When I counsel people who have experienced a loss, I make a point of explaining that grief doesn't go away after a certain length of time. I try to help people understand that grief isn't something that you "get over" like the common cold. Grief works on its own time table and it shows up whenever it wants to. And it can keep coming back over and over again . . . for a long, long time.
I share those thoughts not because I encountered them in a book somewhere - but because they are realities that I have experienced firsthand.
Life is filled with losses. We don't gain much in trying to decide whose losses might be greater. Frankly, losses have touched us all. In my life, the loss of my mom and my dad stand out as especially painful heartaches. My mom died seventeen years ago. My dad died in June of 2013.
Even now, waves of grief wash over me from time to time - and often that happens when I least expect it.
Finding ourselves in financial need this summer, God provided a job for Julie at the very place where my dad lived the final months of his life. He received spectacular care at a facility here in our town, and this summer Julie was given the opportunity to work there as the life enrichment coordinator. On Friday evening this week, the staff, the residents, and the families gathered for a huge picnic. It was great fun.
I have visited the facility several times since my dad died, but Friday night I found myself sitting just outside what would have been my dad's room. Much to my surprise, I spent the evening remembering things that I had long since forgotten - and ruminating on those memories. Perhaps I should have expected it, but the possibility of being drawn back into that world of memory never crossed my mind as I drove to the picnic. I was thinking instead about the people who I would meet and trying to make sure that I had remembered to bring everything Julie had told me to bring.
Once I got there, though, something very unexpected happened.
Working there, Julie says that she has gotten comfortable with her memories - though, she says, it is sometimes a little overwhelming when she spends time in Building Three (where my dad lived). I haven't been there as much, though, and Friday night was my first time to visit that specific area since last year.
It may sound strange, but my grief isn't really something that I'm "trying to get over." Instead, I see my grief as a companion that walks with me through life. I don't necessarily enjoy this particular companion, but it has become part of who I am. The memories that came to me on Friday evening weren't all sad, of course - but they sure brought to mind some losses that at least partly define my life.
For that to happen on Friday evening - especially in that setting - should not have been a surprise.
But it was a surprise.
And I found myself dealing once again with grief unexpected.