A Man’s Journey Through Grief continued, #6
Several weeks ago, I described the way meditation on the greatness and purposes of God brought calm to my wild emotions over Mary Helen’s home-going. “Be still and know that I am God.” It was wonderful advice from the Scriptures that has often helped me during these months. But foolishly I began to think that gaining perspective would now begin to erase the more emotional symptoms of my grief. In the afternoon, I discovered how little I have them under control.
From my recliner, my eye often drifts to the sofa where Mary Helen lay during her months of decline. There I propped her up with an assortment of cushions and covered her with a comforter. I ensured that the tube bringing her air was working. I could almost see her there.
For some reason, I went into the office to check my diary and review the time-line of her decline, and burst into tears. The discovery of one of her poems intensified my sobbing.
A Friend
A dear friend seems to find the sun
Just when we think there isn’t one.
And finds a little bit of spring
When winter covers everything
And brings the silver into view
Whenever there is a cloud or two
A dear friend is someone special
Someone just like you.
The tears continue off and on through the afternoon and into the supper hour as I watch the news. The news tells of a child who is found drowned. The parents must be prostrate in grief. It continues to review the story of people mowed down by a van deliberately targeting pedestrians in Toronto. The case has taken four years to go to trial.
Every night I watch stories in the news of people dealing with prolonged grief. Why should I grieve when Mary Helen and I had such a long life together? Why am I so irrational?
I look out the window into the main street of our condo community. Widows and widowers occupy many of the condos. They have known grief. Yet they all seem very rational and under control. Why can’t I gain perspective?
Maybe the intensity of my grief is due to the length of time I cared for her. During that year-long period we were bound together in a bond of care and need probably more intense than at any time in our life together. Maybe my tears are just unspent love. Jamie Anderson writes:
Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love,
It’s all the love you want to give,
but cannot. All that unspent love
gathers up in the corners of your eyes,
the lump in your throat,
and in that hollow part of your chest.
Grief is just love with no place to go.”
No place to go…
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