SHARING A CUP OF GRIEF

   A friend posted a beautiful piece on FaceBook today that includes the phrase, “There is another side of grief.” It discusses there comes a time when it’s not just sadness, struggles, and sorrows. Since just this morning a stranger and I had discussed grief and how it affects each of us in different ways I found the timing interesting. Having a copy of this poem to give would have been lovely, but all I had was my own experiences, none of which completely matched hers, but I could share an understanding of God and grief.

    This woman had lost her son two years ago and seemed to feel she should be getting “over it”. That would have been enough, but she has also been a caregiver to her now also deceased mother as well as her husband whose health is what brought her to the medical facility where we met. I was able to express my belief that two years, particularly in the loss of her son (though I’d not experienced it), was nowhere near enough. She visibly relaxed. Or was it my imagination?

     I told of my experience with the shocking death of my dad. I was twenty-seven, he, almost fifty-seven when he passed suddenly from a massive heart attack. I’d seen him at Thanksgiving. This was the following March. We lived too far apart for easy visiting and my children were young and in school. I believe I handled my grieving naturally with multitudinous tears, some sleepless nights, foods not having their usual, etc. While the family gathered in the home of my parents for the funeral preparations, we set the table for coffee and foods delivered by well-meaning friends. What were the chances that not only was there was an empty chair when we all sat down, but also unknowingly, Daddy’s favorite light blue coffee mug would be on the table at that very place, leaving my mother more bereft than ever? None of us realized why she suddenly burst into tears and threw her hand towards that cup until she was able to explain. Grief. All these years later and that image has been etched as deep in my mind as the wrinkles in the skin have been to my face!

    Seven years passed and I would have guessed my deep grief had as well, but how little I knew of such. I went to my special box where I kept a collection of favorite things to search for a poem I’d once given Daddy because I wanted to share a copy with a person I’d just met. Following Daddy’s death, Mama had returned it to me, explaining he’d kept it on his desk where he spent hours studying his Bible. The poem, cut from a magazine and backed by a complimentary piece of construction paper, was about a camel kneeling at the end of a day to have his master remove his load, and kneeling again at break of day to have his load replaced. It fit my daddy’s life. It was just seconds before I found that construction-backed page and once it was in my hand, I not only burst into tears, but also into heart-rending sobs! Our teen son, just descending the stairs where he could see into the room where I was sitting, was as startled as I was shocked by my uncontrollable grief. As with my mother at the table that day, I had to try to explain the deep sensation of being overcome by a stunningly surprising grief.

    As a result of that day’s ability to grieve so completely such a long time after Daddy’s death, I came to the realization I must have continued “hanging on until I finally “let him go” during those mournful moments. I also came to the comforting conclusion that God has built within each of us the ability to accept what we can today, a little more tomorrow, and still more the next day, etc., as time moves on. However, what that also means is the amount of grief you may be able to absorb can be as different as your eye and hair color, height, age, etc. from the amount I can accept. Just as when we were babies we grew physically and emotionally at different levels, so too, we can grieve at different levels.

   Who’s to say how much time is the right amount of time for grieving? Let it be between God and you, between God and me. There will come a time when the other side of grief will come, the memories of happier days, the smiles, and yes, even the laughter shared.

Weeping may last for the night,

But a shout of joy comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5b (NASB)

© M Sue       9-18-14