Transparent Christian Magazine

YEARS AGO, MY WIFE AND I BECAME FRIENDS WITH A YOUNG COUPLE AT OUR CHURCH. They had been married perhaps a year or so when we first met them. He had grown up as an only child in Atlanta. She had been the only child of a couple in a small town in south Georgia. Theirs was a storybook romance, a storybook wedding. They had a little house, they were crazy for each other, and they loved God passionately. The life before them glowed with promise and expectation. After some time, they wanted a child to make their little Eden complete.

After four years of waiting and praying, Carissa became pregnant. But the excitement they should have enjoyed, that was part of their own private script, was short-lived. It was at the initial examination of her pregnancy that they discovered her leukemia. It was aggressive, and it didn’t seem to respond to our prayers, however fervently we prayed them. Any attempt to explain fell short. Still does.

The child, Hannah, was born healthy, and not without joy—tearful, mysterious, lovely joy. Carissa lived for one more year after that. This all happened some time ago, and my wife will tell you the facts of this story seem to change every time I tell it. That could be true, but I will never forget the night Carissa died. It was just a few hours after midnight. We were all in the waiting room. We all knew what was happening, and why we were there. Finally, after some period of silence, her hometown pastor comes out of the room where she had just died and shouted, and with a little skip to his step, “Halleluiah, another one’s gone to Glory!”

You could hear the thud echo all over the room, and down the long hospital corridor. Facial expressions did not change. No one said a word. No one could. Amazement, outrage, injustice, disbelief, sorrow, all these came together so swiftly it was difficult to know just what to feel. Perhaps it was well meant, perhaps he felt he had to say something, but for me it was out of place.

The wound was too raw, too close, too uncivilized. My heart, already heavy, sank to the floor, and I can’t tell you what I felt for the mother and father who had just lost their only daughter, or the husband who had just lost his wife, holding a motherless child in his arms trying to figure out what is next. And God was not obliged to give us any explanation.

I am always suspect of those believers who claim, or at least imply, that grieving the loss of someone we love is somehow indicative of a lack of faith, that it is more spiritual to celebrate their passage to heaven than to lament their loss. But a reasonable God gave us these emotions, these passions, and he did so for a reason. To deny them is to deny his craftsmanship, to deny the humanity he gave us as a gift. He fashioned us to laugh with all our strength, to weep, to play, to labor, to worship, to feel anger, to be moved deeply, even to tears. And Jesus is our best example of these things.

In a recent blog I enjoy reading, this very topic came up. The blogger was a friend of mine. He claimed he didn’t want to be missed, but rather he wanted to be remembered for things he had done and for who he was. He went on to say how grieving, to him, is negative, that he would rather celebrate a person’s entrance into heaven, than to lament the loss. For the sake of fair play, I’ll call my blogger friend John. Other than his real name, the following is my response exactly as it appears on his blog.

“There is nothing really wrong with being missed. It is just an indicator that a significant emotional investment has been made, that I have given some bit of myself away for no reason other than it was asked of me, or that I chose to, outside other considerations, outside the weight and balance of accomplishment, of things done or things left undone. I think love operates outside those types of assessments.

Grief, particularly at the death of a loved one, is a celebration in itself. It doesn’t have the appearance of a celebration perhaps. It hurts. It meddles deeply. It has a long reach. It is overwhelming, life-altering. But it is also an inevitable part of life, and of love. And strangely, we earn the right to grieve. We make investments in the lives of others, and those investments have returns. In love, those returns are always positive, even when they may appear otherwise. We were created as creatures of community, and engagement with life can get messy, complicated, awkward, but it is those very things that also lend it beauty and mystery, that keep life fluid, and effervescent.

Hey, if you were no longer around I would miss you, John. Somewhat badly, I think. And not for anything you’ve done either, or haven’t done. Those are mere trifles. May we all love enough in this life to hurt for it.”

In the end, his mind wasn’t changed at all, and that is okay. Still, and for lack of a better way to say it, I think he is missing something.