Your Timeline Is Not Mine.
A letter to my younger friends...
I can tell that for some of you, my grief is getting old. "Shouldn't you be further along by now?" you ask. "When will you be done mourning?" "Is there any way we can help you get over this, after all it's been almost three months?"
Many of you are young and have experienced very little loss in your lifetime. Like me, you have just begun your family. Your husband or wife shares this joy with you. Your parents embrace their role as grandparents. In many cases, even you grandparents are bragging to the other folks in the senior community about their great-grandkids. This isn't me assuming some air of superiority; it's just fact.
Not so for me. Dalton's grief would be difficult enough. But I grieve more than my husband. I grieve my grandfather, who died in February, my mother who died last November, my father who died in 1994.
I grieve my entire family.
Iain is all that remains.
So please don't rush me through this. For once, i am trying to let myself heal. I am feeling the pain and still living with it. I am not numbing it in dangerous ways. I am not hiding out in my home. I am not isolating myself from those who love me. Crap, I'm not even taking any anti-depressants.
I just am.
And I believe that God is an will continue to bring healing.
Perhaps it makes you uncomfortable, wondering what the future might bring. Most of us will suffer tremendous loss in this life. Wouldn't it be easier if we thought of it as a temporary, even fleeting "thing to get past."
I'm not ready to past it yet. Sure, I'm ready to be done with the social awkwardness, the self-indulgent blog, the selfish monopolizing of conversations, the single-mindedness of my life. But if that is the price I pay for experiencing the pain of loss, for now that's alright. I can't imagine what I would be if I didn't, but I doubt I could be called human.
posted by Tricia @ 10:49 PM
6 Comments:
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Trisha,
Nice to hear from you again. You are so honest and write nothing but the truth! I'm one of those who believes that after loosing so many close family members, I don't know that there is such thing as "done mourning," or "moved on." I think that for the rest of your life, everyday something will remind you of each individual. I think only take one day at a time, and each morning ask God for his strength to continue through the day! It's so nice to hear of little Iain!! Thank you so much for sharing your life with us!
As someone who has known you for many years I am relieved to know that you are "allowing" yourself ample room to grieve. For so long I knew you as a strong and solid person whom rarely alowed herself to feel sorry. You never have to apologize to me for whatever you need to do to feel one moment of happiness or relief.
Even though we are so far away, we think about you daily and I am happy to see you are blogging on!
Hey Tricia,
Have to agree with your stance (as if anyone has a right to disagree with it).
In my out-of-place way of thinking, it is an additional tragedy that not only is it socially unacceptable to grieve for however long we need, death itself is not viewed as something that is wrong in the first place.
The secular view of death in a society that is not ready to die is that it is something to be "celebrated." Or rather, the actual death of someone is minimized, in favor of celebrating the life that they lived. While there is nothing wrong with celebrating someone's life (assuming it was worth celebrating - Dalton's was!), I think it is wrong to sanitize death, to separate from it so we can avoid thinking about it. So we can avoid mourning.
The world says death is natural.
The bible says it is unnatural.
The world says death is part of life.
The bible says death is the greatest tragedy.
The world avoids thinking about the ramifications of death in order to avoid thinking about the ramifications of belief. As believers, we must think about death, and think about it everyday, in order to know just what are the ramifications of our living and our beliefs.
It is not good to die. It is not right. It is not good to avoid mourning. Mourning keeps us aware of just how close death is to each of us, and just how important it is to know the one Truth that removes the sting of death. For those who die, the sting of death is sin.
For those who remain (I'm not referring to these super-humans who seem to think that "getting over it" is the proper course of action), the sting of death is its unnaturalness. For God, the death of His loved ones is precious. For us, it is a curse.
And so we mourn.
Tricia,
So sorry if I upset you. I was trying to create an open dialog and to better understand how you were really doing. You may wear black as long as you see fit.
Karen
In Christ we are all eternal beings. God doesn't measure how long anything takes for us or if we ever find "closure" or "improve". We aren't called to happy lives, just Holy lives (which does often translate to joy another of C.S. Lewis' favorite states of being!) But in the meantime - it may take a long time (in idiodic human terms) to get there. Your point about people being totally uncomfortable about death is right on the money. No one thinks these things will ever happen to them.
Still praying for you daily,
Michelle
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