The Intimacy of Loss

I am often surprised by the intimacy of grief. The way grief knows me and touches all my vulnerabilities. The way it shows up tenaciously as if we have been companions for years rather than its recent 6-month stint in my life.

Perhaps grief and I have known one another longer. When I open the Song of Songs, the first thing I attune to is the seasons of the Song: meeting and unfamiliarity, the passion and turmoil of relationship development, the way love shows up not only as physical chemistry or intense romantic propositions, but transformation through challenge and circumstance, seasons of settling in and looking to the horizon of Chapter 8.

Christ, and love, are alive in each season. I am reminded that as long as love is part of the journey of life, we will hold loss as well. We have each experienced grief in a thousand ways:

disappointment

growing into different versions or deeper versions of yourself - for better or worse

changes you can’t control

changes you choose

noticing that the world is both lovely and hard and really more hard than you’d like

My relationship with grief is not new, but I recognize my intimacy with grief is growing.

I am generally not sure I would like to get to know you more, grief. Can I opt for a “no thank you” here? Is that a viable option? Grief’s tenacity has the strength of a toddler asking for bubble gum at the grocery store checkout.

I think growing closer to grief is really growing closer to those deep and vulnerable places within ourselves; growing closer with aspects of God which make us uncomfortable or despondent; growing closer with our needs, and they are many.

Grief introduces us to (once again) the younger versions of ourselves. We confront their fears. We might have forgotten them otherwise, and that would be a true pity. Not only does the emotional load stack up when our parts and pieces go unnoticed, but these beauties are also the chorus in our own Song of Song refrain:

We will exult and rejoice in you;
we will extol your love more than wine;
rightly do they love you.

Rightly are we loved, whether walking across a stage or and gathering ourselves quietly in an airport restroom stall.

I have recently (resistantly) spent time in the vineyard with of intimacy with grief. There I have met and have been reflecting on the shadowed parts of me. I was not ready for Song of Songs chapter 5 here. These are parts of myself I’d rather turn from, ignore, or frankly kick out. This is why intimacy finds us at a crossroads - shall we go forward or shall we not?

As I hear Christ say to me, in the words of my mother to my adolescent self, I say within me, “I choose you, even when I don’t like you, beloved.”

This is my story of grief low self-esteem:

It started innocently enough, I would see a therapy client and wonder if I had offered them the “right” tool or allowed enough space for their pain, or their joy.

I started to wonder if my dissertation plans were interesting. I needed to organize myself differently. The work was coming apart at the seams.

“I am an executive functioning mess.” I set timers and alerts. I switched to a paper planner and a phone calendar.

I began to feel a little irritable with myself. I felt a little in the way of my own endeavors. I berated myself for my lack of concentration.

I felt fat. I didn’t like the way my clothes looked. I cooked food for my family I picked apart. I looked around my house and wondered what slobs lived here.

I didn’t realize how far my grief low self esteem had devolved until I was riding my Vespa to work on a blue summer day, unable to see through the fog of my glasses.

I realized I was crying.

The background of my thoughts were no longer the community chorus of support. I had become cruel to myself. Without the vineyard time of intimacy with grief, I had been taken over by grief. I had written this narrative. Because I refused to let grief become my companion, it had become my assault.

There are deep places in most of us forged in trying to survive middle school gym class or catching our parents on a bad day or sitting in front of a beloved art project with a red D printed neatly in the upper right hand corner. Grief opens these places, the web of stories which are Grief in Our Lives.

I could keep fighting my attacker (also known as “being human'“), or I could get to know grief, and myself in grief more deeply.

Friendship is generally a good place to start with vulnerability. They are our external chorus:

We will exult and rejoice in you;
we will extol your love more than wine;
rightly do they love you.

I admitted to a friend my grief low self-esteem and it’s ugly thoughts and words.

“When was the last time you heard your mom’s voice?” she suggested.

My mom. My beautiful and obnoxious number one fan. Her words made me reflect on how often I wanted to interrupt conversations only to say unrelated words, “I miss her.”

Without my mom’s voice interrupting my days with poorly timed phone calls or misspelled Facebook posts, my chorus within me had forgotten they were special to others on this earth, to me, to the work.

Thank goodness for technology and my executive functioning failure to clean up my voicemails. I listened to my parents sing me Happy Birthday in their terrible and lovely chorus. I heard my dad yell across the room to tell my mom to pick up the other line and the worn out response allowable when you’ve lived 80 years and been married 45 of them: “WHAT?!”

I heard my mom say, “I love you.”

Without wrestling with low self-esteem, without this version of intimacy with myself, I would not have known my deepest need was to remember I was loved and this love had not been lost.

Grief is a bastard, a drunkard overstaying his welcome at the bar after hours, but grief is also a way through to the next season, the light and honor of a thousand precious memories, and an introduction to our deeper selves.

I will not pretend that grief and I don’t have a contentious relationship. Song of Songs Chapter 5 comes in every relationship, dear ones. It is not intimacy without the tension of differentiation. But I am working to also welcome grief as my companion. It seems he is gonna stay around awhile anyway.