As the Deer

There is some unnamed function of grief that swiftly severs that inorganic cable between head and heart. Whereas before you may have been able to experience a mild annoyance or setback, and your mind would have quickly relayed to your heart that “all is well, this is nothing compared to the entirety of your life.” Or inversely your mind would tell you “this person has had enough chances, you should leave” only for your heart to respond with a message of grace. Greif however, has a perfunctory ability to confuse and obfuscate that correspondence in a way that is cataclysmically concussive to the psyche in a way that renders you ineffectual in dealing with death and loss.

I keep telling myself that they are in Heaven, they are at rest, there is no greater a conclusion to this story than these last pages. But what am I, what are we to do with the aftermath of their absence? Why should we after all the head knowledge and imperative truths have set in, feel so desperately lonely? The less than satisfactory answer is that I have no answer, that I know no comforting response. Of course the Word of God addresses the afterlife, the pain and grief. Yet we are still left with the sorrow. Even the Psalmist confesses that his heart is in no place to worship after a constant onslaught of attack. (Psalm 42)

And the traditions we have fashioned do little to spare us the pain. Funerals feel less like a celebration and more like an AA meeting without a group leader. An insane smattering of people that have only one thing in common; they have no idea what to do with themselves or each other. I’m not sure what’s worse, the forced regurgitation of tired cliché statements (that for all intents and purposes are well intention and aimed at catharsis) or the recounting of individual recollections relating to the deceased that start with “I will never forget the time…” The problem is that we will forget the ‘time.’ We don’t want to admit it, but in time the nuance and eventually the very authenticity of each of our memories will fall apart. This is why we state unequivocally that we won’t forget, knowing full well that we will.

It becomes apparent that our coping mechanisms are akin to shielding ourselves against tornados with our bare hands. There is something in our nature that tells us to avoid heartache with the feeblest methods imaginable. It's the same mechanism that instructs us to stem that urge to reconsider life at its core after tragedy. You know that urge, the one that puts your goals, aspirations and fears on a scale on the opposite end of loss and tells you that the imbalance you see is just an impartial illusion created by an overwhelming happening. I have been staring this reaction in the face for a couple days and I think it's safe to say that it should be denounced at all costs if we want any sort of meaningful denouement to this shit show of a dissonant movement.

What if we, if I, were to accept every measure of this "tragedy" and allowed it to envelope us entirely? What if we didn't dodge the heaviest portion of the blow and instead let the impact of it land square on the chin? Would we wake after a spell to find ourselves less burdened, less encumbered with the trivialities of this existence? Is there hope that such a beating could end up being revelatory instead of vanquishing? I'm beginning to think that the devices we have implemented to avoid suffering are ineffectual tools in assuaging pain, in fact I believe that they cause more of the very thing the further we get from the their death.

It helps to list our limitations. We cannot reverse the damage that has been done. Even at out most powerful (and most selfish) we cannot will them to live here with us again. We are unable to numb ourselves forever to the pang of this, nor are we commanding enough to instruct our souls to be completely unfeeling. So how then should we, being so seemingly powerless react?

Maybe there is no magic to this, no cure all procedure for walking through this unscathed. Perhaps the mind and heart are both correct in their unconnected states and pronouncements. This did happen for a divine reason and we don't have to like it, at all. If there is a God (and there definitely is a God) then maybe he is not lying when he says that our ways are not his ways, which to be honest is a comforting thought. Maybe this grief, which feels so much like fear, is a way for us to peer for a just a moment through this fogged glass called existence.

 Only a few in the history of mankind have been so blessed, or cursed, to look past the veil and see the clockwork of creation. Did they see them? I like to think sometimes that all time has already occurred and that if we were so able to glimpse it we would see ourselves, and everyone we know both completely alive and completely expired standing at the edge of eternity, and there is no pain, famine, war or heartache amidst us. But that is just a thought and I cannot see it. What I can see is this world, in this linear time. And what I can feel is pain, sadness and loneliness, hour after hour, day by excruciating day. But it's getting easier, and the "I'll never forgets" are fading gracefully into "I can't waits" as I allow the scale to be imbalanced, as I allow the weight of everything effect everything.

This is all to say one thing: I hate this, but I'm ok, we are ok. The Gospel wouldn't be so full of reassurances if we weren't in need of reassuring. It wouldn't be so full of promises of a later glory if this life wasn't do devoid of comfort, and He wouldn't be so present if we weren't so hopelessly lonely. If you are reading this, and any of it made sense to you, do yourself a favor; stop shielding yourself from discomfort and pain. Show the world that we have been created not to withstand but to grow. And each time we grow we are afforded that beautifully humbling perspective that only comes to creatures who are not who they once where.