The value of memories.
This guy - he's been in Heaven now for just short of two years. You do not understand loss or grief until someone really close to you dies. You just don't, it doesn't make you less empathetic or less of a friend, mother, son or daughter. But until someone you know and love, that was a significant part of your life dies - grief is a word that you reserve to describe some one or a situation, but not a word you grasp.
Grief is not sadness, and I certainly did not comprehend that until Bill Burns died. Sadness happens for a little bit, you are sad the day someone dies. You are sad when something you used to like to do is no longer an option. You are sad when you can't see someone any more, when a love is lost, when an accident that you cannot explain happens. But grief - it is forever. There are some profound thoughts on grief, "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis is an all time fave. And I've read, heaven knows I've read, about grief and loss and sadness. Three years I read, I read about those topics before Bill died, because, I could see where the journey was taking us. I knew he was not coming home, not in the physical sense.
I don't pretend to have profound thoughts about grief. All I have are my thoughts, they go like this:
1) Grief never goes away. It's always there, it's with you at the grocery store or when you are taking a nice long walk in the sunshine. It's with you in all the obvious places too, all the milestones, the birthdays, the anniversaries. And although time certainly numbs the sadness, it never heals anything. After all, time can't heal us. We are humans, we will never be perfect and healing implies perfection. Grief is part of the burden we carry in an imperfect world, and thank goodness we have God's grace to see us through.
2) Grief for the loss of a someone close to you is like grief you've never known - until it happens to you. I've seen plenty of loss, some of that loss so difficult you struggled to wrap your mind around it. But the honest to goodness truth here; loss for others is not loss for you. Grief that others experience does not translate into the same for you. I am not saying you cannot be there for someone - goodness knows we all need friends, family and support. But I have to regularly remind myself that grief feels different depending on what side of the fence you are standing on.
3) Grief for the loss of a spouse or child is profoundly life changing. As I type that last sentence, I will also say, I believe it's also profoundly life changing for the loss of a parent to a young child. Your every moment of every day just changed - if you don't think someone is shaken to the core from that, think again. I know the loss of a parent, someone who shaped you into the adult you became. Someone who helped you navigate college, and sleazy landlords, marriage and babies. I know that loss - I carry that grief. But the spouse, child or parent of a young child that dies is something entirely different and I have to recognize that, because your every day, the routines you've always done and the timing of it all will never be the same. To experience change in something is to grieve the loss of something, and losing those people that touch your most personal world day in and day out, can leave you breathless.
Grief is not sadness. In fact it's not always tears. Grief can be happy too, the longer you go carrying grief, the more you realize, it's part of your thread in life's fabric. And you accept it, acknowledge it (oh yes, you still find yourself angry that you have to have the grief) but you know that grief is indeed part of loving and you move forward and you live your life.
I'm not saying anything Earth shattering here. But I will tell you, until you experience the kind of loss I am talking about, you will not totally understand what this post is all about. And that's okay. Just remember to carry a little extra kindness towards those that are walking that path. They need your love, they need your prayers, and they need you to not pass your judgement.
“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed