Tag Archives: Grief

Grieving in Isolation

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The COVID-19 pandemic compounds and complicates the grief process. It’s as though the whole world is in mourning.

Many are dying alone in hospitals and healthcare facilities cutoff from families.  Funeral services and comforting embraces are limited.

There is a solitude inherit in grief itself. Others may empathetically bear some of sorrow’s weight; but the deepest pain is privately borne.

Yet, we need the comfort that comes from physically connecting with one another — warm embraces, a clasp of the hand, a smile on the lips, or tears in the eyes.

Friday will mark six months since Linda’s death. The intensity of the sadness has subsided and the waves of sorrow wash over me less often. Adjusting to life without her presence remains a daily challenge.

The “social distancing” and isolation are having an impact on my own grieving.  I grieve for and with those who are infected with the COVID-19 virus and their families. The sheer number of casualties is breathtaking.  But they are more than numbers; they are mothers, fathers, spouses, children, friends, colleagues, family.

I feel a certain kinship with them, a solidarity that is deepened by my own loss. There is a strange comfort in such solidarity, a sense of connection with others who grieve. I understand more fully the Beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

The isolation is forcing me to revisit and work through painful memories. Prior to the onset of the pandemic, my busyness had enabled me to avoid fully coming to grips with some guilt, regrets, and other negative components of grieving.

Now I can’t escape them. The long hours of solitude and silence bring buried thoughts and  emotions to the surface. I’m naming them as they arise, reflecting prayerfully, and sharing them in telephone conversations and messages with family and close friends.

Although I am alone most of the time, I’m not really isolated in my grieving. I remain connected in multiple bonds of love and friendship. And, I’ve committed to reaching out to others who are grieving. With the pandemic, “others” includes almost everyone.

A hymn we sing often at Bethany, the memory care facility where I serve as volunteer chaplain, is “Blest be the Tie That Binds.” We always include this verse:

We share each other’s woes,

our mutual burdens bear;

and often for each other flows,

the sympathizing tear.

Let us find ways of sharing our grief even in this time of isolation. In so doing, we may come to know “the peace that passes understanding.”

 

 

Moving from Grief’s Tears to Love’s Smiles

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It’s been three and half months since Linda’s death. The grieving continues!

C. S. Lewis in his classic A Grief Observed writes that grief is like a bomber flying overhead. At times you are only faintly aware that it is there. Then, without warning it drops a bomb, shattering your world once more. The sobbing and disorientation return.

Those waves of grief come unexpectedly, like a sudden bolt of thunder on a clear day! They are triggered by a site, or fragrance, or a rediscovered memento, a reminder of an experience from the past.

Painful images of Linda’s diseased-induced distress, anguish, confusion, disorientation, and fear open the floodgates of grief’s tears. They trouble me, sometimes torment me!

Experts remind us that the memories with the most painful emotion attached to them are the hardest to heal.

Those negative images accompanying our journey with dementia are difficult to dislodge from my memory.

But healing is happening!

Our daughter created a collage of photographs of happy times over our sixty years together.

Collage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The collection of joyful images sits in my sunroom where I spend much of the day. Other photos are attached to the refrigerator.  Two months ago, those photos brought tears, too. They reminded me of what had been but can be no more.

Yet, something important has been happening.

The painful images from the last few years are slowly being balanced by memories from six decades of love and laughter.

Our new community chaplain, Kathleen Miko, stopped by this week for a visit. Since she had not known Linda, I pointed to the collection of photographs and explained why they were there.

Kathleen observed, “I notice that you smile every time you look at those photos.”

I hadn’t realized that gradually grief’s tears are being replaced with smiles of gratitude for love shared.

I know that more bombs of sadness will fall, waves of grief will come crashing over me.

Yet, grief’s tears are slowly giving way to love’s smiles.

 

Living with Grief’s Paradoxes

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Photo by Norma Sessions

I’ve known it intellectually, but now I’m living the reality.

Grieving means living with paradoxes, struggling with conflicting emotions and desires! 

I’m less than a month away from Linda’s death. The grief is raw, the sense of loss intense.  Here are some of my lived paradoxes:

  • relief that she’s at peace and regret that she is gone;
  • desire to engage others and preference for being alone;
  • wanting to remember and trying to forget;
  • confidence that I loved her well and guilt that I fell short;
  • quietness as solace and silence as a void;
  • aloneness as solitude and aloneness as loneliness;
  • clinging to God’s presence while feeling God’s absence.

A friend reminded me, “You can’t go around grief. You have to go through it!” I can’t remove the paradoxes. I just have to live them.

God, grant me the patience necessary for living with and through grief’s paradoxes!

 

“Glimpses”

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A week has passed since Linda’s death and I have begun the process of adjusting to the new norm without her physical presence. Though the house is vacant and quiet, the reality of the love we shared for sixty years remains.

One of the most comforting and profound experiences of the last week has been a poem written by our daughter, Sheri, which she shared at both of Linda’s memorial services. I learned that she wrote the poem over the ten years of Linda’s disease and that she would write a new stanza every time her mom entered a new phase of dementia.

Each stanza represents a stage in the long journey and chronicles the progression of the losses experienced, including the present reality of her absence and our anticipation of resting in the loving arms of God in whose presence Linda now lives.

I share the poem with Sheri’s permission.

                     Glimpses

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of a future reality that will come to be.
A lost word, a confused look,
An expression I mistook.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of the mom who still knows and loves me.
Embarrassed by her lapse and my forgotten name,
I brush it aside because I love her all the same.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of the mom she used to be.
A smile, a giggle, a twinkling of the eye
Remind me of a taken-for-granted time now gone by.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of my mom slipping away from me.
I try and try to connect once again
To little avail, though; this is how it’s been.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of where my mom will one day be.
In the arms of the God who loves her so much,
In the arms of the God she did always trust.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of my mom happy, as she is meant to be
Cradled in love and joy and peace
After all these years, she is finally free.

Glimpses, mere glimpses I see
Of a world without my mom physically
Close in my heart she will always be
Until that very day God cradles me.

(Written by Sheri Carder Hood)