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?

The Death of Despair

Today I attended a funeral for a distant relative. I know his daughters better than I knew him, and unfortunately, though we are the same age and grew up in the same town, I don’t know them as well as I’d like, and we talked today about rectifying that over the holidays.

In a strange way, I enjoy going to funerals, and it is a bittersweet experience, because you learn so many really wonderful things about the person that you really wish you’d known when they were alive. I am blessed to come from a large extended family where multiple generations have kept in touch, and while there are a few rascals, most everyone is solid salt of the earth, even some of the rascals, which makes for some good stories. The tragedy is that my generation doesn’t really have the bonds with each other that the previous ones do. And we are beginning to lose large numbers of my grandparents’ generation (we’re a long-lived clan)—one more probably won’t make it through tonight, literally. Her funeral is already scheduled for next weekend.

This semester, we unexpectedly lost one of the powerhouse professors in our department, and yet already things are moving forward administratively to take care of his responsibilities. His memorial service will be next weekend also, and it will be full of stories and remembrances and praises, as you’d expect, and as he deserves. But life goes on.

I found myself during the service today asking the question, “What is the point of living life, much less a life well lived?” As the Preacher, Solomon, observed in Ecclesiastes 2:12-16:

Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly.

What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done?

 I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness.

 The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness;

but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both.

 Then I said to myself,

   “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?”

I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.”

 For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;

   the days have already come when both have been forgotten.

Like the fool, the wise too must die!

The first answer to my question that I gave myself was to look around at the packed chapel to see the lives this man impacted, and knowing there were many more that wanted to be there. The cynic in me replied that it just begs the question, putting it off and the real question was why any of us was here—the cycle of life and death is just mechanistic meaninglessness, for even the universe will one day end, so what?

But God commanded us to live and declared that our existence is not only good, but very good. If He is Good and Holy, then these two facts are of critical importance. The fact of our living, and the urge to live well of necessity flow from the character and person of God. Without that being true, the Preacher is right. Even Paul concedes that if it is only for this life that we live as Christians, then we are to be most pitied of all people. Without the reality of a good God, Life is a burden, and one that should be shucked. If the destiny of our lives is annihilation sooner or later, then it really doesn’t matter which, sooner, or later.

But, if God, then everything changes.

One of my favorite verses about mortality is Psalm 116:15: “Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints.”  What care and comfort that the Almighty Creator sees the passing of our loved ones as precious! Anything that God deems precious can never be a waste.

Is your God big enough to redeem your mortality?

SDG