Love is not wasted (Thoughts on death, grief, & comfort for the comforters.)
My uncle passed away unexpectedly a month ago. Just this last week, Kobe Bryant also died suddenly. And only minutes before I sat down to write this, I learned that someone close to members of my extended family had committed suicide. I wasn’t particularly close to any of these people. I didn’t even know the latter two personally. But it’s easy to say that death is something that’s been on my mind a lot this month.
Mostly, I’ve struggled to simply know what to do with it. What do you say in the face of such tragic, unexpected loss? How do you comfort the ones left behind when you know full well that nothing you do will ever fill the empty place left in their heart? How do you even begin to make sense of something that seems so senseless?
I’m not writing because I’ve figured out the answers to these questions, because maybe I won’t ever fully understand what to do with death. Perhaps the best comfort we can find in the face of death is simply being honest about it. Death sucks. Death REALLY. SUCKS. We were never meant to die. God never intended us to bear the grief of separation from the ones we love the most, even if we know that separation is only temporary.
What I wrestled with most this month, especially during the time I got to visit my aunt and cousins, was this feeling of overwhelment, that this was something that was so far beyond me I did not know what to do with it. I was reminded forcefully this month that I still do not know what to do with grief. I feel like grief has been a consistent, recurring theme the past couple years. I’ve thought a lot about it, had help in beginning to work through it, and have become better at dealing with it in healthy ways. But I was humbled this month, struggling to keep my heart open to a face of grief that I had not dealt with yet. How do you help someone who is grieving a loss this huge and this deep? Is what I’m doing even helping?
I am so grateful for the friends who reminded me that what I did, did matter. Something significant to me was that two friends individually (without knowing that the other had said the same thing) reminded me of the story of the boy with five loaves and two fish, a small offering that Jesus multiplied to feed over 5,000 people. Another friend told me, “Love is never wasted.” These reminders are a comfort to me as I’ve found myself as a comforter, struggling to know how best to love the ones who are grieving.
I had a lot of feelings this month that were hard to put into words. And somehow simply writing out paragraphs of thoughts didn’t seem to express the tension I felt inside. I found myself writing poems a lot this month as a way of processing all that was going on, mostly in relation to my uncle and the time spent with my aunt and cousins following his death.
I hope these words can create space for those of you who are also grieving loss today.
Death comes unbidden,
the needy acquaintance
that you wish you could pretend
you didn’t recognize,
so that you could turn him away
without feeling
the twinge of guilt
that comes with
refusing to give
to someone
you know.
His knock is never
expected,
so you open the door unwillingly,
thinking to yourself,
”Again?
Haven’t
you taken enough
already?
And since when
have you ever
repaid me?”
perhaps it is just part of being human,
this instinctual urge
to make sense of our world,
to find in everything
the good,
the right,
the beautiful.
—only death
is shockingly un-good,
un-right,
un-beautiful.
still we are convinced
that we can squeeze meaning out of it,
hoping that this dried-out fruit
will produce something sweet
if only we squeezed it hard enough.
we say things like,
”it must have been his time to go”
and “God must have needed her
more than we did”
and “surely this must be God’s will”—
knowing full well that we are not satisfied
with our dried-out words,
words as dead
as the loved ones we lost.
it is a beautiful attempt,
this drive to make meaning
out of death,
out of suffering,
out of all that is wrong in the world.
and we need the courage
and clarity that comes with trying to see
where death turns
into resurrection.
but perhaps
the purpose of suffering
is not that we make sense of it
but that we learn
how to make peace
with mystery.
perhaps the meaning
is not to find meaning,
but to learn to be content
with its lack.
alongside.
i cannot imagine
what you are going through
but i love you,
so i will try to imagine it.
i do not know
exactly how you are feeling,
but i love you,
so i will feel with you.
i do not understand
why this happened to you,
but i love you,
so i will sit with you in the mystery.
help to the grieving.
i feel as if i
am throwing fistfuls of sand
into your ocean.
comfort for the comforters
when the boy brought you his lunch
you did not scoff
at its smallness.
it seemed like nothing
but with you,
love is not wasted.
both
because of hope we
can grieve, and in grieving hope
becomes truer, realer.
Today I am thankful that Jesus has “borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). He is with us in all of our anger, sadness, fear, dysfunction, and confusion. And he has made a way for us to no longer fear the sting of death.
“Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
—1 Corinthians 15:54b-55