Some A**hole

These are the words a friend of mine spoke that had us cracking up with laughter:

Some a**hole came along and f%cked up my life...

Our subject matter was not in the least bit entertaining or funny, in fact, my friend is suffering extreme bouts of grief, with tidal waves of sorrow that threaten to drown her. Both her parents died within one year, and I believe it was a mere six months between deaths. In one fell swoop (six months is such a short span of time), she was orphaned. 

Who to blame, who to blame? Some a**hole, I suppose...

● Grief is a hideous middle of the night monstrosity 

● Grief is an early morning sneaky thief that shrieks, Wake-up, I want to remind you of something

● Grief is a daily intruder that overstays visitation rights. There is no way to extricate it, and tell it to, Get the hell out of here! Go back to where I can't see you or feel you, or hear from you ever again

● Grief is cruel and unrelenting

● Grief has private club members, that join without invitation, and definitely without a sense of prestige or privilege

● Grief changes everything, and who a person was is no more, the bloom of hope aged and darkened quickly, replaced by a sobriety that is not easily shaken, nor should it be

● Grief is recalling without the pleasure of reliving, in the flesh, with a person that was loved, admired, cherished, revered, appreciated

Irreplaceable. 

Have you considered this, dear reader, how some people that have taken up residence in your life are one-of-a-kind, and if they were to depart through death, or misfortune, you could never have them back again? That is the never again feeling that my friend is coming to terms with. Her mom has been dead, and I say dead dear reader, in a heavy handed way, because to call it anything else is to deny the gravity of the situation, for six months now. When a person dies, despite seeing the motionless, breathless body, there are the memory clips of them that play in the mind, tricking us into believing they are still alive, and that we will see them again soon. That is the cruelty of death... the having to reconcile what is, with what used to be. 

And so my friend made a joke, about some a**hole f%cking up her life, because that is how she is feeling. She can't point a finger at anyone and say, It was YOU, YOU did this... or It was THEM, THAT group over there, they are responsible for how messy my life, my feelings, my thoughts are. They are the reason I have trouble focusing, getting things done, and how I don't recognize myself anymore... 

Wanting to blame and not being able to is a tough thing for a human: we really do want to make sense of what is to the soul, incomprehensibly nonsensical. Logic is marvellous, but death is so strange an animal, that no matter how pragmatically we broach the subject and try to understand it, comprehension remains enigmatically elusive. 

I stated in a recent piece of writing that 2024 will be the year of death. The grief, the wailing, it will be heard far and wide. God will bring us to our knees pleading for relief, and that, dear reader, is the only place we will feel any comfort at all. He won't take the pain away, he will be with us as we suffer. He will scape us up off the floor, spatula like, brush us off, and have us face another day, with his strength. Some days with weakened extremities, we will not be able to carry on, and he will be there then too, this time brushing our hair back from our feverish brows, bidding us to sip from his Holy Spirit, to quench the fiery darts shot at us from the enemy of our souls... 

The devil does not want us to think past our now, he wants us to despair eternally, and to live the fate he will forever have to endure. That would be grief unbearable, would it not, dear one?

My friend swore today, and we both laughed at the absurdity of the situation, of a crime being committed against her soul, with no one to pin the charges on.

She was right: someone rather invisible, whom hence forth we shall call death, came along and stole two precious people from her life. She is reeling most days, from the reality she faces of not seeing them, hearing their voices, sharing a meal, a story, a hug, laughter, intimate conversation... She misses them, and they aren't coming back.

Perhaps you can relate, or will one day in the near future. I hope not, but then again, into every life a little rain must fall.

I cannot imagine facing the terrors of grief without God, dear one. I cannot fathom facing the hopelessness of a life lived and lost, without faith. I cannot, and I am grateful, I do not live this way. My friend, she knows her Creator, she knows the Great Comforter, and it is to him she turns when her heart aches and she longs to see her parents again. 

She doesn't feel like herself currently, with the grief taking up lots of space in her being, but she still has a snappy sense of humour, and a resiliency that is admirable given the circumstances. 

What about you? Have you joined the Grief Club? How are you fairing? Where do you get your comfort? Do you turn to the One that can soothe you when no one else can? Are you gazing into eternity and anticipating being in the Presence of God... death is eminent, and must be considered as a reality.

What do you believe, and whatever will you do, when death comes, to your door? 

Revelation 21:4

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.