Thank you to those who were kind enough to give us some feed-back about last Sundays service, when Catriona and I had a conversation about our experiences of grief. I think, for many of us, it brought back memories of people we have grieved for. That isn’t a bad thing because grief never finally goes away. It can become less intense as the “space” between feelings of grief gets longer. But at sometime something may trigger it again and we remember our loss.
Grief isn’t “bad” – unless it becomes pathological and prevents us moving on slowly with our lives. Grief takes many forms – numbness, shock, sadness, tearfulness, sleeplessness, anger anxiety, depression – BUT it is different for everyone. No two people grieve in exactly the same way. And not everyone experiences all the different aspects of grief. It depends a lot on our own personality, the culture we were brought up in, the quality of the relationship we had with the person who died.
Grief is the emotions we are given to express the sense of loss we feel. And those feelings are OK. When we see or experience something funny we laugh – in the same way when we feel sad we cry. Have you ever tried to suppress a laugh? The harder you try the more the laughter builds up – and finally “explodes” out of us. It can be the same with tears – we can only suppress them for so long before they finally burst out.
I just want to reinforce a few things:
- Grief is a normal response to loss.
- Grief is different for everyone, we each have our own way of experiencing it.
- Individually we may respond in different ways to different losses. Grief can be different for the loss of a partner, a child, a parent, or a friend.
- We cannot assume that others will respond in the same way as we do. It’s good to avoid the phrase “I know how you feel”! We don’t really know how another is feeling. We do know how we feel in similar circumstances. Be careful not to assume someone else is the same.
- Grief doesn’t go away altogether. And why should it! It’s our body’s way of helping us remember the loss of someone we love. “It’s like being deeply wounded. The wound heals but it leave a scar. In the cold weather the scar aches”.
I hope the service was helpful for you. If you have any questions or comments please contact me. This Sunday we will have a look at “Ruth” – the little book in the middle of the Hebrew Scriptures.
See you Sunday.
Shalom
Jim
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