BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Some of us are more attached than others to the things of the material world. But for most of us there’s something now gone that still delivers a pang when we think of it—that well-worn Hard Rock Cafe tee-shirt from Atlanta that got thrown out; the magical swan-boat picture of the children when they were little that was in your wallet when it got snatched; the heirloom jewelry box that went to your father’s new wife when he died, instead of to you; your collection of baseball cards that you lost track of years ago, but think about every six months or so; the hand knit sweater that got ruined in the wash. There’s a favorite earring I lost once in the car or the driveway, and I imagine I’ll be keeping an eye out long past the time when there’s any chance of finding it.
Of course, over the span of a lifetime our losses will go much deeper than jewelry and baseball cards. Some of us have known unspeakable loss, where the heart breaks and the pain seems never-ending.
Feelings of loss need to be dealt with on their own terms and according to their own time frame. When we watch people grieve, we just can’t tell from the outside what’s going on. Maybe they’re going through the process in a healthy, thorough-going way, and it’s perfectly fine that it’s taking four years to dismantle the daughter’s room or work through the anger at the loss of the spouse. Who are we to say a person is crying too much, or too long, or not enough? How can we know from the outside whether or not it’s time for the person to get on with it, to get past it, to get over it, or to really deal with it squarely in the first place?
For that matter, how can we know from the inside?
I think back to when our boys were little, and we used to take them to a cheap restaurant that gave out cheerful helium balloons. I began to dread these outings, and finally put a stop to them altogether, because as you know, the ultimate outcome of handing a child a helium-filled balloon is always disaster. Either in short order it winds up in the rafters or the tree tops or the wild blue yonder, or it makes it all the way home, where it dies a slow and pathetic death, ending as pitiful deflated litter on the child’s bedroom floor.
Our children were much in touch with their emotions in those days, and when it came to feelings of loss, they were unsurpassed. True to the textbooks, they were angry—furious—that anything as wonderful as a balloon would be taken from them. They were sad, too, tears of sadness that you wouldn’t believe. And they were afraid—afraid of how life worked, how the universe was designed, of what else could disappear so suddenly, so definitely. And they felt regret, especially if it was they themselves who had accidentally let go of the string, just for an instant, and lost the balloon for good.
Well, according to the psychologists, we should be as little children. Indeed, good grieving may require the tears and the yelling and all the rest. We can help ourselves by recognizing and processing these feelings in our own particular style, by tending our emotional landscape.
But what does religion have to offer to the process? Well, for one thing, religion offers ritual. When we lose something or somebody, most people find comfort in a ceremony of some kind. When people die and we are missing them, it can feel good to gather together at a funeral or memorial service and remember what characters they were.
We may decide to plant a tree, or scatter the ashes with friends at that favorite pond in Oregon, or go out in the woods on the first Valentine’s Day without her and read something comforting, or we may honor special people by offering gifts to charities. We bake the special dessert she used to serve us because we remember it would have been her birthday; we hang an evergreen wreath because that’s what he used to do; we get out the photo album every year on the anniversary of her death.
And there’s spirituality, that strength inside, that source of peace, that connection to whatever for you is holy, that stillness that tells you over and over again, no matter what’s going on, that life is worth the living.
We do the work of living this life, we feel the feelings, we practice our religion in ways that sustain us, we learn what makes us whole again inside, we get back in touch with what other things the day has to offer, and then we do what Mary Oliver tells us to do in her well-known poem, “In Blackwater Woods.”
“Every year/ everything/ I have ever learned/ in my lifetime/ leads back to this: the fires/ and the black river of loss/ whose other side/ is salvation,/ whose meaning/ none of us will ever know./ To live in this world/ you must be able/ to do three things:/ to love what is mortal;/ to hold it/ against your bones knowing/ your own life depends on it;/ and, when the time comes to let it go,/ to let it go.”
