Grief & Loss
I laughed properly for the first time last week and then felt sick about it afterwards. Does letting myself feel better mean I am letting her go?
“A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;”
Ecclesiastes was written by a man who examined everything under the sun and refused to be sentimental about any of it. His famous list of seasons declines to rank the parts of a life against each other; the heavy seasons and the light ones are given equal standing. He is not saying one replaces the other on schedule. He is saying both belong to a life lived honestly, sometimes in the same week.
“And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”
On his last night, Jesus tells his disciples that they have sorrow now, and puts a joy nobody can take from them in the same breath as it. He does not pretend the sorrow is a phase to be hurried through. Joy in his framing is not disloyalty to grief. It is the very thing the grief was mourning the loss of.
A path forward
Notice the guilt when it arrives and answer it out loud: 'laughing is not forgetting.' Left unanswered, that thought quietly polices the rest of your life.
Thank God in prayer for the specific moment that made you laugh. Handing the good moment to him breaks its association with betrayal.
Tell someone who loved her too about the thing that made you laugh. Shared joy about a life is part of how a person goes on being remembered.
Closing verse
“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
- Psalm 126:5
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