Hidden, Unreconciled, Silently Screaming Grief and Sorrow

When I was younger, I'd half-jokingly explain away social shortcomings by initializing the behavior.  "I'm a ".SL" Slow Learner, I'd explain, which became a one-part litany until I couldn't use it anymore.  I never used the acronym to describe skills or status of others, only myself.  It didn't work well in high school and not at all during undergraduate years.  Nonplussed,  I zipped my lips, afraid I'd sound like a simpleton.

"SL" applied only to social situations.  Maybe I grew up on the wrong side of history, since now, acronyms are de rigueur,  at least on social media.  I digress, however, because this blog seek to address ways I circumvented the cumulative pain of grief and sorrow. Or so I thought. When you're a young child, say seven or eight years old when a trauma occurs, you probably don't have the words to describe it,  if  you even understand what has happened.  At least, that's how it played out for me.

In truth, I'm not sure I ever learned a vocabulary for death (much less the emotional furor that accompanies it).  Since grief, sorrow, and mourning were barely discussed, my contemporaries and I didn't dwell on it.  Probably because we didn't know how.  Plus, death presents a formidable topic to tackle.  Adults displayed impatience toward people who didn't "snap back" (from death) in what they deemed a reasonable period of time; therefore, impatience became the norm.   No virtue there.  

Culturally and socially, discussions of death and/or loss, (a catchall term for a boatload of pain), attained "off-limits-in-polite-discourse-status.  We left it alone.  People didn't die; they "passed on" or "we lost him" or God needed her in Heaven." A baby? Hence, I rode a roller coaster of grief, uncertain of when or where the next dip might jar my world. Or death meant punishment, evidently self-inflicted. (I'm not talking about suicide here.) As if the only life there is, is the one we know on Earth.  As if this earth plane that exists.  Doesn't Genesis 1:1 read, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"?

Anyway, the trouble with never having dealt with death's inalterability hamstrung me as I navigated  the vast continent of Loss.  I faced my Waterloo when dealing with loss in all its costumes. My emotional world evolved like a landfill of plastic bags, bottles, trash; and junk of every imaginable configuration,   I remember my first foray in doing Grief Work almost two decades past. I had been invited to present a workshop at my Augusta, Georgia Church.  Between 15 and 18 men and women attended the two-hour, Friday evening class.  In the middle of it, a young woman began crying, clearly  distraught---really almost hysterical.

Oh my goodness! What had I done or said? Without a word being spoken, we gathered around her and began praying.  When she could speak, she explained: She had been reared by her beloved Grandmother, from birth until her "Gramma" died while she was a high school senior.  She had not realized that "Gramma was dead," until that evening.  For 13 years, she had gone about her life as if her grandmother was alive! She didn't know how she had done it! But done it, she had!  Subsequently, her Pastors nurtured her through grief counseling, giving spiritual support and healing balm.

Unusual? Probably not.  The rollercoaster of grief defies description or prescription.  How to handle grief or loss, if maybe you haven't?  I offer Matthew 7: 7-8, "Ask (God for help), and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  ƒor everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds,  and to the one who knocks it will be opened."

I love to hear from you!  I'm still at ordainedelder@aol.com, Facebook, and here.