THE TREASURE WITHIN OUR TEARS
I was mad at life for not stopping. The people around me continued to laugh and carry on, as if things were normal. Didn’t they know? My Dad was gone. Cruelly, I thought, my life had to go on, too. So here I was getting on with things, but not that well. I put on a brave front. In fact, I was a mess.
Dad had made that electrical connector for my generator and was going to help me install it–or at least coach me through it–after the surgery. I now stood in my garage with the unfinished pieces in my hands, reminding me both of my Dad’s presence and his absence, and I wept. It was only the first of many such occasions. They often began with me getting tangled in some project for which I was marginally qualified and thinking, I’ll just call Dad.... Eventually, I got to the point where I did not cry each time it happened.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I’m really not one for excessive displays of emotion, nor am I ashamed that I cried. I was experiencing grief and was sometimes just overwhelmed by its power.
I had supposed that the first major holiday after a death would be hard, but I was unprepared for the reality of his absence that first Christmas. It was too new, too unfamiliar. It followed too closely upon his death.
I have always loved Christmas. Christmas, even when we were just starting our family and had to carve wooden toys for the children because we were penniless, was my favorite time of the year. My whole life has been in education, so Christmas always meant vacation and family time. That year, my first Christmas without Dad, was very hard. I had to make a conscious decision even to buy a Christmas tree. I had no desire to see people, to give or receive gifts or to celebrate in any way at all. I found that I had little or no desire to do anything. I was numb. Moreover, I could hardly wait for vacation to end because school promised to be very busy for me. Teachers at my school write their first-semester evaluations and schedule meetings with parents right after the break. I threw myself into the work and tried not to think too much about the ache that was in my heart. I don’t recommend this as the best way to deal with grief, but we each have to cope with it somehow. I don’t think the cloud into which I entered at that point fully lifted until the end of the following summer.
I found grief surprising, normal and very human. The memories of my father, both painful and sweet, were oddly comforting. I shared this with a close friend, who had never really known his father because he had been adopted when he was very young. My friend said he was almost jealous of my grief, because it meant that I had a very good relationship with my father. He felt nothing for his father, and in that he felt cheated.
It occurred to me in class one day when I was teaching chapter 11 of John’s Gospel, that I was not alone. When a dear friend of Jesus died, he wept, too. Grief is a powerful human emotion. Jesus experienced it, but found a way through. Grief may be normal, but it is not the end of the story. I saw that death is our enemy. It defaces God’s beautiful creation. Jesus encountered death–his friend’s and his own– and defeated it. My healing began that day.