More Thoughts on Grief

My dad died five years ago. To be honest, because of the dementia, it many times felt like he was dead long before that. I’m not sure that grief ever goes away. It’s less like a feeling and more like a companion who never leaves. He gets quieter over time, but never really leaves. Yeah, that’s what “it” is. A companion. Not a friend. It’s too simple to call it a feeling. Grief becomes the personification of the person in the absence of the person.

He is not here. His doppelganger is though…watching, being, in his absence. There is sometimes a strange comfort that comes with grief. The dull pang of loss is better than feeling nothing at all, right?

I think grief never really leaves, because new experiences are made every day. New experiences, where “they” are not there. Grief is not just sadness over the loss of the way things used to be, it is the stark realization of the loss of the way things might have been. The old memories, they are ours. The memories yet to be, never to be.

How does the old song go, “Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again.”

And so it goes.

But there is hope at the end of the tunnel. We don’t weep like those who have no hope. Those who have fallen asleep in Jesus…we who are believers will meet them again.

Until then…