Grief is such a weird thing. I recently came upon one of my favorite pictures of my grandma and me. She passed away a month before our wedding in October of 2003. That means it has been a little over twenty two years.
There are some days that my grandma doesn’t really cross my mind at all. Or if she does, it’s little blip of a memory here, a little blip of a memory there. The memory blips on by without much more than a smile at the memory.
But, there are days like the day I came across the picture. I tried to let the picture just bring a smile to my face with no other emotion other than thankfulness. I picked it up, stared at it, set it down. I couldn’t help it, the urge was too strong, I picked up the picture again. This time allowing myself to feel the pain of the loss. The sweetness of the memories that flooded my heart as I stared at the picture. Acknowledging the fact that I still miss her so darn much.
I am pretty sure this picture was the same Christmas season that we walked the halls of the nursing home singing the song Silent Night. My grandma’s dementia had been taking over her life for some time, but the words flowed out of her mouth easily. Twenty two Christmases later and I can only hear her voice when I hear Silent Night. I don’t sob as much when hearing it, but the first few Christmases after her death? I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed some more.
That’s the thing about grief, you never know when it will hit you. Sometimes things make complete sense and you can pinpoint why you’re overwhelmed with the grief. Other times, you’re simply sitting and staring at the fields and you’re all of a sudden trying to swallow the lump in your throat.
I don’t know if you need permission, but I am going to give it to you. It’s okay to grieve forever. I don’t know why people think they get to put a timeline on YOUR grief, but they do. I have a friend who was told ten DAYS after losing her daughter that it was time to “get over it”. Worse yet? It was her own mother that told her that.
The thing about grief, is that it ebbs and flows, but it’s always there. The loss of the person doesn’t mean that you’ll eventually forget them and who they were to you. You don’t “move on” or “get over it”. You walk forward in a life without them physically here with you. The truth is? The grief you have is a space for them in your heart. The space that reminds you how much you love them. We grieve big, because we love big.
Then there is grief of mine that I have a hard time putting into words. It’s the grief of Shaun’s dad and brother. Two people I have never met, but I grieve often. I grieve the “what ifs” and “what could it be likes”. I grieve the fact that my husband had to lose a brother at the age of four, and holds almost no memories of having a brother. I grieve the fact that my husband lost a dad in eighth grade and was left to figure out things by only what his dad had taught him about “being a man”. And while I am so deeply grateful for the men who stepped into the spaces to help guide him, I still grieve for the boy who didn’t have his own father standing there with him.
I stare at the pictures we have of both of them in our house and grieve the fact that, on this side of heaven, we can only hold them in our hearts. I grieve the fact that, on this side of heaven, we can only imagine a life with them. We (the kids and I) only know life without them. I grieve that.
Grief doesn’t feel fair. I don’t know that it is meant to be. You can say the old adage “life isn’t fair”. But that doesn’t change the fact that grief hurts, a lot.
You can grieve the “I wish it would have been different”. Or the “this sucks, but I don’t know what I feel other than that.” Those types of grief hit weird. You’re sad for the loss, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel the same as other grief. You struggle with feeling guilt because you think you ought to feel “more sad” or “more upset” or “more affected”. The truth is, those griefs are real, and they’re okay.
I think the weirdest grief I have had to battle is the one of “they lived a long life, they’re not in pain” sort of grief. My heart has been devastated by these losses, but my heart understands them better. My heart somehow can make the loss “make sense”. It doesn’t hurt less, just different. Yet, at the same time, does any loss “make sense”? I don’t know.
We know, logically, that we don’t live forever. The logic goes away when it becomes our unwanted reality, though. Somehow we want it to be that everyone does live forever, so we don’t have to endure the loss.
If I am being fully transparent, some of the hardest grief I have walked is the grieving of someone still alive. When creating boundaries that mean not having someone in your life, you have to grieve the relationship. You have to grieve what was, what wasn’t, what is, what isn’t and what may not ever be again. It’s weird. It takes time to work through it. To pray through the boundaries and knowing that boundaries aren’t to hurt yourself, or others, but to simply protect you, and others.
I read somewhere once that creating boundaries are helpful and a certain kindness, because it is allowing the person to NOT sin against you. You’re helping them to not sin against you, to not hurt you by creating the boundary. In turn, that boundary is helping you to not return the sin and hurt that can so easily happen.
The only benefit to this grief, is there is always a hope for reconciliation. You could play the other side of this and say “what if it doesn’t come and it’s too late”. I’ll simply answer with this, life is always short. Each day could be someone’s last. Do not guilt someone into a relationship because you don’t agree with the boundaries they’ve set. Boundaries are set for a reason, and you can respect them. You might even judge them, just keep those comments to yourself, they’re not useful or helpful to anyone.
I’m so thankful that we don't serve a distant God who watches our pain from afar. I find such a peaceful comfort in knowing that Jesus was a ‘man of sorrows’ and was ‘acquainted with grief.’ He doesn’t look at my twenty-two years of missing my grandma, or the 'what-ifs' of my husband’s family, and tell me to 'get over it.' Instead, He fulfills the promise of Psalm 34:18: 'The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.' He doesn't just watch me grieve; He mercifully sits in it with me. He honors the love that stays behind, even when the world tells us it’s time to move on.
All of this to say, I’ll keep the picture. I’ll keep picking it up, staring at it, and putting it down until the next time. I’ll keep listening for her too-high-key voice in the verses of Silent Night. Whether it is the grief from a loss twenty-two years ago, the grief of “what if” or the grief of a necessary boundary, I’ve learned that I need to let it pull up a chair. In the end, I think it’s the best way to live—loving big enough to make the grief feel worth it. Remembering the grief is mine, it doesn’t have a timeline, it doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else. It is simply the space in my heart where love still lives. I’m letting it be, one ‘blip’ of a memory at a time.
Comments
Post a Comment