Grief Ponderings

Grief is such a perplexing emotion. Seems to have a mind of its own. I’ve experienced grief before this recent loss of two of my dearest friends, but not on this level. I wasn’t close to the children I lost as they were babies. The loss of my grandparents didn’t shake me because I just wasn’t close with them. They never got real with me my whole life. The women I lost were real with me. There for me. Answered my phone calls when I couldn’t take another day. They gave of themselves to me by sharing their life experiences. I drew from those stories, learned from them, and reminded myself of them in the battle of hard times.

And now my friends are gone. Both dying within four months of one another. The second to die made the loss of the first feel worse than it did before. I’ll be okay. Honestly I will. I’m not over here hiding under my covers, not brushing my teeth as the world goes by or anything.

But if you know me, you know I have to pick everything apart and look at all of the pieces before I make my mind up on how I feel about something.

So far, what I know is grief stinks. I also know that it’s hard to swallow the tears away and slap on a smile and ignore it. Just doesn’t work. Simple as that.

The platitudes you hear almost make the grief worse. “You’ll see them again someday.” “They’re no longer hurting.” “Up dancing on streets of gold” I’m guilty of saying these statements to others over the years. And if you really look at it, it’s just our humanistic way of trying to make someone who is grieving not to grieve. To feel better.

Think about it this way. We’re always shushing our kids when they cry. We try to intervene and fix the problem so they stop crying. From newborn all the way on in life we do this. Why isn’t it just simply ok to cry? Ok to ball your eyes out, take deep breath and keep going. What would Jesus do? (Remember that saying? Anyone still have a wwjd bracelet?😆) Jesus wept. He cried when Lazarus died.

We humans want to fix other humans. We want to spare them from pain. Somewhere we gotten the notion that we deserve to be happy, we deserve for our kids to be happy. But there will be times when we just simply need to cry I guess. I’ve cried so much in my former life and so much in the beginning of my salvation as I came to grips with my past that honestly I don’t want to cry anymore. I try not to. For now I guess I’ll have to let the tears flow when they do. My mother in law said it best, tears are cleansing.

When my 11 year old started crying over the loss of my second, I just simply let her cry. (My friends were so awesome that they both were respectful to my children, creating a place in their hearts) What could I say to my daughter? What could I do? I told her it was ok to cry and that it would pass soon. In a few minutes she was better and we kept on with what we were doing. I guess that’s what grief looks like.

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