A Season of Loss

Death is the great upsetter of priorities and thoughts. 

I was a substitute teacher at a local High School. It was a rough day. The kids were bad (substitutes are sometimes given the worst of the kids others don’t want to deal with) and I wasn’t the greatest at handling smart aleck teenagers. My focus was on trying manage the students' behavior and to get some education into these these high schoolers. I was interrupted by a message over the intercom to come to the office. When I went to the office my wife was on the phone; I was shocked when she told me that my 37 year old brother-in-law had died of a heart attack. 

Suddenly the behavior of these kids didn’t matter. Nothing I had been thinking about mattered. My mind was now consumed with the new terrible fact of Mike’s death. I don’t remember the rest of the day, it was like I floated through it detached, because my mind was elsewhere. 

Now, years later, I’ve been with a lot of people who have lost someone they love. They all go through this same upsetting, disrupting of priorities and thoughts. At first, all they can think of is the loved one. Then other tasks and concerns move in but the loss stays at the forefront of their thoughts. You are brushing your teeth and something about the person comes to mind. You unlock a door and a memory flashes through. Driving in the car brings a moment of uncontrollable sobbing. Grief comes at expected times, such as purposely doing something that concerns the person. And grief also attacks when unexpected.

My theory about this is that our minds find death an unsolvable problem. The mind is a problem solving machine; it is constantly working on solving problems. And usually it is very good at it, helping us with life tasks, sorting out things in relationships, figuring out problems at work, giving us more a sense of control. Because when we feel in control, we settle down, believe ourselves to be secure and threats to our life are out of mind.

 Even though death is unsolvable that doesn’t mean our minds stop trying to solve it. Seemingly all our mental resources are thrown at it. But because we can’t bring the person back, the mind keeps spinning, trying to understand what happened and why. When a death is unexpected or tragic, it is especially difficult to move through. We would like closure, but full closure doesn't come.

Of course we don’t just think, we are emotional. There is deep sadness and yearning for the person; missing the human connection. There is no explaining that away or curing that. It just hurts. But the desperation to know more, to absolutely, fully understand, that is an unsolvable problem. 

Learn as much as you can; make sense of it as much as possible. But at some point, faith and mystery come in. It will always hurt. But someday, there may be some more peace about it. I pray that for everyone.