AUGUST 28 If death my friend and me divide, thou dost not, Lord, my sorrow chide, or frown my tears to see; restrained from passionate excess, thou bidst me mourn in calm distress for them that rest in thee —CHARLES WESLEY Sometimes we have the mistaken notion that people of faith not grieve Confident that the essence of their loved one has survived and that they will know each other again, they move calmly through this temporary separation without tears or turmoil Not so Let us not add to our already burdened hearts any further burden of guilt that we so easily “give way” to our grief Wouldn’t we miss our loved one if he or she moved halfway around the world? The imponderable mysteries of death are far more impenetrable than having a loved one move to a foreign land! Fortunate are those whose faith remains strong in the face of loss They are also fortunate if they can mourn freely and without recrimination from themselves or others To be human is to feel the pain of loss To be healed of that pain is wonderful, but there are no shortcuts There is only the way through I will deal honestly with my pain; we know each other well AUGUST 29 I was in a garden at the Rodin Museum For a few minutes I was alone, sitting on a stone bench between two long hedges of roses Pink roses Suddenly I felt the most powerful feeling of peace, and I had the thought that death, if it means an absorption into a reality like the one that was before me, might be all right —IRVING HOWE What are the sources of epiphanies like this moment described by the eminent literary critic Irving Howe? The sociologist Peter Berger suggests that gods are not, as some claim, human projections of our wishful thinking, but that humanity and its works—angels, skyscrapers, symphonies—are God’s projections into the world He speaks of an “otherness that lurks behind the fragile structures of everyday life.” We read these statements and conjectures, and our hearts rise As we wend our way through the shadows and high moments in the wake of loss, these statements and intuitions are as food to the starving, as water to those all but overcome with thirst I will watch for my own moments in the garden AUGUST 30 Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the oe’r fraught heart and bids it break —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE The pressure of unspoken grief is like that inside a pressure cooker—it builds and builds until one feels as though another tiny increment of pain will drive one mad Speak Tell a friend Tell another friend, or the same friend again A wise friend will know one must tell this tale again and again One way to begin—particularly if death has been unexpected and hard to believe—is to recount to this understanding friend, in as much detail as you can remember, the events of the day on which death occurred “I got up in the morning I had my usual breakfast of cereal and juice and coffee I read the paper”—as mundane as that This kind of retelling of the day grounds the event in the real world and helps us begin to believe the terrible truth of that day What happened is not a fantasy, or something we can put in a bubble and hold away from the rest of our life It took place in real time, on a real day, and while it will be terribly sad to recount, the recounting will help release the pressure inside and activate the flow of healing—friend to friend As often as I need to, I will tell my story AUGUST 31 I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower—the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence —HELEN KELLER Surely a woman who from birth could neither see nor hear speaks out of a deprivation more profound than anything we can imagine And yet with the long, persistent—and insistent—care of her teacher and mentor, Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller was able to break from this darkness, to liken the presence of the God within her to wonders she could know through her sense of smell, through warmth on her skin and vibrations of her fingertips Though that is a vastly different darkness from the darkness of grief, there are perhaps elements in common—a sense of isolation, discouragement, uncertainty about the future What is to sustain us through the long periods of grief? What enables us not to be totally crushed? Along with all kinds of help from our friends and our communities of faith, it is often a sense of the God within that helps us break from our darkness A presence as gentle and insistent as the fragrance of flowers, as life-giving and warming as light I have a strength within myself that sometimes surprises me SEPTEMBER We can be a little more resistant to calls of duty, though responsibilities, too, can help us keep going But if we tend to be superconscientious, we can relax a little…When we go into social groups, we need not expect too much of ourselves or feel we have to be scintillating or muster up the small talk —MARTHA WHITMORE HICKMAN What we are suggesting is that we be kind to ourselves, realizing we have sustained a major wound and need time—maybe even a little self-indulgence—to recover If there is some level on which we feel responsible for what has happened (even if it’s only the “guilt of the survivor”), we may feel a need to work extra hard to prove we deserve our place in life again Wrong! As the lapel button popular a few years ago proclaimed, “I am a child of the universe I have a right to be here.” Or to quote the dying priest in Diary of a Country Priest, “All is grace.” Life is a gift none of us earns We need to take care of ourselves so we will be strong for another day Let someone else the extra chores of life for a while We’ll have our turn again, when we’re feeling better I need make no excuses to anyone—not even to myself—in taking time to let the depleted wells of my energy fill up again ... conjectures, and our hearts rise As we wend our way through the shadows and high moments in the wake of loss, these statements and intuitions are as food to the starving, as water to those all but overcome... terribly sad to recount, the recounting will help release the pressure inside and activate the flow of healing? ??friend to friend As often as I need to, I will tell my story AUGUST 31 I believe that God