Water Through Our Hands: An Observation On Grief

“Nobody told me that grief felt so like fear.”

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

We call them brave. 

We call them warriors. 

We say they have a strength we could never comprehend.

And it’s all true. 

But they’re also weary and fragile and maybe afraid too. They are the parents who stand with broken hearts and empty arms.

Over the last days and years, I have had the honor of learning from them as they stay patient and brave around my awkward, overwhelmed attempts to comfort. So on this, the last night of September, before Childhood Cancer Awareness month fades away, here are these words of mine… taken from many of their actual words…and they are meant for me, for you, and for all of us who love the grieving and don’t always know how to help. 

There is no textbook for grief: Just like a deep reservoir of water, grief is powerful even when it might not be fully known beyond the surface. And a drop might leak out, or the whole damn might burst, but the depths are often unplumbed even by the one experiencing the grief and there is only the now – the next breath. So if that breath is used to sob. Accept it. If that breath is used to curse. Accept it. If that breath is used to laugh. Accept it. It would be all too easy to put the bereaved into a box full of ‘should’. But the heart of loving someone in grief is not to impose a correct set of actions, but occupying the same air and breathing it in and out with them – however that looks in the moment. 

There is no timeline for grief: Like water and time, grief is a wearing, carving, near living thing. Just as flood waters erode the land, so grief can chip away at the landscape of the heart and mind. Eroded rock is some of the most beautiful landscape in the world, especially as the sun shines full upon it, but it does not look as it once did and it never will again. It is beautiful simply as it is – wrought by time and the elements. So do not expect the bereaved at two weeks to be the same grieving person you see at one year, or two years, or even five. In some ways, the more removed from the moment, the more they hurt. Every moment heals the wound while simultaneously ripping it open a little too. For these parents, they are one breath farther from the moment their child died in their arms. But they are also one moment farther from the last time they held their child at all. Healing and blood, tearing and scabbing and scars – they all go together forever and there is no timeline. We do not always know how the grieving are changing, only that it will be beautiful in the end. And for now, there is only the breathing it in and breathing it out with them – however that looks in the moment

There is no cure for grief in this world: There is no Instagram filter for death and no platitudes that dry tears. Put them aside, please. After something burns, it will regrow in time, but it might not look like it did before. The burn that destroyed the soil left its mark forever. Likewise, there is no ‘getting over’ or ‘getting past’ the death of a loved one for the grieving. The absence of someone deeply loved leaves a noticeable, felt trauma. The skin around the scar will grow back stronger, but the nerves are closer to the surface too. So why should we desire the grieving to ‘get over’ it? To recover as if nothing occurred would be to negate the loved ones’ impact in our lives. Why would we desire this for them or ourselves? There can be no getting over, only getting through it because we were not created for separation, and in this, we can breath it in and breath it out with them – however it looks in the moment.

And dear ones, it’s not accidental that these grief analogies are tied to elements of the earth because just as the earth came about, so did grief. We were created gloriously, and then it fell apart and now there are tears and horror and un-comforted sorrows – all as old as the earth itself. And someday, the pain will be gone. We will be together again – the grieving and the lost – under the perfect light of the One who gave us life in the first place. But until that day when all the tears are gone and the pain is wiped out forever in ultimate joy, I believe with my whole heart that we have a responsibility to those who grieve. We have a responsibility to let them feel deeply. And to do this, dear ones, we must sit with those who grieve. We must just share the air with them – sometimes with words – many times without. 

So I issue you this challenge as I stamped it on my own heart in the writing today: Perhaps we are not to speak, but rather to listen. And perhaps we are not to change the course of the grieving, but they are to change our course. Together, we walk forward.

Moment by moment.

“For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often — will it be for always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realized my loss till this moment”? The same leg is cut off time after time.”

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Note: One of the richest, most raw and real pieces I’ve ever read on grief is A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis (written after his wife died of cancer) – I would highly recommend this resource.

Note: If you are grieving today, please know that you are loved and that grief is never the end of the story.