Grief is stored in the body. I could go off on a search for references, but I don't need psychologists or neuroscientists to confirm this for me. I know it, in my gut. Or is it my left lung? It's in the vacuum that opens up right beneath my heart when I swerve too close, too suddenly to a memory. It's a space that also opens in sympathy for others' grief.
"Son and brother." These are the words that leapt into my mind in church today as I heard of the death of a close family member of people well known to me over the years. a death that followed a brutal and discouraging battle with cancer. "Son and brother" also describes my son, Kris. The loss is five years old, but the wound still opens easily. Tears flow.
I hate crying in church, or at least I say I do. The self-control needed to stop it relies heavily on anger or disassociation along with an assessment of what's needed from me in the next few minutes as a choir member. Today I could look forward to the trebles of the choir singing the third stanza of "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven."
Tenderly he shields and spares us
Well our feeble frame he knows.
In his arms he gently bears us
Rescues us from all our foes.
Not, but isn't it pretty to think so?
And yet —in illness, death, sorrow and grieving we are gently borne along in God's arms. That is, of course, a metaphor, and I'm not sure that I can explain for what. A shrug here -- it's a mystery! Or it's something for the mystics. All things must die, yet God our Creator loves and cares for all and ultimately folds them into the Godhead, into wholeness, into resurrection
It was a beautiful fall day today, the kind where bright sunshine celebrates the first trees to turn gold, orange and deep scarlet. A month from now the leaves will be on the ground. I won't be able to sit in my backyard with an Oktoberfest beer from On Tour Brewing Company. It will be much colder.
But even then there will be wholeness. Because wholeness includes grief and grieving, housed in that place in the gut that grieves as leaves fall from trees, that grieves with all who grieve today.
