till the end, refusing medication that would dull his mind, still sharp and insightful and wanting to read theology. I knew he was being perfected when the day before he died, he groaned and cried out in agony while the home nurse turned him, and when she said “I’m so sorry”- what he said astounded me: “not at all” in the most polite tone of voice he could possibly muster at the time. This was a man who, like us all, was impatient at times, desirous of independence, wanting to be his own man. Yet, in his severe affliction, he was gracious enough to excuse those who caused him more pain.
Grief is so private and yet, it’s public, the object of one’s grief also grieved by others, also being able to be observed from the outside of one’s soul looking in, as CS Lewis so eloquently described in “A grief observed”. The emotions are so big, so brash they cannot be ignored. They scream at you, shout from the soul that you must obey, must stop and listen, must give place to this giant lurking around every corner catching up to you when you least expect it.
It’s vicious, this attack on my soul, this grabbing and pulling at my emotions until the dark is darker still. It’s unavoidable, this assault on my senses. I hear him, feel him in the bed with me and then I awake to full consciousness that it cannot be, it is habit, it is long years. He is with me, around me. I want him gone; as he is! Gone for good. I am here for the now, I need to live for right now. I am rooted and grounded in the love of God. No tomorrow can suffice for me, I am in the here and now, may as well stay here.
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