This past weekend, a college friend lost her 21 year old son
very unexpectedly. As the family wrestles with the usual mechanics of a loss,
notifying everyone and preparing for the services, there are several things that
accentuate the intensity of this time: his
youth, the suddenness of his death, their first born, the ‘wrong-ness’ of a
parent losing a child, the proximity to Christmas, and so on. I find myself
trying to imagine myself in that situation. Has she already gotten his gift(s)?
As she picks them up, and it brings fresh waves of sadness over her, what does
she do with it? When they steel themselves to go through his things and find
the presents he’d gotten for them, with sticky notes on them, saying “Mom” and “Dad,”
ready to be wrapped, how do you begin to sort out the tangle of emotions that
erupt unbidden from an already shattered heart?
They are going through a particularly brutal kind of hell.
Those of us further in space and time from the rawness of the loss are faced
with our own questions. Yes, we are mortal, and there are all kinds of
theological reasonings for our mortality. We can even discuss how the Fall was
God’s Plan A, and mysteriously draw comfort from that—how He was not and is not
caught off guard by what we do, but planned for it, just as parents plan
flooring and furniture options around the age and messiness of their children.
When the mess, accident or violent tantrum happens, the clean up was included
in the equation of what setting to live in.
But why grief? Why was that in the equation?
When an ant is squashed, the other ants generally just step around it and go on
with life, the vacant place filled by another with barely a blip in efficiency.
Why does love have to have the negative aspect of grief instead of just the
positives, so when Good-Bye happens, we can just move on?
