Sticky Grief, Pentecost, my Dad
So This is Helping . . .
Interested in the sermon I preached on Pentecost last Sunday at House of Mercy, here it is. It was fun.
So This is Helping . . .
It helps to remember that grief is sticky. When someone dies, or something ends, you don’t just grief The Person. (or people. or place. or life you had.) You grieve The Way Things Used To Be. And you grieve Who You Were When You Were With Them that you aren’t any longer because they aren’t there. And then you grieve The Future You Imagined That Is No Longer. These separate griefs stack up, can’t really pull them apart.
And then you knew somehow but failed to grasp that grief doesn’t stay in a stuck on a calendar. It moves around like a time traveler, apparating sometimes predictably, like on birthdays and death days. And other times, sneak attack - a song at a concert, a scene from a movie, a line in a book. And other times completely unbidden, just to fuck with your mind. And there you are, on your ass, knocked down by Feelings.
Either way, this pain, it sticks to your day, interrupts your night, hijacks your week, and you’ve got a choice (or the illusion of a choice). Feel what you feel when you feel it, or . . . or what? Alternatives don’t seem very good. So, I guess, let it stick. Let it do what it’s going to do til it passes. It will pass. Til next time. Next time will be less intense.
This is what I’m learning. Too fucking slowly for my liking. But still, learning.
So This is Helping . . .
Today is Father’s Day. My Dad was a good and flawed and generous man and he loved me with all his capacity. I idolized him most of my life. He died in 2007 of ALS. This is maybe my favorite picture of us, taken in, I’m guessing, 1984, I was probably 18. It’s up at our favorite place. I guess we liked plaid flannel.
.That’s all for now. I’ve been processing a lot internally these weeks - concern for our country, grief, identity, fear, death to self (the ugliest part of the Gospel), and I’m trying to learn some boundaries, so not putting much here for now.
Keep heart, dear people.