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?

Of course the answer revealed itself indirectly. When two people get married and go on a honeymoon, after a week or two, the honeymoon vacation is over, but that doesn’t mean the honeymoon itself is over, but it changes as the two people learn to live with each other, to incorporate the new spouse and their relations into the pattern of daily life. As a newlywed, you now have not only your birthday, and those in your family, but now your anniversary, their birthday, their family traditions, and so on. Your life, some say, has grown in complexity, but I would say, has grown in depth, in new dimensions that expands your view of the world, in new colors of experience (hopefully mostly positive!!) that you would NEVER have known apart from marrying this person.

It would seem that grief is similar. Once it comes into your life, you are forever changed. It never goes away. It will shut your life down for a time, but at some point, it is time to start learning to live with it, to begin to incorporate it into the new normal of your life. The surprising thing is that the better you can do this, and it is different for each person and relationship, the more you see your life has deepened, and in ways you could never have imagined or experienced any other way.

But, why, and is it worth it? I don’t fully know. I do know that one of God’s primary attributes is love. As a being of complete love, He desires we become the same. He is too wise, and too compassionate(!) to leave us with an incomplete picture of all that love means, so that we may choose how we respond to love, from Him, and from others. If love is a grafting of individual lives into a new organism, and when one of those original lives are pulled away, it is a real and significant injury to the remaining organism. Grief is the healing process of sealing the wound. And it always leaves a scar. Always. The stronger the love the bigger the scar.

I grieve all the deeper when I see someone who has not learned to let grief take its course, but clings to it, like someone grabbing hard to the blade of a knife, afraid to let go, keeping the wound fresh, never letting it heal, never allowing healthy scar tissue to form as they enter daily life. It cripples their hearts, rather than deepening them.

I have seen the physical manifestations of grief in the changes to one’s appearance. I have seen people whose faces have turned hard and bitter because of unhealthy grief. I have also seen to my wonder, and honestly, to my joy, men and women, both, who were glamourous in their youth, become even more beautiful after their grief. There is a dignity and depth to the beauty that truly seems to go beyond skin deep. It can be as profound as going from a 2D movie to a 3D. It is as if their outer beauty has become more transparent, revealing the soul within, their inner glory is shining through, making the surface beauty come alive, like stained glass with warm light on the other side, versus darkness.

Perhaps that is part of why—grief is an event that affects our whole being—body, mind, heart and soul. It shatters us, and yet as we heal, it melds the different parts of our being even more closely, integrating our spirit and flesh in a way lesser events cannot hope to. It brings our spirit to the surface, both revealing and changing our inner being and locking it more firmly into our countenance. 

It is an opportunity to become more whole spiritually, to become more spiritually aware, even in this flesh, and thus move closer to the image of Christ Himself. Love touched by healthy grief eventually somehow sees the colors of life through a richer palette, more sensitive to the deeper tones it couldn’t see before due to the brightness of its innocence and naïveté.

Grief seems to be something to embrace, and neither shun nor cling to. It will leave its mark regardless, yet we can choose how that mark is left. That may be the best tribute to the one we grieve.

SDG