Deconstructing grief
Two weeks ago we looked at the feeding of the thousands from a unique perspective. Jon reminded us that, in the gospel of Matthew, this occurs almost immediately after Jesus learns about the death of his beloved friend and cousin, John the Baptist. The fact that this miracle is an interruption to his grieving, as he was trying to find some space by himself, was incredibly moving for many of us.
It has also been a time of loss for folks in our community. Over the past month or so many of us have lost loved ones. Some of us have attended funerals that were, well, not really adequate to our grief.
You see, one of the impacts of deconstruction is rediscovering our own emotions. So much of the toxic Christianity we have learned is paired with toxic positivity, a hyper focus on those things that make us happy to the point of ignoring our pain. As we have re-examined such doctrines as heaven and hell, we have peeled back the layers of positivity and found a whole lot of grief and loss that we don’t know how to live with.
What kind of toxic positivity am I talking about? Some of the common things we hear in the receiving line of a funeral…or even from the pulpit/stage:
God needed another angel.
They are in a better place.
She was so special God called her home early.
He wouldn’t want us to be sad. He’d want us to celebrate.
These are all attempts to make meaning, which is an important element of moving through hardship. However, they ignore the real pain of losing someone we love or admire, so it isn’t really meaning. It is, as the King James translators put it, dross or rubbish. These one-liners are said to numb pain, not face it.
So how do we attend to our own grief when everyone around us is only numbing the pain?
Here are a few ideas:
Pause and remember: You see a meme and find yourself texting it to your dead friend. You hear a song and remember dancing with them many years ago. These moments may bring tears, but they are also a kind of visitation, an opportunity to remember and give thanks for the love you shared.
Talk about the dead person: Find folks who will sit with you in your sadness and listen to your stories, even if they don’t know the person who died. Sometimes, that is a gift, because that person can focus on being with you and not their own experiences of the person.
Go to a favourite place you shared: It might be somewhere in nature, or your table at the diner. Just be there and remember their presence, how it felt and what their voice sounded like. Feel free to cry—or laugh! Which leads me to:
Laugh: Really. It’s ok. You can laugh-cry, or just laugh.
Write or draw: You can write letters to the person, or journal your feelings. One thing I like to do is take a piece of paper and write their name in the centre. Then I write or draw things like what I loved about them, what I hope for them, and my own feelings of loss.
Find some counselling: Grief is triggering and hard on the mind and body. Whether the person who died is a parent, a friend, or an influencer you really like, grief is disruptive and we can get emotionally stuck. Working with a professional to process the complex range of emotions that come with loss is nothing to be embarrassed about.
You will notice I haven’t talked much about afterlife here. Our community contains a lot of differing ideas about what happens when we die. Whether you believe in a golden, cloudy heaven, or that we return to stardust, or we simply end, grief is grief. Our belief (or not) in an afterlife is only one part of how we grieve and experience Divine love. That love is deep and wide enough for all your feelings and experience.
