Unexpected Wisdom...and Grief

Tonight I was flipping through channels and I caught the last few moments of the Grey's Anatomy season premiere. At the end, giving her usual ending commentary, Meredith was talking about the experience of grief.

"...the very worst part is that as soon as you think it's over, it starts all over again..."

Well, amen to that. This, to me, is the simultaneously most frustrating and most beautiful part of the process of grief. Some days you just want it to end, to stop hurting, to not be as real. And then other days you cling to the pain, the rawness, the gnawing at your soul - because it reminds you that the love you had and still have was just that real. And within all of this intensity, you are absolutely powerless over the cycle of starting, stopping, starting, stopping.

It's not just Meredith Grey who has me pondering this whole equation this week. Last Sunday's sermon has been sticking in my chest, reminding me that God makes light out of dark places, another dichotomous view of dark and light, sorrow and joy, despair and hope. And then Monday morning I had a little coffee shop run in that I haven't been able to shake...

I was still not feeling quite awake following my first in-home client on Monday, so I popped in to a coffee shop to grab a quick cup before heading into the office. Directly inside of the door was a man working at a small table. He appeared to be transferring dates from his 2009 AAL (Aid Association for Lutherans) red calendar to his 2010 calendar (same one, also red, of course). I could recognize these planners in my sleep; they came in the mail every year when I was growing up. My dad took the pocket sized version, and kept every detail scrawled inside in slanted writing that used a capital "R" in the middle of words, all kept together by a trusty rubber band before being slipped in his back pocket. My mom used (and uses to this day) the bigger version of the calendar, where she wrote every detail of her life and of every other person's life as well - that calendar did not miss a birthday, anniversary or any other remotely important occasion. Every December she'd complete the arduous task of transferring everything by hand to the next year, perhaps the early roots of my complete satisfaction at making lists and transferring information by hand (proof of the dually genetic and learned components of neurosis, I suppose...).

So I digress. I catch the calendars as I'm walking in the door, and the whole time I'm doctoring up my coffee I'm considering whether or not to say something to the nice Lutheran calendar user on the way out the door or just to walk on by and keep the little connection to myself. In the end, I hypothesize that this guy must be a pastor, and he'd probably get a kick out of my thankful connection. So I stopped on my way out, awkwardly saying hello and explaining that I really loved seeing his calendar and although it seemed quite silly altogether it made me think of my parents. Our little conversation continued, and was classic Lutheran - he was a nice pastor who had recently moved from a church in downtown Madison to one just outside of the city, and gosh he sure wondered if he knew my dad or if maybe they went to school together (he didn't, and they didn't, but he did know one of his old interns). After it couldn't be avoided any longer, he asked where my dad was working now, and I had to stumble around saying that he wasn't around at all in fact and in that moment I was so sorry that I'd said anything in the first place. But, in very pastoral fashion, the unnamed pastor smiled and said, "well, then it must have been meant to be that you walked in today and saw me, so that I could help you have a fond memory of your dad." And then I smiled and said thank you and we said goodbye. I got in my car and drove away and cried good and hard, and that was that.

The very worst and the very best part about grief indeed is that just when you think it's over it comes rolling back. It doesn't take much, and you start to know the cycles for yourself - the dates, the months, the seasons, the periods of the church year (hello outing myself as a pastor's child) when it will be the worst. But it's not always that clear cut, because then it's just Monday morning and you're getting coffee and the man sitting inside of the door pierces your heart without ever knowing it. And you remind yourself that God is really really good at tripping you up when you need it so badly that you can't see it coming until you're face down on the floor.