Grief

We got a newspaper subscription, and a few weeks ago I was sad to read an obituary about someone who did not believe that there was "room for grief" in the plan of salvation.

I do not agree. I think grief, like joy or peace or pain or sorrow is a necessary feeling of this mortal experience that teaches us, that hones us, that can help us come to know more about Jesus Christ.

Else why was He a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief?

Recently, I had another painful week where I felt again the agony of Jake's loss. The pain of separation. The grief of death. It came unbidden and built from event to event but hit me like a powerful wave which I was helpless to control.

So it takes me down and pulls me under and finally I come up exhausted and spent. The experience is happening with less frequency, but when it comes, almost like when you physically get stomach sick and vomit, the feeling is the same.

Pain.

Raw and biting and profound. All the way through.

At the LDS widow/widower's conference there was a talk about grief that I loved. The speaker, Kent Allen, discusses the grieving process and sheds light on the experience of grieving. Here is the link:

Kent Allen's talk on the Grieving Process.

I've listened to it several times and shared it with our family members. I think his definition of loss and grief are insightful and so practical and helpful.

In defining loss he states, "Loss is when we lose hopes and dreams that are core to our existence."

So loss is when we lose hopes for our future. Lose dreams that we held dear. Lose plans that defined our existence.

And he explains that grieving is the process we go through that helps us let go of old hopes and dreams and helps us obtain new hopes and dreams.

And boy oh boy, it is a process.

There are many days when I feel that I have accepted our losses. That I can start to look forward and create new hopes and dreams. But then there are days where my mind rejects any form of acceptance and I just want our (mine and Jacob's) old hopes and dreams back.

So I am muddling through.

Kent Allen says that grieving "is an unlearned process. There is nothing in our lives that prepares us for loss. Even if our spouse was sick and we knew it was coming we could not be prepared for it. It is a feeling process, not a thinking process. You cannot think your way through it because it does not make any sense."

My experience with grief agress with his assessment 100 percent.

Our kids have been listening to musicals lately and one day I realized that many of the big hit musicals have a song that deals with the pain of loss, the ache of separation, the inexplicable nature of grief. That is what makes them compelling.

In Les Miserables, returning to the room where he met with his friends, Marius sings

There's a grief that can't be spoken,
There's a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables,
Now my friends are dead and gone.

In The Phantom of the Opera, lamenting the death of her father, Christine sings

You were once
My one companion
You were all
That mattered
You were once
A friend and father
Then my world
Was shattered

Wishing you were
Somehow here again
Wishing you were
Somehow near
Sometimes it seemed
If I just dreamed
Somehow you would
Be here

And in the recent hit Hamilton, after the death of the Hamiltons' son, Angelica sings

There are moments that the words don't reach
There is suffering too terrible to name
You hold your child as tight as you can
And push away the unimaginable
The moments when you're in so deep
It feels easier to just swim down
The Hamilton's move uptown
And learn to live with the unimaginable 

On February 18, 2017, Elder Jeffery R. Holland posted the following on the LDS church Instagram account:

"I often think of those of you who are in the midst of a struggle. As much as we want life to be easy and comfortable, as much as I wish it could be that way for you, it simply cannot be. We are all, in one way or another, at one point in our lives, going to deal with a moral conundrum or a difficult issue without an easy answer.

At that point, we need to ask ourselves, 'How much does the gospel of Jesus Christ really mean to me?' How will you act when that call comes? Will you defend Christ and His gospel, come what may? "John Taylor wrote that he once heard Joseph Smith say to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 'You will have all kinds of trials to pass through... God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God.'

"The life of Christ was like that. It is not coincidental that the word that he used for Christ's experience in Gethsemane is that He was in 'agony.' If we say we're disciples of Christ, we will on occasion be in agony. We must walk where He walked. When those moments come- contemporary issues, historical complexities, personal problems at home, challenges in a mission or a marriage, whatever it is- I pray and ask and bless you to the end that you will be strong. May you follow Christ with every ounce of your being, in good times and in bad."

And so that is what I will do. Follow Christ. Stay with Him. Soften my heart. Grieve and feel and mourn and ache. Hoping that one day it will make sense, that I will see the whole picture, that I will understand.