Naming Grief

I sat impotently by his side, observing a beloved life fading away. Sunrise and sunset marked his last day of life upon the earth as slowly he left this world and our life together. As his spirit gradually departed the life of his physical body, I accompanied him on his final journey as far as I was allowed to go.

Twilight came and retreated as night encroached on our last hours together, each breath more labored than the last, heaving, and at last gasping. I tried bravely not to cry in his presence during the long vigil at his bedside as I sat there and watched him slowly die. My thoughts were random and escapist. My mind searched frantically for life even as I knew that soon he would be dead. I held his hand and talked to him. I rested my head on his arm, yearning for physical connection, somehow still believing that he would revive.

The sense of his spirit ebbing away was the dark backdrop of those last hours, his suffering and pain near their earthly end. Resignation and anticipation were the contradictions of my watch as I waited helplessly for the impending moment of death. The great empty space that would be my life without him at its center was beyond human imagination.

The truth is that it is absolutely impossible to comprehend or process the death of another person before the fact, however dire the circumstance. Hope persisted that the nightmare of his illness would yet end in earthly victory. Irrationally I expected him to rise up and say, "Come on, Jules, let's go home." I had no concept of what death would be like when it came, or how it would feel to experience the last breath of another beloved human being in a single moment of utter finality. In some inexplicable way, I expected to participate—not as a helpless bystander to his dying, but in the mystery of his actual death.

His entire body gave a great start around 12:30 a.m., as though to wake me from exhausted half-sleep, "sleeping through sheer grief" (Luke 22:45 JBP). With extraordinary physical strength he gripped my arm, his beautiful blue eyes feverish and suddenly wide open. What did he see to rouse his spirit from the coma of death to half-consciousness? Who was there? What did he hear? Why did it exclude me? The words from the hymn "To God Be the Glory" resonated: "our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see." Was this his experience of transport, his "going on toward perfection"? There was an intimation of eternity and of our spiritual immortality in that incomprehensible moment of silence so powerful it touched the very edge that separates mere mortals from life beyond death.

He held onto my arm as long as he could. I had so longed to see his beautiful blue eyes one more time. I did. When he closed them for a last time, his grip released. When the moment passed, I knew that his spirit had departed. I sat and watched as his beautiful body, devoid of spirit, lived on for two more hours, slowly, painfully, inevitably giving up the last of his physical being, breath by wordless breath. I could not believe that his life was almost over. It was only a moment ago that our life together was safe and ordered, every moment a joy.

He died at 2:40 a.m. It was the dark night of my soul. He left without me. He left without saying goodbye. "But now that he is dead, ... can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:23 NIV).

I was directed to an impersonal room where I waited, cold and in shock, for someone to complete the death certificate formalities. This ungrateful task was relegated to a rookie chaplain who was, at best, unpracticed in spiritual matters of dying and death. I heard myself saying words to encourage him in his fledgling pastoral care ministry. At my request, he walked me to the car.

Awkwardly he muttered a few words of superficial comfort. I brushed them aside, as though they were not intended for me. I was awash in disbelief that death had come, a death that was cruel, untimely, and unreasonable. I left that hateful place for a last time. I left without my husband. I was alone.

Driving toward home along the now familiar route, the car seemed to find its own direction. As I merged into freeway traffic with others speeding along at 3:15 a.m., my rage and anger found conscious expression. I cried aloud somewhere into the universe, "Doesn't the world know that my husband just died? Can't it stop for even ten seconds to mark the passing of a great man from this life?" Through my tears and exhaustion, I thought about how I was now among the cars on the freeway going somewhere, part of the anonymous, red-orange blur of pulsing motion I had observed from the window of my dying husband's hospital room ...

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
"Funeral Blues," W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

And so began my journey through grief. My story is not the same as your story. For each of us, grief is unique and personal. Yet we all share a common experience; we all know the painful reality of grief because we have lost someone we love. In this chapter, you will explore the nature of grief and the experience of grief.

What Is Grief?

"Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy." John 16:22 NIV

The death of one you love is like the death of a part of yourself. Grief is the outpouring of emotion and pain that expresses how you feel because of what has happened in your life:

• Grief is shock at the suddenness with which life's plans have been changed.

• Grief is anger at the untimeliness of death.

• Grief is sadness.

• Grief is the pain of starting to speak to someone who is no longer there.

• Grief is going to bed without saying goodnight to one you love.

• Grief is an empty chair at the kitchen table.

• Grief is wandering around a too large house with painful memories.

• Grief is emptiness.

• Grief is loneliness.

• Grief is adjustment.

• Grief is reorganizing to go on with life.

• Grief is wishing that things were as they used to be and knowing that they never will be again.

• Grief is...