Holding on when you cannot let go

Recently we had news that anyone with parents in their 70s could expect to get. Suddenly I’m more aware of others who have lost their parents in recent times, and how that must have hurt them so indescribably deeply.

I was sitting in a cinema with my wife a few nights ago when I suddenly became aware of that feeling that I cannot let go. I cannot just let my parent die. And yet, they will. There is nothing I can do to change the fact; it will happen. And now it is our time to prepare.

But preparation, in itself, is folly. It’s like a new parent preparing to have their baby. Once the baby is born everything changes. Once a parent dies everything, too, changes. No longer do we have access to this person who brought us into the world and who nurtured us and who we’ve shared all our lives with. All we have left is their memory.

It is so easy as a funeral celebrant to facilitate a beautiful celebration of a loved one’s life, so long as that loved one isn’t your own. I can empathise with people in their loss, but I cannot touch the pain they feel, until I experience that pain directly, viscerally, interminably, in my own being — when it is my own pain. This is why ministering with people in loss ought to keep us humble. Their pain is not ours and all our hearts can do is go out to them; to be in awe of them in the pain they bear.

I am thankful for the encounters of death and loss and grief I have had that in some ways equip me. But I also sense that in losing a parent I will be completely undone. Part of me struggles to hold on when I cannot let go. At this very point in time I feel as if I cannot let go.

It is all part of the grief process. What is overwhelming and impossible, that is the grief process. It takes us beyond our ability to cope. And somehow, over time, we learn resources that help. And in time, with the help we get, and our own openness to learning, we recover.

Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash