I have had several responses to my blog of last Thursday when I admitted to having a bad day. Seems I am not alone … which I was pretty sure was the case. Many of us are having hard days as we struggling with something … anxiety … fear … loneliness … worry … or, as two readers pointed out to me … let’s call it what it is … GRIEF!
We are a people grieving all that we have lost. What have we lost? Community, connection, gathering, anticipated events, a feeling of safety and security, the privilege of travel, even the opportunity to eat out! We have lost the comfort of shaking hands, receiving and giving hugs, being with family, all lost. If you would allow me to speak personally, all of this community grief is added to my own grief that I am still working out, though my husband has been dead for over two years. These days at home have meant I have finally had time and opportunity to confront things I have put off or buried deep (pun intended) in my emotional storehouse.
Yesterday I cleaned out his desk – a task that was not pressing but needed to be done and, after watching several church services online, I had the time. Such sorrow arose as I sorted and discarded things he had tucked away in those desk drawers; notes, scraps of paper with phone numbers written on, and more boxes staples than anyone could use if they lived as long as Methuselah! Emotions arose and I realized I was crying not only for the sense of loneliness and isolation but for all those tears I had been able to hold back due to busyness and activity. This sabbath time of ‘sheltering in’ gives time for reflection and self-awareness but that is not always an easy road to walk.
As a community, whether it be our faith community, our town, our country, or our world, we are facing grief. I am grateful to the people who named it for me. When it has a name we can begin to understand it and live into it. Grief. We are grieving.
One friend sent me a link to a helpful article. As she said … this is a paraphrase of David Kessler’s work on grief. He is the world’s foremost expert on grief and he co-wrote with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross the book On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. His new book adds another stage to the process, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. Check out this web link to read the article. https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief?fbclid=IwAR3yhMAvJYajTDQk9C3Th7fEgkmjGsB6oE5kLS-5BKPk18ZCpN2096pikH0
He explains in the article that we can continue through our grief after what had been described as the final step of Acceptance by going to the next step which is Finding Meaning noting that we want to find meaning, even in those darkest hours. He also says as we grieve our way through Covid19 we need to stock up on an extra measure of compassion both for others and for ourselves. I have had several people text me or email me saying they find themselves weeping and that feelings of unease and sorrow roll over them. All I can say is, this is normal, let the tears flow, as Kessler says in the article, emotion needs motion to process those deep feelings that we hold in check most of the time.
So, dear readers, let’s name it for what it is: grief. Let’s accept it for what it is: grief. Let’s own our grief and know that one day there will be meaning but “now we see in a mirror dimly”. The Gospel reading from the lectionary yesterday was the beautiful story of Jesus raising Lazarus. The story where it says, “Jesus wept.” This story is about many things but one thing is points to is that grief is okay, weeping is okay, sorrow is okay. We also can be assured that when the weeping is over we are more whole emotionally than before.
P.S. I got interrupted in my writing of this blog with the text that said baby Nancy and her mom Berivan are going home from the hospital. I dashed over for a “socially distanced” first peek at my namesake. What a wonderful antidote to the sorrow in the air these days.
