Not only are you grieving mentally, physically and socially, you are grieving emotionally. Maybe I didn’t need to say this at all because you already knew it.

In an earlier blog I mentioned that Grief is a Chaos of emotion. It’s chaos. It’s unpredictable. It’s a whirl wind or a tilt-a-whirl of emotion. There are waves that threaten to overwhelm you, like big surf at the beach. There are dark days and heavy nights when the “shadow of death” is almost oppressive. There are tears, fear, anger, sadness, regret, disappointment, etc. I can’t even name them all. There is a long missing of the person who died. 

The anger can be directed at the one who died or at the One who didn’t stop this death.  It can be focused on others because of some choices they made that contributed to death or didn’t contribute to life. The anger can be directed at medical professionals, or other drivers, or –you name it! There are logical targets and there can be targets for that anger that are completely irrational. Yet that person may receive some of your anger. Grief is like that, reactionary rather than thoughtful and rational. 

These emotions are in a stew within the grieving person and on a short fuse! Grieving parents are often fragile –if you look at them the wrong way, they break down. Or they may be volatile – if you look at them the wrong way they may blow up! Think about a pair of parents, whose child recently died. They lost the same child at the same time and they both feel this chaos of emotion, both with short fuses. In any household, any couple, there could be several breakdowns and blowups when that stew of grief emotions gets stirred. The best way of coping with this within a couple is grace. Each parent can graciously decide to give the other one a bit of repentance on the one side and, on the other, the benefit of understanding that their grief is chaotic and sudden reactions sometimes just break out. 

If you are feeling anything like I have described, you are normal. There is some comfort in knowing this is normal. If people have felt this way in the past and if most of them survived, then I can survive this turmoil too! Truly, there is hope here. Others before us have survived.

But there is more. Jesus wept. Jesus grieved when he went to visit his friends, Lazarus’ family. He saw the family and friends grieving and he felt their sorrow.  It was said of Him, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” (John 11:33) Jesus had real emotions when He thought about the death of his friend and about the grief His other friends were experiencing. He didn’t suppress or hide the emotions. I think He feels your grief and sadness too. As He wept for his grieving friends, He weeps for you too. He knows your heart hurts and He knows how much.

Looking at the context a bit more, He knew Lazarus was really dead but only temporarily. He knew He would raise Lazarus from death in just a few minutes. Yet He wept. He wept for the grievers. He wept that death ever entered into His creation and into our lives. I am so comforted by Jesus’ tears in this situation. They show me God feels my pain. They also give me permission to shed a few tears. They do not represent a lack of faith. It shows there is sorrow at the end of every precious human life. Jesus knew all, knew that Life is just around the corner, and wept anyway. Tears are part of a proper response to death.

Share:

Your child died. His best friend didn’t. How now do you relate to his friend’s parents? It is different now. And so are all your other relationships. Your own best friends may be great with the new you who is learning to walk through the “valley of the shadow of death” or not so much. Some of your old friends may not make it into the category of new friends. It’s true. Some people just can’t stay with a grieving person. Some people can’t stand to be around so much pain. I’m not sure why. But I have some guesses: it hurts them to see you in so much pain, they can’t deal with the thought of death, they don’t know what to say. (Who does, after all!) These are all just excuses. But you really don’t have to spend the energy that you don’t have, to try to maintain a friendship with someone who can’t be with you where you are in life. You may have to just let some friendships go.

People with whom you have just a nodding acquaintance – like the grocery store clerk, the post man, even some of your neighbors, even some people at your church – may avoid you. God has recorded this very behavior in Psalm 31:11-12,  a psalm of David.

Because of all my enemies,
       I am the utter contempt of my neighbors;
       I am a dread to my friends—
       those who see me on the street flee from  me.

 I am forgotten by them as though I were dead;     

 I have become like broken pottery.

As they did in the days of David, people are still crossing the street, or going the other way in a grocery aisle to avoid you. I’m sorry.  

Relationships are different in your extended family too. Some of them are probably just like the people I have already described. Or they may be the ones who are giving you the most pressure to “get back to normal!” or to get on with life! Or to get over it! Again, I’m sorry. The general population just does not get how deep and wide and painful and life-changing grief is. Because of this lack of understanding, it is lonely.

It’s also lonely because only you lost what you lost. Even in a couple when the husband and the wife lost the same child, they lost some different qualities in their unique relationships with that child. In some ways, the dad’s relationship with the child was different from the mom’s. In subtle ways, they lost different things. Add to the uniqueness of the loss, the fact that each one is a unique griever, and their grief will be different! It’s a fact: only you can grieve your grief. In your couple, try to encourage one another; try to give one another as much as you can, in your present state of depletion. But know, you can’t take away their grief and they can’t solve your’s either.

In a couple, different things are going to help heal each of you. In every couple, one partner likes to look at the pictures, and the other just can’t. I know a couple who shared that one was energized by being with people and the other needed a lot of solitude. This great couple consciously chose to give one another as much as they could of what the other needed. The wife who needed solitude took as much opportunity to be with people with her husband as she could bear. The husband took as many walks in the wood with his wife as he could bear. And each gave the other permission to be in the context that helped them most, even without the spouse.  

It’s lonely because people don’t understand grief and they avoid you. It’s lonely because friendships change. It’s lonely because only you lost what you lost and only you can grieve your grief. It’s lonely because generally in this time in history, kids grow up and most parents have not experienced the loss of a child. In many ways, you are alone. But there is One who has promised to be with you, always.

Jesus said “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Mat 28:20) God often promised in the Old Testament “Do not be afraid, I am with you” (Isa 43:5 is one example). The Holy Spirit was given to be with you: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—.” ( John 14:16)

Psalm 31:1-5 talks about that intimacy this way:   

  In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge; …

 Turn your ear to me,
       come quickly to my rescue;
       be my rock of refuge,
       a strong fortress to save me.

 Since you are my rock and my fortress,
       for the sake of your name lead and guide me.

 Free me from the trap that is set for me,
       for you are my refuge.

 Into your hands I commit my spirit;

 Lean into Him because He is with you. Grief is lonely, but you are not alone.  

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
       and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

Share:

One mom said to me “I never knew you could hurt this much!” That’s how painful it was, greater than she had ever experienced before.  I have always thought this statement was not quite complete. I think the rest of it is: “… and live to tell about it.”

There is pain and a heaviness in the chest, as if a truck were parked on it. There is the deep breathing and sighing, because of that heaviness. It feels like you can’t catch your breath. There is the GI upset, the tightness in the gut and the loss of appetite. You may have to make adjustments in how you eat. I ate kinder gentler foods, easier to digest foods, comfort foods.

There is the emptiness in your arms. The need to touch your child didn’t die when they did. To stroke their hair, to hold their hand. There is the need to hug your child, to smell their skin, to feel their lashes in butterfly kisses. There is the need to hear their voice. All this need to physically connect with them leads to physical pain in your body since none of these things can be accomplished.

There is fatigue too, because of all this constant pain and all the work to catch your breath. It takes energy and determination to think a thought, and after that, you are physically fatigued. Grief messes with your sleep patterns and with your eating habits. So of course you are fatigued after not sleeping enough. Each of us will experience some sleep issues. For some it’s laying down that is most difficult. Your mind runs and you can’t stop thinking about the one who died, or your loss, or your grief. For others, it’s hardest when they wake in the morning. Sleep has been an escape but all the pain and loss come rushing back when the mind starts waking up. Job describes the hoped for blessings of sleep in Job 7:13-15  “When I think my bed will comfort me and my couch will ease my complaint, even then you frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions, so that I prefer strangling and death, rather than this body of mine.” What he found were the curses of sleep. Sleep is sometimes the one and at other times the other.

Regarding eating, there are 2 kinds of people when under stress: those who eat and those who can’t eat. I’m an eater; anyone who can see me knows that. But I know there truly are people who can’t eat when their heart is broken. For both kinds of people, you need to determine in your own mind to eat at least one healthy thing each day. Small baby steps along the way help with the healing.

This weekend I met a young husband whose wife died of breast cancer. Just 6 weeks passed from diagnosis to her death. He mentioned that he is surprised how much physical pain his emotions produce. Like I mentioned, the categories are invented conveniences but you are one whole being. The pain of grief is in every cell.

So, there is pain in the skin and in the bones and in the heart. The Lord knows this. In His word, He records some of these same physical expressions of grief:   “my bones are in agony, my soul is in anguish… I am worn out from groaning, all night long I flood my bed with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow…“ (Psalm 6:2-3,6-7) This Lord, who invites you to pour out your heart, knows the pain in your grief too. He is not surprised and He does care.

Share:

After the death of a child, the parent’s whole being – bones, muscles, brain, heart, skin – every cell grieves. There is no part of you that’s functioning normally, without stress or pain. After talking with hundreds of parents, I came up with a description of the grieving parent. Before I begin talking about that description, I need to enter a disclaimer: I’m trying to describe Chaos, so every description will be flawed. I’m trying to organize my thinking about chaos. It can’t be done very effectively.

So, I describe a grieving parent as a person who is affected Mentally, Physically, Emotionally, Socially and Spiritually. While you are one being, one whole, I have divided you up into these categories just to help with this discussion. But I don’t think you are actually divided this neatly. 

But for the purposes of discussion, let’s talk about how grief affects a person mentally. In my own most severe grief, it was like I was thinking through Jello for weeks after the death. Decisions were too hard to make so I wore the same pair of earrings for months. I talked with a mom who, when it became dinner time, the decision of “what’s for dinner” was too overwhelming. So, for about 300 days that first year, they had pizza. No kidding. In this case, there was also the issue of the empty chair at the table. Dinner time served to highlight in fluorescent green that one child was not there. It is hard to make decisions. Even getting dressed in the morning is difficult because you have to decide whether to wear black or brown socks today!

Mentally, it is hard to remember anything from one moment to another. You can go upstairs and forget what you went to get. You can forget where you parked the car or why you went to the store in the first place. You can forget what you were planning to say between the beginning and the end of a sentence. It is also hard to concentrate on anything, including what someone else is saying. It’s hard to follow a thought from the beginning of their sentence to the end of it.

The one thing you can’t forget is that your child died. You can’t forget what he looked like the last moment you saw him, whether he was living at that time or you saw him in the ER bed after life left his body. That picture takes up all the space in the front of your mind so everything else is hard to remember. You can forget where you are going and forget to stop at stop signs. You can just space out, forgetting where you are and why and what you have done for the last few minutes.  

Since you can’t remember anything and you are thinking through Jello, it is hard to be organized. Now, I have little in the way of organizational skills, so someone like me is even more debilitated! But another mom who is gifted organizationally said she was prepared to be sad but not prepared to be so disorganized. You can miss appointments and skip details and forget to pay the bills. Since time moves very differently you can forget it’s Wednesday – thinking it’s just Monday. You lose things, words and time.

Grief affects a person mentally. The intensity may vary with many factors, including how recently the child died and what waves have overwhelmed you lately. I want to ask you all to be careful out there. Be careful driving, since it can be hard to concentrate and make decisions. Be careful doing anything with any remote danger involved, even cooking. Delay as many decisions as you can, since it is hard to follow a thought from beginning to end. Take it easy and be kind to yourself. Slow down your life to the pace you are able to manage in your present state of grief. And know that it won’t always be this bad. Take it from me; your mind is not permanently gone. You are grieving and you can heal. 

This is normal grief. I’ll talk about the other categories of your being in the next few blogs. Joe Bayly was a man acquainted with grief, having lost three sons at different times in different ways.  He spoke at a BASIS retreat some years ago and said, “whatever you are feeling right now, is normal for you in your present state of grief.” Just know you are normal. You are healing. God is with you.

Share: