Category Archives: Changing Life

Happy Mourning: Grief-ism #1

Those grieving a loss hear this one often, “But he/she would want you to be happy.” 

So what does this really mean? Don’t grieve for them? Pretend the one human, who for the most years and who gave the most meaning and joy to life, is still here? 

Impossible!

The thing is, no one gets to tell you how to grieve. Not even your deceased person. Not even THEY get to dictate how much you hurt or how much you miss them because they’re gone.

Would Mike want me to be happy? Of course. One of his goals in life was to keep me happy (and I him). But neither of us could ever know how hard it is to be happy without the other.

We don’t know how to minimize the giant hole that just opened up and sucked everything that was normal, safe and stable into it so mourners resort to masquerading happiness because that makes everyone around them back off and feel better.

The fresh, horrid grief of those early days has subsided and I finally experience moments of happiness. Small rays of light in the darkness that is Mike’s absence. But it’s taken this long and still, after all this time, an underlying operating system of continual sadness runs in the background of everyday life.

And that’s the point. We can’t rush people back to cheering up or looking on the bright side. The bright side looks bleak and dim for someone who has suffered such monumental loss. Rebuilding an unwanted life from the ground up takes time.

Trish Harrison Warren, author of Prayer In The Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep, says, “We are taught to minimize grief.” 

Allow grievers the time they need to be in their sorrow, let the trigger tears and heart crushing pain play out.  Weep with those who weep, for as long as they weep. 

Eventually we will rejoice with them, because we stayed around long enough to see them discover joy again. 

Only then are we better practiced in comforting the broken hearted.

Introduction To Grief-isms

So what are grief-isms and why do I think it’s essential to talk/write about this? 

Grief-isms are a term I created to describe the cliched sayings we use when someone experiences a profound death loss. Most of these axioms I found unhelpful, non-comforting and sometimes annoying, especially in the early days and months of my experience.

At first I thought I might be a bit crazy but after talking to many people who have had significant loss, especially of a close relationship – spouse, child, parent, sibling, best friend – attending GriefShare group multiple times and following several internet based widowed, grief and loss groups the past several years, I realize I‘m not alone in this opinion.

First of all, not one of us can fully understand death grief, especially early stage, until it’s experienced. And no one knows how they’ll react in it until it happens to them. I‘ve compared it to someone telling me how to labor and deliver a child to actually doing it. There’s knowledge of what it might be like, then there’s being up to your eyebrows in the middle of it. It’s overwhelmingly intense and painful! And you gals who’ve had a baby or two know exactly what I mean.

It’s extremely important to know how intimacy and closeness drive the level of grief when trying to support someone through a loss. The depth and duration of grief is equal to the intimacy and duration of the relationship you, your friend or family member had with the person who has died. They will grieve harder and longer for a child, spouse or family member, than an acquaintance or non-immediate family member rarely seen. 

Also important to understand, is how intense grief effects lessen with time but never totally disappear and anything can trigger a fresh but (probably) shorter response. There is no proper time frame for a person to ‘get over’ a person who has died and ‘move on’. These are also cliched terms that should always be avoided.

All the love, investment and history you have for and with a person doesn’t fade out or shut off once they’re gone. Like I keep saying, There’s No Off Switch! Our people become an intricate part of us and have shaped who and what we are. Forty two years of life with my late husband and four years without him is a no win comparison and I can’t just move on to a happy, slappy brand new life as if he never existed, once the memorial service is over or the headstone is on the grave.

I‘m not here to demoralize or criticize any of us. No one wants grief education. Who in the world volunteers to join the ‘someone I love with all my heart has just died’ club? We don’t like talking or thinking about being without our best people. I get that. Since Mike was a pastor I was exposed to death, funerals, burials and the depths of human sorrow more than most. I realize now I was often just as clueless as anyone, in the face of another’s suffering and said some of these same cliched statements to people in their loss. I openly apologize to you if you were one of these people and hope you can forgive my previous ignorance. 

If we all live long enough, we and others around us will likely loose someone dearly loved, so it’s crucial to practice being good comforters, to know how to be with another in their deepest pain.

The purpose of the blog posts that follow is to share my heart around some of these specific grief-isms and why they weren’t helpful. I pray this information will help all of us be better supporters of the grieving when the need arises. 

Coming up next: Grief-ism #1, “He would want you to be happy.”

Four Years Later

We were driving a main street through Portland, Oregon on a winter day in the late 1970’s. This particular road consisted of five wide lanes, two each headed in opposite directions with a central turn lane.

It was a quieter morning than most, less traffic than usual, because Portland, known for it’s damp, gloomy, rainy winters with temperatures hovering in the high thirties to mid-forties, had experienced an overnight thermometer drop low enough to coat the city with a rare inch or so of snowfall; enough to close schools and a host of other businesses and keep people home.

Since Mike and I had recently moved there from upstate New York and were accustomed to far worse winters, we shrugged it off, warmed up the car and headed out. What we forgot to remember was the frozen rain covered surface beneath the snow.

We confidently motored down the slightly hilly street, commenting on how few cars there were around us on a normally busy thoroughfare, joking about the Portland wimps afraid of a little snow, when our car suddenly began to slide out of control. Mike immediately attempted all the skills learned in his years of northeast winter driving, but there was no stopping it. No way to control the free slide we found ourselves in as the car began to pick up speed while spinning in circles across all lanes, heading straight for a power pole on the opposite side of the road. 

Suddenly heart pounding, pulse racing, breathtaking helpless fear loomed in the horror of grim possibilities just outside the vehicle and we were immediately panic paralyzed inside our out-of-control yellow Toyota.

Such is the nature of grief. And most severely in the early days and even early years of a death experience.

One moment we are riding confidently, securely on the road of life when suddenly a significant loss plunges us into a free fall of heart stopping, breath sucking despair, panic and anxiety. There’s no stopping the flow of turbulent emotions and change that constantly pulse, swirl and crash over us moment by moment, hour by hour and day to day. 

Because we are humans who form deep bonds and connections with others – spouses, children, family, friends – we struggle to control the slide and spin a death creates. The sudden absence of a person we intensely intertwined into most of our days, loved fiercely and counted on deeply, looms monumentally ahead. The future without them is grim and our immediate reality has few favorable outcomes.

After a few terrifying moments on that snowy Portland day, our little Toyota finished careening and spinning and came to a halt, facing the wrong direction on the wrong side of the road just inches from the power pole. Mike took a few seconds to catch his breath, thank God we were spared, then gripping the steering wheel with shaky hands, he pulled back out onto the street and drove us home.

I have no words to adequately describe what my late husband’s death has done on the inside of me. Mike took large chunks of me with him when he left. I may look the same on the outside but I am so far removed from the person I was on this same fateful day four years ago. Yet much of my internal careening and spinning has finally begun to subside during this past year and I can sit on the other side of this journey staring down a road of….what….?? 

For now, I only have gratitude for surviving. I can only thank God for being with me as I land just inches from the thing that almost destroyed me, Maybe now I can catch my breath and with a shaky heart venture back out into this unfamiliar life and see where it goes. 

Without Mike, yes. The sadness of this reality will never end. 

I constantly miss his presence in our lives.  In my life. 

But for whatever reasons he is gone and I’m still here. 

I have to live. 

I GET to live.

Dear Jesus, let this be the year that I figure out how to really live again

 

Adapting or Accepting?

It took about three weeks of random days, doing a section at a time, but I finally finished pressure washing the pool deck today.

As I was pulling the weeds that grow between the pavers with pliers, because my arthritis crippled fingers aren’t strong enough to grasp them, I was thinking about how adaptable humans are. How we endure and adjust to life’s difficult twists and turns.

The Serenity Prayer has been quoted for a long time: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.”

I‘ve had to adapt to many difficult challenges through the years and realize of late, that I have always had a problem with the acceptance line of this quote. I‘ve never been good at accepting what I can’t change because I’m not sure I should. To me acceptance means giving up, giving in to a thing and allowing it to rule, and I see little in scripture or history where that has ever been a good idea.

My first son was born with a genetic disability, and while I accept and love HIM for who HE is, I have never fully accepted the imitations disability has placed on him. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done everything possible to help him reach his full potential through the years. Have I adapted to how his disability affects him, me and our family? Yes, and continue to adjust daily. But I have never rejoiced that my son has not been able to live his life the way others do. I have never stopped grieving in the depths of my being that he still needs continual supervision as an adult. I know in my heart God’s original creation was never meant to be this way, so complete acceptance still alludes me.

All the ways I’ve adapted to having a crippling chronic illness, beginning in my mid-twenties, are too many to list here. Pulling weeds with pliers is just one of hundreds. Learning to eat properly to reduce inflammation in my body is another. Acceptance means I would give up. Lay in my bed, drink soda pop and eat donuts, howling in pain, expecting others to do everything for me. There are times when we need others to do for us, but ‘the wisdom to know the difference’ is part of adjusting to our situation.

I can never accept coming home from grocery shopping to find the man I loved for forty three years, dead. Just like that. Gone. No. Never. Because I know physical separation, death in this life, was never God’s intention from the beginning. Death was chosen and since then, we all live with the physical consequences of this choice. So after a lifetime of marriage, I’m at a new level of adaptation. Learning how to be single. How to be alone. How to get things done that are hard for me to do.

So many of the tasks Mike did are now mine and I’m slowly adjusting to all these new responsibilities; knowing when I should and who I can call for help, who I can trust and when I can do a thing myself. I‘m certain I‘m making mistakes, bumbling along, asking for wisdom, help and endurance to figure it all out but I also understand I have to be patient, even with myself. I’ve been dropped suddenly into new territory, without a map or GPS, and this journey requires a steep learning curve.

As humans we grieve all our losses. Some impact us so deeply, that we never think of them without feeling that sludge hammer of sorrow to the heart and it is a huge misinterpretation of scripture to believe God asks us to deny this reality. What He wants is to be invited into it. To meet us there. To walk with us in and through.

So while I will not blindly accept any of these things that were never His original intention, neither will I pretend they don’t exist. I meet them head on with HIS strength and guidance. I have little of my own.

Many days are exhausting and difficult, but I must not, cannot, settle into acceptance. I must keep trying. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep enduring.

By Father’s great grace I adjust. Adapt. Pull weeds with pliers and keep going.

The Uncertainty of Certainty

It’s a new year. A new decade. In my life time, I’ve marinated in environments where it’s expected I should declare prosperity, health, blessings and all things good for the new year. And why not? Isn’t that what we all hope for?

But honestly, we don’t know what a year will bring. I’ve had good years and others where things have gone horribly wrong, with no foresight of what was coming, no matter what I had declared at it’s start. Years where the collision of my bless-me-club-membership faith and actual reality shattered me into tiny pieces and everything I was certain of, understood and believed, lay broken at my feet.

As the years come and go I‘ve come to ask myself, are these declarations of only having what I define as good in life, nothing but a demand for God’s stamp of approval on what I want? Isn’t it arrogant to believe I can take a few scriptures mixed with my wants, my desires and throw them at God, as if He’s some genie in a magic bottle or cosmic vending machine, demanding He heal, prosper, alleviate, rescue me from every heart rendering circumstance of death, despair, disability and disillusionment?

Ask? Yes. 

Declare and demand? No.

Maybe we should just declare that whatever happens God will be with us. In it all. Maybe all He wants is us, not all our plans or demands. He just wants to be inside this life with us whatever that ends up looking like. 

Maybe He just wants us to discover the simple certainty of this, He is Emmanuel. God With Us. He will not abandon or forsake us in 2020 or any other time. 

And maybe knowing that is enough for a new year.

A Jon View of Loss

I found this photo today, upside down on an end table in the family room. An old one, judging by how we’re dressed, possibly taken in the late 1980’s or early 90’s. 

A snapshot of happier days with Mike’s youngest sister and husband, and me and what used to be my husband. Used to be is the key phrase here, because two years ago my husband died. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. And as you can guess, he was in this picture. If you look closely his hand is draped over my right shoulder.

As soon as I flipped this photo over, I saw Mike had been scratched out. And I knew who did it. But I wasn’t sure why. What I do know is Jon is still internalizing the loss of his father, as am I, and though he’s spoken little of it from the beginning until now, this is proof.

I took the photo to Jon, put it down in front of him and very gently asked, “Jon, why did you you scratch your dad out of this picture?” It was a shot in the dark to ask and I really didn’t expect an answer from my mostly nonverbal son.

He glanced at the picture and looked away. “He’s gone,” was the reply. So much sadness in his expression. So much hurt and pain in his eyes. Maybe my disabled son thinks scratching his dad out of a photo somehow makes it all go away. I wish it was that easy. Wish I knew Jon’s thoughts. Wish we could have that conversation. Wish he could open up and pour out everything he’s feeling inside. But he never has. He doesn’t have those words. 

So he just makes his father disappear. 

In the past we’ve been told by ‘experts’ and believed that grief is on a timeline, it’s not. Two years is nothing compared to the lifetime we had Mike with us. Thirty seven for Jon. Forty three for me. So you will excuse us if it takes us that many years to ‘get over him.’ Please?

Honestly, I doubt we ever will. As much as we would love to scratch the sorrow and pain of loosing him away, we can’t. Mike not being here has impacted us greatly and it’s painfully difficult. Still. We are so aware of his absence, his physical presence missing here, in our daily life. 

Time does not erase the memory of him. Or the loss of him. We’re simply learning, with the passage of days, months, years, how to live without him. Maybe time will permit us to be better at that. I hope so, because scraping Mike’s image off every photo we can find, certainly won’t. 

In the days ahead, I pray I can find the wisdom to help my son’s heart know this. And mine too.

Two Years Later

It’s been two years. Today.

What I never knew, what you can’t know until you’re here, is the large part of you that dies with your spouse. It can’t be helped. Through the years of togetherness your existence becomes so completely entangled and intertwined, you loose entire pieces of yourself when they’re gone. 

Not only do you suffer the loss of a person but also the unique history the two of you created. The glances, the personal jokes, the comfortable silence only you both understood. The way you often knew what the other wanted, liked or thought without even asking. The decisions made together that shaped the path of your life. The parts of your mind, soul and body only your loved one knew. All of the small nuances and intimate sharing that was just the two of you. These all have vanished and nothing or no one else can ever replace them. 

I lost so much when I lost him. 

Ironically one of the last sermons Mike preached was on how to handle loss. One statement he made that has stuck with me is this, “God is the God of all we’ve lost and the God of all we have left”.

For seven hundred and thirty days, I‘ve lived in the aftermath of stumbling, faltering attempts to move forward. My heart has been much slower to accept what my brain has known since the evening he left me, Mike is gone from this earth and he’s never coming back. And while the passing of two years has done nothing for the missing of him, I must continue to live. 

Discovering who I am without my husband is a daunting task. I still don’t know. But God does. 

“The LORD says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.” Psalm 32:8

He is the God of what is left of me. As year three begins, only He can show me where to go from here. I‘m Hoping. Trusting. Listening.

A Widows Prayer

Good Morning Father. I’m awake. 

Another day, and my first thought as always, is he’s gone. 

Still. 

His side of the bed unruffled. 

Comforter flat and wrinkle free. 

Pillows smooth and in place.

Here I am without him. 

Again.

I can’t do this widow thing. 

But You can.

I can’t do this single mom/caregiver of a grown son with disabilities thing. 

But You can.

I don’t have enough faith. 

But You do.

I am without hope. 

But You’re not.

I’m not strong. 

But You are.

So I will push this blanket back. 

Put my legs over the side of this bed and my feet on the floor.

I will stand and get ready for whatever this day brings.

I’d rather pull this blanket over my head and stay right here. 

But You’re with me.

He’s not here. 

But You are.

Thank You for never abandoning us. 

You and Your Son have not forsaken me and mine.

You have and are everything I need.

I place my trust in You.

We will do this day together.

Here we go.

Useless Words

I admit, I‘ve run out of words.

Well, ‘run out’ might not be the exact terminology. Words still exist, but they are a continuous whirlwind of thoughts, crashing into each other and shattering in uselessness to the bottom of my brain. I‘ve been asked, why I‘m not writing and posting regularly like I was. When you can’t make sense of anything, expression can be difficult.

Everything I once thought I knew, believed, subscribed to, seems trivial and irrelevant. All the knowing-of-things I once held dear, is nothing but the fluff of a spent dandelion blowing in a tornado.

I need to drown out the noise of this world, the constant chatter both past and present, ricocheting off the walls of my heart and mind. So many words and ideas others have spoken into me since childhood. Piled deep and high. I’ve been stripped inside to the nakedness of my soul and exhausted by years of ideas, opinions and dogmas I have heard and still hear.

Confession time? Complete honesty? All my cards laid out on the table? I‘m too tired to figure it out anymore. Too broken to put me back together. I‘ve reached the end of myself and I don’t care how unspiritual it looks. The mask is off. I can’t fake it ‘til I make it. Can’t stomach the cliches and pat answers I always thought were truth.

I am asking God to help me understand Him in ways I never have before. I am begging my Father to reveal Himself to me. Not from the interpretation of others. And not from my own contrived misconceptions of who He is. But for Himself. 

What about Him do I not know? What about Him do I not understand? If I’m going to move forward from here I desperately need to hear His voice and understand His heart. 

For me. 

There’s little to say right now.  I must be still and learn to know He Is God. I‘m like Mary, who after the angel appeared to tell her she would bear God’s Son in human flesh, pondered all these things in her heart. 

Or Job, who after striving with so much sorrow before his Creator, put his hand over his mouth and shut-up, realizing he had spoken things without knowledge, from the limits of human reasoning.

Or Paul, who considered everything he had ever accomplished prior to knowing Christ, the power of His resurrection and fellowship of His suffering, nothing but garbage. Manure. Useless.

The encouraging news in the dark night of my soul is this; even the dandelion, that blooms, withers and blows away, is rooted in solid ground and when the winter is over, lives again. Even the garbage heap can be recycled into new usefulness. Even the manure pile is tilled back into the earth to enrich a new harvest. In the fullness of time and the proper season of renewal, all can be restored.

So in this season, I exist on what I still know that I know to be true. God is good. He is faithful. He does not abandon. And He loves me. 

At present little else matters to me. It is all the words I have. And it is enough.

For now.

 

Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I Am God.”

Luke 2:19 “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

Job 40:4-5 “I lay my hand over my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I will not answer; Yes, twice, but I will proceed no further.”

Job 42:3 “I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

Philippians 3:8-10 “ Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—  that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”

Lamentations 3:22-24 “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

Matthew 28:20 “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

Moving On or Moving Forward

Mike and I moved many times through the years of our marriage (read about that here).

Whenever we relocated we left houses and some unnecessary things behind and carried many possessions with us to the next destination. 

Such is the nature of life. Change comes and we have to decide what to carry with us and what to leave behind. It’s rarely an all or nothing proposition, but a mix of both.

Since the death of my husband, a little more than year ago, I’ve learned the pervasive thought of modern western culture is to grieve on a linear path of stages for a while, get through it, get over it and finally move on to a happy, contented new life. 

Grief is a problem to be ‘fixed’ rather than an experience to be acknowledged. 

Our culture doesn’t deal well with death, pain, suffering or grief. We personally avoid these at all costs and we often don’t know what to do with those who are experiencing them. Our convenience loving, pleasure seeking, short attention span, hurry-up-and-make-bad-stuff-go-away culture, often and unintentionally places grieving people in a position of pretending to be alright or having to defend their sorrow, eventually forcing them into suffocating silence.

Moving on implies leaving everything behind. To not speak of our dead loved one again, acting as if they never existed, if not ridiculous, is at the very least, unfair and a dishonor to our departed and the love we shared with them.

The truth is, our love for a person doesn’t die with them. We never ‘get over’ it, because their life and death are ingrained into our experience and become an integral part of who we are. As long as I breathe, I will carry Mike’s life and death forward into the future I learn to live without him.

Recently someone was brave enough to tell me they had heard about Mike’s death and said, 

“That must be so difficult.” This was an acknowledgement of the pain. 

“Tell me about him. What was he like?” This was an honoring of his existence.

They didn’t dance around the reality of his life or death and what I was going through. They didn’t assume I didn’t want to talk about it. They didn’t offer cliches or platitudes. And they weren’t afraid of my sadness or tears. They entered into the loss with me.

It was a beautiful thing and something we all need to practice as we enter into one another’s pain and suffering. When we do we are mirroring God’s heart for the broken.

He didn’t avoid our pain and suffering or run from it. He put on a suit of skin and entered totally into the experience of humanity. The blessings, fear, joy, sadness, laughter, tears and darkness. 

God chose and still chooses to be with us in all of it. He doesn’t pretend to make the hard stuff go away but enters into it with us.

He promises to be Emanuel. God With Us!

And moving forward, especially during the sadness of another Christmas season, I can be thankful for this, even when it’s difficult to be thankful for anything else.