Early last Thursday morning, January 4, Ruthie’s mom, Rosemary, died. She died unexpectedly, the suddenness making it very hard for all of us. We all grieve losses in different ways. I posted what is below, earlier today on Facebook, in an attempt to understand my own pattern of grieving. I offer it here for your consideration and reflection.
We all grieve in different ways. These past days have been very hard for Ruthie as she grieves the death of her mother. I, on the other hand, grieve differently.
Perhaps it is a result of being involved in countless numbers of funerals over 41 years of ministry, that I find myself rather stoic and business like prior to and through the funeral, even when my sister and my father died. It was following the funeral that the grief would hit me. So it will also be for Ruthie’s mom, Rose. I am all business until her mom is buried, and then the world will come crashing down upon me.
Perhaps it is the fact that I know that life does not end when the body dies, rather it is only then that a person really begins to live, that influences my demeanor.
Perhaps, as St Paul writes in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, that death is not but a “momentary light affliction that produces for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” that I feel comfort and consolation rather than devastation.
Perhaps I am affected or infected by the optimism of Julian of Norwich when she writes, “All well be well, all will be well, and all matter of things will be well,” even though as she wrote these words the Black Plague was wiping out a third of the population of Europe.
Perhaps it is the words of St Paul in his 1st letter to the Corinthians that stirs within me victory rather than despair, “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? …But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
My manner of grieving is not one where head has primacy over heart. I have come to believe that it is an assimilation of the two, where the feelings of my heart inform my head, and the knowledge of my head informs my heart. I will grieve the loss of my other mother while simultaneously rejoicing in her victory over death.
