On Learning Loss, Time,

And the Passing of this World

I am on the precipice of the most challenging agenda I have had in the last five years. My child is entering their senior year in high school, so there will be applications and the anxiety of waiting. I have my customary slate of university classes, a liturgy course for the new diocesan M.Div. program starting in three weeks, and a new responsibility coming my way in November.

This is also not my favorite time of year because a big anniversary is coming - five years since her sudden death.

Sharing personal thoughts and views on social media tends to leads to a predictable outcome - words and emojis of encouragement, and these are nice.

Sometimes though, I find it difficult to communicate that the struggle to cope and to find my way has continued while I am doing things that are good and normal. I started two essays in preparation for the five year anniversary of Tresja’s death, and - I stopped. Maybe I will resume one of these essays. Perhaps I will start over.

I struggle to write about grief because the decorum of academic appointment and ordination prohibits speaking raw truth. You tell the truth in your writing, but not all of it. And the easy way out of that is to write for yourself, but without sharing it for anyone else.

I spent ten days writing cold, hard truths in June 2024 at a writers’ workshop at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. One particular truth stands out to me - it captures how I felt, how I feel, especially about God, but making my thoughts public would offend some people and perhaps even get me into trouble.

I do want to share one truth that I am feeling today, after a week of vacation with my senior-in-high-school kid. It was the rare event that actually was kind of epic. I went out of my comfort zone. I stayed up later than I wanted to and decided to test that stent in my widowmaker artery by going on a roller coaster. I went high reward for a high risk. It was a great time.

So how does one transition from saying “it was a great time” to sharing that they’re not okay? I don’t enjoy sharing that I don’t know if I will really be okay ever again. I am not okay while occasionally having the time of my life. I am grieving and living. I am lamenting and rejoicing. I am experiencing all of these feelings at the same time.

I got some much needed - we’re talking at the level of personal desperation here - good news in February. And then I got some “share-worthy” news a few weeks ago. There was no one to share it with. Yes, of course I shared it with my child on both occasions.

But when you have lived in that sacramental space of marital love and life where you’re sharing everything all of the time, and then suddenly you’re not - you never get used to keeping a lid on news. Well, at least I don’t. Maybe that’s a “me problem.”

We use metaphors to describe the feeling of losing the one person with whom you share everything. Breathing with one lung or living with one kidney. Using a stool with a leg missing. You get the picture, but again, it doesn’t quite capture the whole truth.

Time: Champion and Tyrant

Several of the rides at Universal Orlando require you to jump on and off slowly-moving platforms. It’s a reminder that time is undefeated. Well, almost. Time collapsed when Jesus died, was buried, and was raised from the dead.

Lifechanging events like the death of a spouse, parent, or child makes it feel like time stopped. It feels like time stopped for you, and only you, while everyone else is on the platform, waiting patiently at first for you to jump on. Then the vehicle bearing the people who are still in your life disappears until you submit yourself and jump back into the vehicle.

David Whelan, ded. to public domain

Time did not actually stop for you. It just felt like it. Everyone was waiting for you to resume the pulse and rhythm of daily life.

The bereaved person who finally jumps back into the motion-directed vehicle of life is exhausted and deeply wounded. The wounds come with them as they resume life. The wounds are with them when the desire for food and human connection God placed into us slowly reaccumulates. The end result is a person who is still wounded and fatigued, but no less capable of living.

Living as a person who recognizes lament in all of its expressions.

Living as a person who desires again but does so with the cross in plain view.

Living as a person whose experience of the personal collapse of time sharpens their sense of the finite nature of this world.

Living as one who knows that time is created and finite and will be halted by God again.

Living as one whose personal world passed away and who sees the fading of the present world much more clearly.

And, with an ambitious agenda on deck, the bereaved person lives very intentionally - because they know from experience that another day in this world is not promised.

Only eternal life with God is guaranteed.