Grief: a visual journey

and perhaps the most difficult of the transitions...

missing you everyday, dad

The Gestation of Grief

He’s been gone nine months.

That’s equivalent to the length of gestation for the average human being.

Nine months since my dad died.

Pregnancy, when healthy and completed, will result in a new life being born. A new life that matured from embryo to fetus to air-breathing baby. 

For approximately 40 weeks, human potential is floating in the blackness of amniotic fluid and developing in the womb until ready to be birthed into a fresh form of existence.

What’s the gestation period for grief? And when it’s complete, what does it birth?

The mysteries of human anatomy are more fully understood today than any other time in history. We can, therefore, predict the trajectory of a pregnancy, monitor the growth of the fetus, and formulate a fairly fail-proof birth plan. 

Grief is a different beast entirely. True, social scientists have observed and recorded findings that help us understand the most expected path grief will take. The human factor is, however, so vast and so varied that the only foreseeable pattern in grief is that very little seems predictable.

And as best I can tell, as grief incubates and develops in healthy ways, there is a sense that something new will emerge, but it’s not always clear what that will look like or when it will occur.

What’s the gestation period for grief? And when it’s complete, what does it birth?

I hadn’t consciously viewed this path of grief as a gestation period for me. The countless tears, the throbbing loss, the empty absence…I didn’t see any of it as a necessary process toward a new birth. It was just unavoidable in the wake of death and I was just trying to manage survival.

It’s good to know that God sees a bigger picture even when we can’t. 

Grief isn’t meant to last forever, at least not in an intensity that socks you in the gut, confiscates the oxygen from your lungs. The image of a headstone isn’t meant to leave someone stone cold indefinitely. And the freshly dug earth beneath the grave marker, will eventually be covered again in the green growth of grass. It’s the meantime that bridges those two realities. “Meantime” is a gestation; a period of waiting while something grows, develops, matures, becomes, readies itself for birth. 

I am just now realizing, through the fog that something new can actually come to be.

The gestation of grief isn’t measured in days and months, but perhaps there are milestone moments that indicate you’ve moved a little further along in the process. 

Moments when…

• The times my children ask if my sadness is because of Granddad decreases.
• The loneliness of my grief has, in part, dissipated.
• I realize deep ache morphed to anger for a time, and now the anger has subsided.
• I can laugh more easily.
• I am finding eucharist in the everyday spaces again.

The gestation of grief has not reached it’s culmination in me because…

• I still can’t write about Dad without crying
• I still feel acute loss on special days because I won’t get a phone call from him
• I still fight a twinge of jealousy toward those who talk nonchalantly about their fathers
• The Hamilton soundtrack generates melancholy in me because I can’t share a brilliant lyric with him next time we talk.

All these months, while I was lost to myself in the blackness of my grief, an unseen process was nurturing the potential for new life. Jesus has been sitting shiva with me in the darkroom of my grief. He’s been waiting patiently with me and working to insure that what emerges is neither underdeveloped nor overexposed. The God of invisible strength, who holds all things together, has been holding me in tender and capable hands. 

When my tears only seemed to erode my hope, the Comforter knew at just the right time, though unplanned by my calendar, the gestation of my grief will come full-term and something new will be birthed.  

He’s been gone nine months. 

Like pregnancy, there’s a whole lot that has to transpire on the inside before visible confirmation of progress is seen from the outside.

For the first time in this journey of grief, I see evidence that something new and hopeful will born of this. Just yesterday I lay contorted on the driveway to capture this shot. 

As I lay bent on the warm concrete, smelling the delicate scent of these blooms, I realized my lips had turned up in an unforced smile. I may not be able to predict what will come of this gestation or when it will culminate, but if God sees fit to give a flipped-out curl to each petal of the Lily of the Valley, then I trust it will be really, really good.

How the Incarnation Showed Up in My Grief

Grief doesn’t fall into a nice timetable. It has no respect for my schedule. And it showed up in full  force yesterday.

The holidays have been hard for me. Our family is in transition and the future is unclear. On top of all those changes, I spent my first Christmas without my dad. And my first New Year. There’s something distancing about stepping into a year that my dad will never see. It feels like I’ve lost yet another point of connection with him.

Add to that, this coming Monday would be his 65th birthday. This week, I’m sandwiched between emotional holiday firsts and a birthday I can no longer celebrate with my father. 

Yesterday was scheduled with school. Things like adding links to the paper chain we started this week where all five of us add our own link every day with something for which we are thankful. When the time comes in the next few months to move out of this house that has been our home for the last 18 years, we are going to weave that chain of paper through the empty rooms. Like our way of extending gratitude for the life and memories these walls hold.

So, yesterday school was on the docket. Reading about Charlemagne, practicing penmanship, learning metric system conversions, and teaching the concept of regrouping (Lord, help me). I was standing in the kitchen fixing lunch and I lost it. Tears running down my face, full-on ugly cry. Grieving. Aching. The deep soul kind. 

It’s hard to cook pepperoni through a flood of tears.

My tween walks in, sees my tears, and asks if I need a hug. I take it. Paul walks in, sees my face, and immediately folds me into his chest. By the time the microwave beeped that the pepperoni was done, all five of us were intertwined together for the sake of consoling me. I have good people.

The thing is, the tears kept coming. Off and on all day. After doing map work in history, while my 2nd grader use math blocks to solve an equation, and in the basement changing out laundry. None of those moments were expected or convenient. None of it was part of my plan for the day. Not a single tear was on my calendar.

But every single time, my family met me where I was. Every single time. I was not alone in my grief yesterday. 

I actually thought I was going to get away with a crying spell last night. I was sitting in the dark bedroom trying to clear myself up while the kids brushed their teeth. I stood up, ready to exit, and in walks my 7 year old. She sees my face. 

“Mommy, are you sad again about Granddad?”

“Yes, honey.”

And as she wraps her little arms around my waist, she looks up at me and says, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I don’t want you to be sad by yourself.”

Grief wasn’t anticipated, invited, or even welcome yesterday, but had it not been for my grief, I would not have found this beautiful consolation of my family. 

In the church, we talk about Christmas as the Incarnation, when God put on flesh. It was, and still is, a miracle that God would enter our world so we would know that we don’t have to go it alone anymore. Yesterday, on the heels of a hard holiday, while still in the midst of the 12 Days of Christmas, the Incarnation happened again. Jesus took up residence in the hugs, kisses, and comfort of my family. And it is no less a miracle to know that they are entering into my journey of grief so I don’t have to go it alone.

Will Smith, Grief, and Christmas

I went to a movie the other evening. I went alone because it felt a necessary and desired offering on the 4-month anniversary since my father passed away. Four months. I’ve seen September, October, November, and half of December come and go without him. I’ve passed through my oldest’s birthday, my husband’s birthday, a Halloween, an historic election, and Thanksgiving without him. And right around the corner is Christmas. I have yet to determine if it is kindness or cruelty in grief that so many significant days are packed into such a short period of time.

I needed sanctuary. A place of remembrance that allowed me the chance to honor a life, and a death, that has forever changed me. My altar was a big screen and a reclining leather seat. My dad loved movies. I suppose that’s where I got it my affinity for cinema, so it seemed fitting to find myself on this anniversary in a place doing something we both love. 

I didn’t know what I was hoping to accomplish in that dark theater. I didn’t really go with any kind of expectation. That fact, in and of itself, was a gift. 

I parked, froze as I walked from the van to the lobby, bought my solitary ticket, and found a seat among 20 strangers who had also chosen to see Collateral Beauty.

It’s a movie about grief. It’s a movie about life. It’s a movie about what we do with three abstractions: love, time, and death. Although the movie is filled with Hollywood heavyweights, it plays out as a fairly predictable and contrived storyline. Even still, there are some lovely moments where Will Smith’s vulnerability gives the onlooker the permission to grieve along with him.

I had no epiphany during the film. No moment of clarity as the credits rolled. I got up from my seat, walked back to the van, and went home. If I was sure of anything it was that I was glad I had been there. Glad to have followed through and spent a portion of that difficult day at the movies.

Now, days later, I recognize something more. Spending 97 minutes watching Collateral Beauty was the embodiment of Advent reality. The film clearly invites the audience to enter into grief, but if you accept the invitation you aren’t alone. What the film gave me was a chance to be okay with everything I might be feeling and my reactions to those feelings because I am not alone. The raw grief of the fictional Howard Inlet is a reminder that we all connect with grief because we all “bear the wound.” I am not alone in my grief. 

That’s the message of Christmas. We aren't alone. God wrapped Himself in flesh and bone and stepped into time, and in doing so He showed us there is nothing we experience by ourselves. He’s been there. He’s done that. He’s gotten the t-shirt. For grief. For being misunderstood. For the joy of genuine friendship. For being hungry. For fighting to accept the reality in front of Him. He’s walked the road. He’s lived in that neighborhood. You and I aren't by ourselves through any of it. 

Christmas says God really is Emmanuel - the God who is with us. Peering into the Bethlehem manger doesn’t erase my grief. It doesn’t eliminate the struggle of adjusting to life without my dad. But the swaddled baby reminds me I don’t do any of it by myself. I am not alone. And today, that will be enough for me.

The Word became flesh and blood, 

and moved into the neighborhood. 

We saw the glory with our own eyes, 

the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, 

generous inside and out, true from start to finish. 

- John 1:14 (MSG) -