Death
A Poem about a Mother’s Grief and Loss
This past week we had a funeral for a 23 year old whose alcohol problems caused an untimely death*. During the funeral — which was one of the more powerful funerals I’ve ever worked — the mother of this young man somehow mustered the strength to read the following poem. I don’t know who wrote the poem, and neither did the mother; and, honestly, it’s doesn’t even come close to having great poetic structure.
What it does manage to do is capture the honest, grieving soul of a mother who had to bury her child in a way that I’ve never heard enunciated.
Don’t Tell Me
Please don’t tell me you know how I feel,
Unless you have lost your child too.
Please don’t tell me my broken heart will heal,
Because that is just not true.
Please don’t tell me my son is in a better place,
Though it is true, I want him here with me.
Don’t tell me someday I’ll hear his voice, see his face,
Beyond today I cannot see.
Dont tell me it is time to move on,
Because I cannot.
Dont tell me to face the fact he is gone,
Because denial is something I can’t stop.
Don’t tell me to be thankful for the time I had,
Because I wanted more.
Don’t tell me when I am my old self you will be glad,
I’ll never be as I was before.
What you can tell me is you will be here for me,
That you will listen when I talk of my child.
You can share with me my precious memories,
You can even cry with me for a while.
And please don’t hesitate to say his name,
Because it is something I long to hear everyday.
Friend please realize that I can never be the same,
But if you stand by me,
You may like the new person I become someday.
Maybe you’re the grieving mother … if you are, I want you to know that I will be praying for you! And I want to remind you that you have friends that are wanting to listen to your heart, who are willing to comfort you and who love you! Give them a call. If you need to talk to somebody, open up! Grief shared is grief diminished.
If you are that friend to a mother who has lost, please pray for them … maybe even give them a phone call, or stop on over at their house … and talk with them, walk with them through the grief that may have been forgotten by others around them, but is only magnified during this coming holiday! This is a time of the year when we have the opportunity to be real friends to those who have forgotten needs.
*I’ve changed some of the details of the funeral I mentioned above in order to protect the family’s privacy. If you know which funeral I’m referring to, please continue to comfort them and pray for them.
Remembering Holy Saturday: The Day We Embrace Doubt and Silence
Doubt and silence play a major role in the history of the Church; a role, that for the most part, has been written out of the Protestant and evangelical story.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the method through which they look at theology is called “apophatic theology”, which is contra Western style of theology in that it speaks silence towards God, who is, they say, in many ways, unspeakable. Cataphatic theology (the Western style), which is what almost all of us in America attempt to do, is the attempt to define God positively, which often involves definition and affirmation. In other words, our theology often involves many words, while their theology often invokes silence (thus their use of icons as means of meditation during silence).
Silence has been written out of the Western view of God.
Protestant and evangelicals not only like to speak about God, they also like to assert about God. Doubt it not a part of our paradigm; thus, when somebody begins to doubt aspects of Christianity, it’s looked down upon, whereas in some Christian traditions – especially Orthodox and in some cases Catholicism – doubt is an accepted form of worship.
Thus, Holy Saturday … the Holy Day where doubt and silence is the PROPER POSITION of worship.
In the Catholic and Orthodox tradition, Holy Saturday is the holy day between Good Friday and Easter. It’s a day when we attempt to understand what the disciples of Christ were feeling. A day when we put ourselves in their sandals.
A day when we try to understand, as the disciples had, the crucifixion WITHOUT the knowledge of the resurrection.
Chris Patton writes,
“It is a day full of question. What will become of his message? Was Jesus the messiah? How will life come from death? Does God really have the last word? Are the powers and principalities really in charge as their killing of Jesus seems to indicate? I can only try to imagine what the disciples were going through. This was not just a friend dying. The disciples’ view of the future, their hope for what was to come, a new way of life, all hinged on Jesus … maybe we should change the name from Holy Saturday to Doubting Saturday. I don’t think anything Holy was going on in the disciples’ mind. Fear, frustration, anger, depression – doubt must have been a hundred pound weight on their chest. (For a more expansive article on Holy Saturday, check out this link)
Holy Saturday is a day when the church belongs to the doubters. It’s a day when we as Western Christians should do two things we are very uncomfortable with: embrace doubt and silence.
>The Buried Stories of Arlington Cemetery
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Buried stories.
The most famous cemetery in North America houses some 300,000 human remains of presidents, government officials, soldiers and their spouses, all in the front yard of Robert E. Lee’s mansion (it was a overt gesture of blame by the North). I was there today, burying the wife of a WWII veteran. The photo shows the Army honor guard taking the casket out of the hearse and to the grave. This was the sixth time I’ve been involved with a burial at Arlington and it involved the least pomp. No gun salute. No caisson. No folding of the flag. No tears from the family.
The cemetery was founded after the Civil War, a reminder of the lose of war. And ironically, if all the war stories were recorded that are buried in the graves of Arlington, it might be enough to forestall any meditations of future wars. But those stories … those warnings, those horrors, those difficulties, those darkest hours of the human soul, and heroic sacrifices … are forever lost like the minds that once held them. Underneath the hallowed grounds of Arlington lie the dead, imbued by the mystery of stories “better left unsaid.” Buried stories, untold truths, mysteries forever, in graves they lay.
