Such a sad story, and one I’ve heard so many times. Back in 2008 my best friend died rather suddenly. He was a widower and childless and all his close family had also passed. The coroner would not release the body until next of kin could be notified. Well, that took weeks. The only kin he had was a cousin in Utah who had gone into seclusion. Why? Because three months prior his wife and five kids were all killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. Needless to say, the poor soul could not deal with another death. He was barely holding onto reality as it was. When I heard that, I realized that no matter how deep my grief is, there is always someone suffering far worse. It knocked a little sense into me and put it into perspective.
Grief is real. It must be dealt with and it takes a lot of time. It’s a process, so grief should never be trivialized. These people need as much support as can be given them. That being said, if the grieving person can try to think of helping others, even for a few minutes a day, then the danger of personality isolation might be avoided. There is a danger in too much self-absorption with loss, and if there’s a way to help a grieving person dodge that black hole, it’s a real service. When to start such intervention is another question, one I don’t have the answer to. Each person is different. But the danger is real. I have seen people lose their minds over this.
When I was a eight my best friend’s little sister was abducted in the middle of the night from her bed. She was slashed, raped and buried alive. Turned out the father forgot to close and lock the back sliding-glass door. A twisted, glue-sniffing, drop-out teenager had been stalking her and waiting for a night when the door was open. Poor Papa ended up in an asylum . . . he never, ever was able to overcome his grief. It went way past grief all the way into self destruction. But that’s an additional problem, a problem of the inability to forgive oneself. The psyche, when traumatized, can go amok.
I have another friend whose cousins lost their only child at the age of 17 to melanoma. It’s been about a year and these folks are still having trouble socializing. They sold their house and no longer attend their church or even see their long standing friends and family. All they want to do is dwell on their loss. They believe their daughter is an angel now and they say she is coming to them in dreams, and leaving little spirit messages around for them, they even claim they feel her touching them. I don’t have the heart to refute any it so I told my friend to let them believe whatever they want as long as it’s giving them comfort. But there will come a time when they have to break from it and rejoin the living. My friend is working on it, since I’m not close to these people and she understands the dangers.
Mark, the image of Jesus holding up your cousin’s friends in his arms is a powerful one. Remember how he wept when Lazarus died? He weeps for and with all of us who grieve. There is no way to avoid death. It’s something every single one of us will face. How and when it happens is really not up to us, most of the time. Even Jesus couldn’t avoid his own death. But, if there’s a way your cousin’s friends can let Jesus have their grief for a short time each day while they go out and help someone else, or engage in a service activity, it will ease them immensely. They don’t have to give up their grief altogether. I don’t think they can; it will be with them for life. But it doesn’t have to always be front and center stage in their minds. Just hand over the burden to Jesus for a short time, but the time has to be right for that, so I don’t know what else to say.
