Lenten Journey: Journey Towards Grief

Easter Sunday brings so many memories. The music, the pageantry, the colors, the flowers, and, of course, the message. New life, transformation, renewal.

But I find it important to remember that Easter Sunday isn’t Easter Sunday without Good Friday. And I find it further helpful to step into the sandals of the disciples and consider the bewildering grief they must have felt when Jesus was crucified. No matter what your theological belief is about what happened three days later, we can all relate to unexpected grief and loss.

So as I reflect on the Lenten Journey, I have to hold a space for the journey toward that grief just as much as I see it as a journey toward hope and transformation. So, I want to reflect on grief today. What is your first memory of grief? What lasting impact has it had on you; how has it transformed you and shaped who you are today? There will be another day to consider how you found strength or hope after grief but today I want to stay on Good Friday and not run away from the grief.

My first memory of grief is a complicated one because it happened when I was three and yet it showed up again at different points in my life.

A week after my third birthday, Allegheny Airlines Flight 853 crashed outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. My father was 21 years old and his older brother, my uncle Gary, was on that flight. I have no idea if I was really there for this memory. Maybe we were at my grandparents’ home holding vigil with them, maybe not. But I have a memory of two airline employees coming to the door of my grandparents’ home to deliver the news and my grandmother wailing at the moment when she was told.

Approximately ten years later, my mother was sharing the story of my uncle’s death with a neighbor when I was suddenly filled with an unexplained grief and anger. It was the narcissistic grief of a 13 year old. I recall feeling deep sadness that I hadn’t known Uncle Gary for these ten years of my life and that he hadn’t gotten to know me. I have learned some things since then that have helped me make sense of that grief but for years I didn’t understand the depth and strength of my reaction that day.

Uncle Gary’s death impacted my whole family. My father went from being the middle son to being the eldest surviving son. Uncle John, who was 11 at the time, lost his oldest brother whom he idolized. In hindsight, I realize that my paternal grandparents, who were SO integral to my childhood, were experiencing the bewildering grief of losing their son so suddenly and tragically when he was still in his 20s. How long did it take them to experience real joy again?

As I said, the grief of Uncle Gary’s death returned for me in new forms at different places in my  life. I wasn’t three but very early in my childhood after that I had fully processed the awareness that life is fragile and fleeting. I also learned early in life that there is a cycle of life and death. Life is beautiful but death is also part of the story that we all experience. By the time I was 25, both of my grandfathers whom I had grown up with had died, my cousin Adam died shortly after his first birthday, and a college classmate died. I experienced each of those deaths with a different grief journey but death and grief were firmly established events in my life.

Although I have experienced some especially difficult deaths in the last few years, grief does not feel foreign to me and death feels both sad and matter of fact to me. If that sounds contradictory, I don’t know how to explain it. Death is able to hold both spaces in my life and that informs who I am today, how I experience grief today, and, I suspect, how I will experience grief in the future. The journey is never simple or easy and I’m learning this year just how much some journeys through grief are harder than others.

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You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com