"IF EVER, BEYOND HOPE, YOU RETURN TO THE LANDS OF THE LIVING AND WE'RE - TELL OUR TALE, SITTING BY A WALL IN THE SUN, LAUGHING AT OLD GRIEF, YOU SHALL TELL ME THEN."
This short excerpt, from J R R Tolkien's, "The Lord Of The Rings - The Two Towers," started a train of thought in my mind as to how we deal with grief.
Grief is a gut wrenchingly deep emotion that stops life, dead in its tracks. Grief is a singular experience and no two people grieve alike. Although grief may have a common denominator, as was the case in the September 11, 2001 Twin Towers catastrophe, each person who lost a loved one (or indeed, a hated one), that day, had to cope with their grief in their own unique way. After the first shock wears off and the friends who sustained you move on with their own lives, the grim reality of grief sets in.
No matter if one or many die, when grief is present, it plunges those left behind into a lonely abyss of fear and anger. A young woman cruelly widowed, may cry out in anguish, "You can't die now and leave me here all alone! This wasn't part of the deal! Come back. Please come back!
A hitherto married man, left with small children to contend with, may lash out saying, "How should I know where she wanted to be buried? We talked about life, not death! How could God let this happen? How are we going to cope without her?" In a second, his life had deteriorated into a damaged half of a whole.
Endless tears flow. Sobs rack your body. You feel as though you are made from fragile glass and that, at any moment, you may shatter into a million fragments. Night closes in and you ache for your loved one, longing to embrace them one last time. Sleep evades you and you replay the last time that you had been together, over and over again in your head, until you reach the very brink of insanity.
The sun rises upon another day, filled with painful memories. Immobilized by grief, you lay in bed, not knowing how to perform the simplest task. "Get up, you tell yourself. Get dressed and get going!" Nothing is as it was. You are helpless, alone and afraid.
If this is the disintegration of a life, after the death of a loved one, how then to deal with the sudden death of a hated one? As the abusive husband, wife, father, mother, friend, brother, sister, or employer left for work that day, you may have prayed for their death saying, "Please, Lord, let them die. I can't take any more!"
By nightfall, your prayer has been answered. The initial relief soon gives way to panic. "Lord, I didn't mean it! I didn't really want them to die!" You begin to believe that YOU (AND NOT CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND YOUR CONTROL) killed them. Your thoughts torment you and the familiar pattern of abuse reward, abuse reward, is no longer there to sustain you. You have no defense against the finality of death. The abusive and detrimental attacks on you have stopped and you are left with nothing to hold onto except self-loathing and zero self-esteem.
Tell God how you feel and believe, with all your heart and mind, that He is listening and loves you exactly as you are. He created you and He doesn't make mistakes! Yesterday is gone forever and the abuse that you had accepted as the truth is shown up for as the lie, which it was. God reaches out to the imperfect, the damaged, and the guilty.
In the book of Mark, chapter 5 verses 25 to 34, it is written that Christ was amongst a crowd of people when a desperate woman touched his garments and He said, "Who touched my clothes?" He acknowledged her deep and desperate need for Him in her life and, by her faith, she was healed. Reach out and touch the hem of Jesus' garment. He knows your needs even before you do, and accept his healing grace.
How do we move on from here, you may ask? I shall not quote you platitudes such as: "time heals", although, in retrospect, I, myself, found this to be true.
But, before we carry on, I have a breathing exercise for you to do. Sit up straight, breath in deeply from your diaphragm, hold for four and release. Do this exercise five times. Repeat every four hours and, if you feel a panic attack coming on, do your breathing exercise until it passes. This is your escape mechanism. Use it whenever you need to.
Now for some facts: You cannot see or touch God, in the physical sense of the word, no more than you can see or touch your loved or hated one who has died. But, when you think about it, God is visible in everything around us; just as our loved or hated ones are. God is in the sunshine and the rain. HE is in a smile or a tear. HE is in the greens, browns and blues of nature, and any color in between. HE lives between the pages of our Bibles. Whatever we see, hear, or touch, God has touched before us. Do you believe this to be true?
Would you then also agree that this belief could be true of those whom we have loved/hated and lost? At this point, I must add that we should not forget the grief we experience after the death of a beloved pet or the closure of a business that contained all your hopes and dreams for the future. Mourning should take place in any circumstance that results in a loss of that which we hold held dear.
No loss is petty. In this crime-ridden world of ours, loss occurs in every area of our lives and shrugging off our grief as not important, is not acceptable. We must never become immune to grief, lest we kill love! No grief is silly or meaningless and with the present high rate of crime, we lose so much that is precious to us that we must acknowledge the loss and not smile and say "It's OK." It's not!
Start a journal. Write your thoughts down on paper or on your PC - a few words at a time. Be brutally honest with yourself. If you are filled with hate, say so. If you are angry with God or another human being, says so! Date your entries as a record of your progress.
Pray, "God, Lord, Jesus, I am weak. Please, help me!" Again and again, pray without ceasing. Pray everywhere you go. This prayer will give your tortured mind a few seconds of respite. When you feel ready to, add to your prayer. Pray, "Lord please help me, I am weak, I miss ... so much! I am afraid and lonely. Please, help me."
The next step is a giant leap of faith. Whisper, "Lord, thank you for my life. Thank you for this new day. Thank you for my food and shelter. Thank you for those who love and support me".
Tough? You bet! At first, you may not really mean it. But as time passes, you will begin to acknowledge the gifts we receive from God every day, even when we are not aware of them. Using his angels, whom he has set over you, God kept your life going while you couldn't. The family still ate and slept, the seasons still repeated themselves in Divine continuity, and, as we once again take our place among the living, we are better equipped to help others who are stumbling through the darkness of great loss.
Learning life's lessons is not always easy. Those we learn the hard way are filled with pain and suffering. All that I can assure you of is, that one day, you will lift your face to the sunshine and say sincerely, "Thank you, Lord, for my life," and the joy in your heart will be reeled. Thoughts of the loved ones, and the forgiveness of the hated ones whom you have lost, will be gentle and enduring. The new dawn will break, splitting the night asunder. You have come through the dark night of the soul and have come back into the glorious light of re-birth, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
I would like to finish this chapter with some suggestions on closure.
To some, closure will feel very much like a betrayal of a loved ones memory. You may feel a sense of guilt for just being alive. You may, at last, feel ready to deal with the ashes of your loved one that you have been keeping, waiting for the correct time to scatter them in an appropriate place.
Perhaps the funeral is hazy in your mind due to the medication that your Doctor prescribed to serve as a bridge in your darkest hour of need. You may wish to re-visit the grave and plant an evergreen as a living memory of your loved one.
The time will come when you can sit in a chair in a quiet room, place an empty one opposite you, and imagine that your hated one is sitting in it and say, "I forgive you."
Never, I hear you cry, never. Remember, Christ forgave his murderers when he was dying on the cross, pleading with his father God to, " forgive them, for they know not what they are doing." (Luke 23, verse 34). You, too, can ask God to forgive your hated one. We cannot forgive in our own right, but we can in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Whatever form your closure may take (and, once again, this is a deeply unique and personal journey), newly healed emotions will re-surface. This is perfectly normal. They must be set free. Talk to your loved ones telling them how you feel. Allow the healing tears to flow. Grieve from deep within your soul. Grief, which is plastered over, will show cracks when you least expect them. Denial is a normal emotion, which allows us to function within the world. But, the underlying wound festers and bursts upon those we love who are still living. They just simply don't deserve it. Closure and letting go are not easy.
Courage lies within us all. Some fortunate folk don't ever need to plumb the depths as you have been called to do. But, death is an integral part of life and God, in his eternal wisdom, holds the date and circumstances firmly within his Almighty grasp.
Death, for those who have gone, is a fulfillment of their lives; no matter what the circumstances. They do not grieve. We, who are left behind, grieve and experience excruciating pain in their passing ~ until that glorious day, when God calls us home to sit at his side in His Holy dwelling place; our earthly life span complete. And true to God's fulfillment of the circle of completion, others will stand, in turn, at our graveside and weep at our passing.
Those who believe in the living God hold onto his promises. Hold on tight to his hand, it will not fail you. "For thy rod and thy staff they comfort me, all the days of my life" (Ps 23:4).
Whether a loved one or a hated one passes from this earth, it is as it should be. We are required to go on in faith, being an example to those who do not know Him and His promise of eternal life. Show love to your enemies and, should you win just one soul for God through your courage in the face of your grief, that person shall fill the place of those whom you have lost; a living breathing whole human being, beloved in God's sight, and a living monument to those who have gone before.
I hope and pray that just one person will find love, comfort, faith, and courage in these words.
In loving memory of (my father) William Farrell, my still-born son, Cynthia Farrell (just 38 years old, a dear friend, mother of twoÊand wife of my brother), Jan Leff (Godfather to my daughter), Lady (my faithful doggy companion for fifteen years), my home built up over fifteen years and lost after my divorce ... my list is a long one and I am sure that many other names and places will be added before I take my own final journey. I believe that God will restore me completely, when he calls me HOME. Amen.
I love you with the love of Christ.
Susan