Grief & Loss
I organized the funeral, sorted the estate and held everyone together. It is six months on and I still have not cried. When does my turn come?
“I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue,”
David describes staying silent well past the point where the silence was helping anyone, holding back even the things worth saying, until the pressure built up and he finally had to speak. The psalm treats that eventual speaking as relief rather than as a failure of self control. Israel's songbook has a specific entry for the person who has been holding it in.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Jesus makes his invitation to the exhausted and the loaded down, and the words he uses are the vocabulary of a weight carried rather than a feeling felt. He is speaking to people worn out by what has been put on them. Notice that he does not ask them to finish carrying it first. The rest is offered to people who are still mid load.
A path forward
Put a date in the calendar that is yours: a day off, alone or with one safe person, with nothing to administer. Grief needs an unoccupied space to show up in.
Hand something back. Name one task you have been carrying for the family and ask a specific person to take it over this month.
Pray as yourself rather than on behalf of the family. Say the sentence you have not let yourself say, out loud, with nobody else in the room.
Closing verse
“Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”
- Psalm 55:22
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