For in grief nothing ‘stays put’. One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats.
Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often — will it be for always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realised my loss till this moment?’ The same leg is cut off time after time.
C. S. Lewis – A Grief Observed.
Two years on.
The change is the new normal.
Whenever we are all together as a family (especially at times such as this) now there’s an absence.
The comfort that comes from the familiarity of gathering has been changed.
Especially when the comfort we seek is from the experience and grief of his loss.
It will never be the way it was.
Which doesn’t diminish what it is now.
It’s different, not worse.
When we gather now there’s always someone missing, his absence as present our our presence, his silence as loud as our speech. Still five children, but one always gone.
When we’re all together, we’re not altogether.Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son, Spire 1989, pg. 96-97
Some weeks work and coping look about the same.
This week in particular.
It is a week to return to Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Lament For A Son.
(Actually that’s every week, but this week is also the singular week)
There is survivor’s guilt, and there must be griever’s guilt.
The circumstance of loss has brought insight and capacity for empathy that are appreciated by others.
While thankful for the ability to serve others more effectively, paradoxically, if the absence of these abilities meant that he was still here I’d choose him.
That the radiance which emerges from acquantiance with grief is a blessing to others is familiar, though perplexing: How can we treasure the radiance while struggling against what brought it about? How an we thank God for suffering’s yield while asking for its removal? But what I have learned is something stranger still: Suffering may be among the sufferer’s blessings.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son, Spire 1989, pg. 96-97
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