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Why Grief?


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?