Grief and Those Late-Night Conversations with God

If you have never experienced the death of an adult child, nothing will ever prepare you for that sudden rush of emotions and the loss. The grief slaps you hard across the face with a force that numbs you for a very long time. Five years later the sting remains but is lessening as each day passes. You will eventually adjust to the loss, but the emotions are, at times, far too much to handle. Without help you can lose yourself for a very long time as I did. However, with a strong faith and a support system that includes late night arguments with God, you are able to breath once more.

Regardless of the age, 39 years young, or a child lost in delivery, these types of unexpected deaths hurt in places that you did not know existed within your mind, body and soul. The younger the death, the more the focus seems to be on what could have been for the young life. For the deaths of our elders, parents and grandparents for example, we tend to compartmentalize their deaths as rites of passage after having led a productive life. For me, I can never know the pain of carrying a child to term only to lose her in delivery. It must be catastrophic for such a loss. When the death is of a 39-year-old son, who died suddenly for no apparent causes, the hurt and mourning gets placed on the goodness of that life up to that moment in time and what could have been for him for the next 20-50+ years perhaps.

I studied Psychology and Religious Studies as an undergraduate. I devoured the texts on death and dying, family systems, cultural psychology, world religions, how religions of the world lend meaning to our lives, and all of the classic books on these topics and theories I enjoyed the exploration. Later, in parish ministry, I would lead wake services and graveside committal services for countless families offering words of consolation and healing to mourners. It was an amazing ministry to encounter individuals and families in the throes of their own grief dealing with those most challenging of times. Yet, as aware and trained as I was to help others with grief and mourning, I was ill-prepared when the death of my son occurred. I was encountering emotions I had only read about but never had to feel, experience, and battle.

My journey into grief and mourning began with a telephone call from a family member informing me that my son had a heart attack and was at a local hospital. What? Impossible! That was my initial reaction followed by, “I’m on my way.” Within just a few minutes the next phone call informed me that my son had died. “Died?” “Gone?” “How?” “What are you saying?” “What happened?” I fell to my knees in disbelief and cried out yet there was no sound. I made a decision, that I don’t regret, to not go to the hospital to see my now deceased son. Right or wrong, I didn’t want or need to get into a car and drive anywhere. I needed to stop and just be – right or wrong I recognized that I needed that.

I didn’t want to go into my ministerial role to comfort the afflicted as I wanted to minister to myself – right or wrong! I recognized that I couldn’t comfort the widow, hug my daughter or her children. I needed to be alone. I’ve always found comfort in the need for my own space to seek consolation. All parties that day experienced a profound loss. A widow lost her husband of just a few years. A sister lost her brother and best friend. Her children lost their lovable uncle. A step-mother lost her only step-son. I lost a son. Grief is grief but I collapsed into my own needs and stayed there for a very long time – right or wrong! I never discounted the grief of others but I could only handle, or as it turned out, mishandle my own emotional needs.

One enters into an emotional and spiritual fog that blinds and paralyzes us forcing us to navigate this life without any direction. You encounter new questions for yourself, such as “why?” “Why my son?” “Was it really his time?” “Why God?” “Is this just a bad dream?” As the hours passed, the days rolled by, and in the weeks and months that followed you engage with complete exhaustion – physical, emotional and spiritual. It’s a crisis like no other you have known. You just go through the motions at work, with friends, with family members, and with yourself. You do only what is required of you in many aspects of your life just to get through it all. You lack joy in your life. You grow tired of life, tired of friends, tired of family, and you can grow tired of those late-night conversations with God, too.

Those initial dark hours, dark days and even darker nights, that led into weeks and months, and eventually years, have haunted me and driven me a chaotic state for a very long time. Every aspect of my life was now disordered. I became, and remain still, alienated from family and friends. My long-standing work ethic eroded little by little with each passing month and year, and I lost focus and lost the minimum requirement to even care about my role. I was growing numb. I told colleagues I was burnt out and was planning to retire soon. And eventually I did. I’m slowly arriving at a new destination, however, called healing – not healed, but healing. Losing oneself eventually allows you to cherish what was, and, perhaps, even re-claim what was.

It's been five years now since my son’s death. I feel I have, finally, arrived at a place where the intensity of the grief has settled down – not just pushed down. I know it will never fade completely, but I’m developing the necessary skills to reconnect with my core values that I strayed from. I’m re-connecting with the practice of my faith that was cast aside by me because I just couldn’t engage with the Word or with the Sacrament. For those few who have remained by my side I hope to regain their complete love and support as I rebuild. That slap across the face when my son died stings less and less each day as I’m working the adjustment of his loss. Our earthly relationship has ended, but I’ll catch up to him eventually.

As I mentioned at the start, we are never prepared for such deaths. We are overwhelmed and we lack the skills to process the myriad of feelings that surface, such as shock, paralysis, profound sadness, weeping, crying out, and much more. These emotions and feelings become attached to us, like our hair, fingers, feet, skin, and they travel with us everywhere we go. In due time, with each person having his or hers uniquely different timeframe, we begin to shed these emotional appendages having learned such a great deal about ourselves after being dragged into this process.

We hear the questions all too often, “why does God allow this?” “Why take a 39-year-old son, husband, brother, uncle, step-son, friend away from loved ones?” Medically, there were explanations for such a sudden death. For me, God is Presence, God is Healer, God is Mourner, too, helping us to get through that grief and the mourning. Having been adrift in my sea of emotions for more than five years now, I am attempting to reclaim those important aspects of my daily life – one day at a time! I want to honor my son’s memory each day by my words, thoughts and actions. I listen, again, to God each day, and we no longer argue much at nightfall, and once again I can hear God’s words of encouragement.

There’s a particular hymn with its roots in Psalm 46, Isaiah 43 and John 14, that reminds me daily, as it has become part of my daily prayer ritual, that God is aware, God is by our side in our hopes and joys, and in our fears and losses. The theological insights we might gain from these words, and others, are prescriptive for the arduous roads we fall upon…

“…I will come to you in the silence…lift you from your tears…be still and know I am here…I love you and you are mine.”

Lastly, as I read through my journals from the past five years, below are some final words and thoughts, suggestions really, and possible steps to take when facing the loss of an adult child. These helped me and please your ideas and share them with others.

RIP Tommy Griffin, Jr.

1.     Accept the loss when ready – it cannot be undone.

2.     Recognize the emotions you’ll face – name them in a journal.

3.     Be kind to yourself as you travel the grief kaleidoscope of feelings.

4.     Adjust to what you can do today – tomorrow is another day.

5.     Seek professional help if needed – I wish I had sooner rather than later.

6.     Honor the dead each day – when you are ready it will help.

7.     Tell your story, share your happy memories – it helps.

8.     Celebrate milestones – birthdays not the death anniversary.

9.     Grief is often unseen by others – known only to you.

10.   Mourning is visible to others – don’t be shy to mourn your significant loss.

11.   Grieve and mourn your way – there is no right or wrong way.

12.   Learn to say no – you’re probably not ready to say yes.

PS: Thanks, God, for letting me get the last word – or did I?