Grief. We've all experienced it sometime in our life. Whether it is a loved one, a loss of home, job, or health. Grief happens. According to Alan D. Wolfelt, "Grief is the internal meaning given to the experience of loss, whereas mourning is the outward expression of grief. To mourn is to heal."
I hadn't really thought much about the difference between grief and mourning until I went to a workshop a friend of mine put on, but it made complete sense. I understood the necessity of embracing the pain of my loss. I hadn't really considered the necessity of intentionally mourning. The only guidance I relied upon was from what I sensed God telling me to do. I remember asking God, after the rush of the memorial service, after well-meaning friends and family went back to their "normal" lives, "How am I going to make it?"
I was reminded of the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 34:8, "The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over." I felt a little nudge from God saying, "You can do it for 30 days - you can grieve - take the time." Yes, just 30 days. I can do that. When I got to the end of 30 days I cried out to God again, "Now what?" God said, "Do 30 days again." I made it through the first year 30 days at a time. Now it is 21 years later and still - grief happens. Not as intense, not as all consuming, but the loss of a loved one doesn't go away.
Grief and mourning are not the same thing. Grief happens one way or another. Mourning is an intentional outward expression of your grief. Allow yourself the tears. Take time to mourn. This isn't a race. "Grief teaches us the importance of living fully in the present, remembering our past, and embracing our future." (Alan D Wolfelt)
So today, I took time to remember, to mourn, to feel again the sorrow of losing my best friend. CS Lewis in his book, A Grief Observed, says it well, "The other end I had in view turns out to have been based on a misunderstanding. I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history, and if I don't stop writing that history at some quite arbitrary point, there's no reason why I should ever stop...Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape."
My history is forever changed because I knew a man, Steele Meyer. May he rest in peace.
