Grief and Loss

What you feel tracks with how healthy people grieve.
All loss causes pain. But you know this. Beyond our control.
Behind all we think or do. Before we know it's even there.

The first shocked numbness leaves you breathless.
You can't believe or grasp what really happened.
Or you can and it's just too much.

Then we come into searching, begin yearning.
Who (or what) we lost was a part of us,
even when we didn't really realize it was there.

So we look for what we lost.

Sometimes people hear the voices of those who've died.
They go into the next room to find them. Sometimes
we have an urge to go looking and track them down.

Or I've seen shadows in faces and forms on the street.
Is that him? Was that her? Their posture. Their hair.
That shirt. We're oriented to what we lost. But can't find it.

Then disorientation comes. Letting go begins but our compass
has been set, pointing so long (in our heart, not only our head)
for so long, hard oriented toward our loved one lost...
now we don't know where our soul should go.
Where do we send what we want to love?

Here is a place in our journey with grief
that we're not only lost but don't know where we to go.
What are we living for? Where are we trying to be?

And during all this time, people grieve in a hundred ways.
Sometimes they shop. Sometimes they sleep.
Some cry. Some never do.
All of these are good.

Whatever way we need to grieve in the moment.
And there is no 'time limit' when we should be done.
There is no clock to 'get over' what we're going through.

After about six months, those who care for others, do
by asking questions about where they are, check in.
Is what you're doing helping you grieve?
What would you do without the things you're doing now?
Not judging, just seeing. Where are you? What do you need.

There's no right or wrong. Whatever way we grieve at the time,
we do. But I can tell you that all these also stop.

Even tears and emptiness stop. There is a hope.

There is a point where the 'valley of the shadow of death'
begins to slope upwards, ever so imperceptively,
the canyon walls lower and we even begin to see some light.
Sometimes we look around and suddenly we are out.
This is not a cause to feel guilt but release.

This is the beginning of reorientation and resolution.

Where before we couldn't move or forgot appointments
or how to do things we wanted to do, now we reorganize.
Our thoughts and plans begin facing toward a new goal.

And more importantly for the healing process, though we
never lose contact with memories of a touch of those we love,
we begin to pour our love into new relationships, new things.

We relocate energy from the relationship with one we lost
and direct it to building new relationships. Taking new risks.

New ventures await.

The wounded healer, though is with you through this all.
Jesus, God, has gone through loss and pain... and been with you.
We're not claiming some empty platitude to say: Jesus
is standing by you now.

He is with you and always will be. Wherever you go.
Walking. Waiting. Wondering. With you.