Remembering
23/02/14 05:15
The people that we love are always with us.
One of the dimensions of loving another is a trace of fear of losing that person. I remember that sensation from early in the journey of being a parent. On several different occasions I would be rocking one of our children as a baby and watching the tiny one and a wave of emotion would sweep over me. I would think, “What would happen if something happened to this baby?” The thought was nearly unbearable and I would have to search for some other thought to try to displace the emotion. The feeling returned at various points in the lives of our children. When they were teens and young adults, the sensation was less a fear that they might be injured or die and more of a sense that they might move far away and live lives that were not recognizable from my point of view. The fear of losing children to value systems or ways of life that were very different than our own was, ast times, as intense as the fear of them being injured or killed.
Now I have never lost a child. I have not experienced the death of my spouse. So my expertise is limited to those experiences where I have walked the journey of grief with another. It has, on occasion, fallen to me to be the one to bring the news of the death of a child to a parent. I have had to knock on the door in the middle of the night and then deliver the news that probably was partially sensed simply by the urgency of our visit. It fell to me to be the one to tell our mother when my brother died suddenly of a heart attack.
I know that deep estrangements occur in families. I have know people of good faith who have not spoken to a sibling in decades. I know stories of families where a child was cut off and no contact was made. In many of these situations I do not know all of the details and understanding of the dynamics eludes me. Sometimes one simply has to accept things that one does not understand.
In the life of the church, I have journeyed alongside widows and the parents who have lost children as they go through the rest of their lives. The ones we love do not disappear from memory. The sharpness of the pain of loss changes. The sense of shock and denial that are present in the early stages of grief fade. Anger often fades at a slower pace, but it too backs of as one moves on with life.
But the people that we love are always with us.
May father died over three decades ago. I have lived more than half of my life since he died. And yet there are objects in my home that bring him instantly to mind: tools in my tool box, a faded blue cap, a book, and the bible with his signature on the inscription. I can hear his voice in my mind when I think of certain topics or events. I feel his presence when I stroll the campus of a college where he served as trustee for a quarter of a century. I recognize him in some of the decisions I make, and in my style of being a husband, father and grandfather.
One of the ministries of the church is a ministry of memorial. We not only allow the memories of those who have died in our church, we encourage them. For some, a physical object aids with the memory. Just like the grip of an old Stanley wood plane in my hand brings a sense of closeness to my father, so too a memorial window or banner or other object in a sanctuary can bring a comforting sense of connection in a time of worship. For some plaques and things that bear the name are important to the memory.
But it is interesting that there are others for whom the objects are not the primary focus of memory. There is a widow whose husband’s name is not on any plaques or objects in our church building. His memorials were invested in scholarship funds and other places. Yet when she sits in the sanctuary there is always a little gap to her left, the side where he sat and when I look at her I not only sense his presence, but am fairly sure she does too. Church was something they always did together before his death and there is a strong sense of his presence in our church.
Another widow in our conjugation had a husband who didn’t spend much of his life inside of a church building. I don’t know the dynamics of her memory, but there is no less a sense that his life and their relationship shaped who she is than the one whose empty place in the pew has never been filled.
I have been thinking about memory and love quite a bit this week as we prepare for worship today. One of the dynamics of the day is the dedication of a collection of books in memory of a man who died almost two decades ago. He was a youth in our church and many watched him grow from adolescence to the discovery of a call to the ministry and a journey to attend theological seminary in Massachusetts, followed by his return and work in a sister congregation in our city. He died after rough journey of depression and mental illness and his death caught many in the community by surprise. Mental illness tends to remain hidden from sight and talked about in whispers. And death by suicide often caries with it a deep stigma for those who survive.
One of the gifts his death gave our congregation was the ability to talk openly about suicide and to engage actively in suicide prevention. The survivors of suicide support group that meets in our church, the founding of the Front Porch Coalition as a united front for suicide prevention, and the LOSS team that reaches out to survivors of suicide all are direct results of his death and ways in which we remember him.
But we need to remember not only the way he died, but also the way he lived. And so his books in our library are a tangible and fitting way for us to pass his memory and his story on to generations yet to come.
It took a long time to get to this place. Today feels like we are passing yet another milestone on the journey of grief.
One of the dimensions of loving another is a trace of fear of losing that person. I remember that sensation from early in the journey of being a parent. On several different occasions I would be rocking one of our children as a baby and watching the tiny one and a wave of emotion would sweep over me. I would think, “What would happen if something happened to this baby?” The thought was nearly unbearable and I would have to search for some other thought to try to displace the emotion. The feeling returned at various points in the lives of our children. When they were teens and young adults, the sensation was less a fear that they might be injured or die and more of a sense that they might move far away and live lives that were not recognizable from my point of view. The fear of losing children to value systems or ways of life that were very different than our own was, ast times, as intense as the fear of them being injured or killed.
Now I have never lost a child. I have not experienced the death of my spouse. So my expertise is limited to those experiences where I have walked the journey of grief with another. It has, on occasion, fallen to me to be the one to bring the news of the death of a child to a parent. I have had to knock on the door in the middle of the night and then deliver the news that probably was partially sensed simply by the urgency of our visit. It fell to me to be the one to tell our mother when my brother died suddenly of a heart attack.
I know that deep estrangements occur in families. I have know people of good faith who have not spoken to a sibling in decades. I know stories of families where a child was cut off and no contact was made. In many of these situations I do not know all of the details and understanding of the dynamics eludes me. Sometimes one simply has to accept things that one does not understand.
In the life of the church, I have journeyed alongside widows and the parents who have lost children as they go through the rest of their lives. The ones we love do not disappear from memory. The sharpness of the pain of loss changes. The sense of shock and denial that are present in the early stages of grief fade. Anger often fades at a slower pace, but it too backs of as one moves on with life.
But the people that we love are always with us.
May father died over three decades ago. I have lived more than half of my life since he died. And yet there are objects in my home that bring him instantly to mind: tools in my tool box, a faded blue cap, a book, and the bible with his signature on the inscription. I can hear his voice in my mind when I think of certain topics or events. I feel his presence when I stroll the campus of a college where he served as trustee for a quarter of a century. I recognize him in some of the decisions I make, and in my style of being a husband, father and grandfather.
One of the ministries of the church is a ministry of memorial. We not only allow the memories of those who have died in our church, we encourage them. For some, a physical object aids with the memory. Just like the grip of an old Stanley wood plane in my hand brings a sense of closeness to my father, so too a memorial window or banner or other object in a sanctuary can bring a comforting sense of connection in a time of worship. For some plaques and things that bear the name are important to the memory.
But it is interesting that there are others for whom the objects are not the primary focus of memory. There is a widow whose husband’s name is not on any plaques or objects in our church building. His memorials were invested in scholarship funds and other places. Yet when she sits in the sanctuary there is always a little gap to her left, the side where he sat and when I look at her I not only sense his presence, but am fairly sure she does too. Church was something they always did together before his death and there is a strong sense of his presence in our church.
Another widow in our conjugation had a husband who didn’t spend much of his life inside of a church building. I don’t know the dynamics of her memory, but there is no less a sense that his life and their relationship shaped who she is than the one whose empty place in the pew has never been filled.
I have been thinking about memory and love quite a bit this week as we prepare for worship today. One of the dynamics of the day is the dedication of a collection of books in memory of a man who died almost two decades ago. He was a youth in our church and many watched him grow from adolescence to the discovery of a call to the ministry and a journey to attend theological seminary in Massachusetts, followed by his return and work in a sister congregation in our city. He died after rough journey of depression and mental illness and his death caught many in the community by surprise. Mental illness tends to remain hidden from sight and talked about in whispers. And death by suicide often caries with it a deep stigma for those who survive.
One of the gifts his death gave our congregation was the ability to talk openly about suicide and to engage actively in suicide prevention. The survivors of suicide support group that meets in our church, the founding of the Front Porch Coalition as a united front for suicide prevention, and the LOSS team that reaches out to survivors of suicide all are direct results of his death and ways in which we remember him.
But we need to remember not only the way he died, but also the way he lived. And so his books in our library are a tangible and fitting way for us to pass his memory and his story on to generations yet to come.
It took a long time to get to this place. Today feels like we are passing yet another milestone on the journey of grief.