We trust that the sun will rise each morning and set each evening; that our children will outlive us; that there will be many days to cherish those we love. Then, in a split second, with the news of a loved one’s sudden death, the world changes forever. The orderly world of predictable cycles ends. We are thrown into an abyss with few tools at hand. No time for unfinished business or goodbyes.
Grief brings that moment when you look into the mirror and no longer recognise the eyes staring back at you. Though the sun still rises and sets as it always has, everything looks just a bit different, a bit distorted. Grief casts far-reaching shadows around us. We realise all the guidelines and preparations in the world will never be enough. We cannot understand the true scope of grief until we walk through it.
No one teaches us what to do when the foundation we believe in crumbles and we are left in the midst of ruin, while society anxiously awaits our quick and tidy rebuilding and return to “normal.” Society has little time for our pain, while we can see nothing outside of it. You cannot understand the challenges until you have faced them.
After losing someone we love, we begin again. We learn how to take courageous baby steps, how to walk and talk, how to dream different dreams, how to trust again, and how to create life anew while honouring the past. We are forever changed.
We need sanity to navigate the unknown emotional terrain of sudden death – a terrain full of walls, shrouded in fog. Psychoanalyst and philosopher Carl Jung wrote, “When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow.” Grief is not something we ‘get over’ or heal from as if it were an illness. It is a journey to a new stage of life. The goal is not forgetting or resolving. The goal is reconciliation with life.
In reality, grieving is more like a maze of emotions than an elevator that starts at the bottom and arrives at the penthouse of peace and understanding. Like a maze, we go forward a bit and then back over the same territory. If we learn to love and accept ourselves even as we are emotionally weaving through the maze, we may begin to see our humanness and our brokenness as a threshold to personal growth.
In any case, it is important to assure yourself, no matter how “crazy” and lost in the maze you may feel, that you do come out on the other side and that you are not alone.
We are loved by God, and we are not alone. God never ceases to call us to be with him in our loneliness. By turning towards him in humility and in trust, we will find his company. We can then begin to discern how to take responsibility for our lives in the depth of our loneliness.
