Words are wild, unpredictable things.
Often, ones delivered in love and designed to heal can wound terribly, especially when attempting to help someone dealing with death.
In trying to help you weather the loss of a loved one, kindhearted, well-meaning people, will often tell you that those you mourn over, have “gone to a better place”.
Though said earnestly, and always in love, this is almost never very helpful or comforting, as grief is really about the personal sense of loss one feels in the here and now.
For survivors, this is largely about how stinkin’ lousy this place currently is.
When you’re dealing with crippling pain, and with the unfathomable newly-made hole in your life; when you’re just trying to piece together in your mind, a patchwork of coherent thoughts to make the present bearable, the phrase “a better place”, often adds insult to horrific injury.
Yes, you want goodness for your loved one, and you think about all that they cannot and will not experience here, and yes, the thought of them in Heaven, free from pain and worry is a small help, but you’re also pretty darn selfish about the whole thing, too.
To the grieving mind the pushback to this idea comes easy, if we think about it:
Heaven was already a better place before all of this happened, but this loss, and the void it has created, has now made this place, (the place where those left behind have to stay and live), a much, much worse place.
And in this sadly ironic way, the seemingly innocent words that you hope will bring comfort, can actually amplify the loss for a survivor; magnifying the great chasm between them, and the one they no longer have.
“Heaven gained an angel”, is another similar well-meaning, but greatly flawed attempt at consolation. Again, it’s a beautiful image and a sweet idea, but for those carrying on here in the valley, it’s mixed with the horrible reality that we, living where angels are already in very short supply as it is, have had yet another casualty.
Please don’t hear this as a slight to you, if you’ve ever spoken these words, even to me.
They’re ones that I’ve offered as well at one time or another, and in those moments, I too, was lovingly, desperately reaching for something that could help carry someone as they wept.
It’s just another reminder and a lesson for the heart, that when facing the irrevocable, irreplaceable loss of someone you held dear, all words fail.
In the end, the only thing we can offer someone who we care for, which can provide the kind of comfort that we all wish words will, are prayers and presence.
There’s something about simply being with someone; about sitting with them in a pain that you refrain from speaking into, that allows stuff much bigger and far greater than words to be exchanged.
And only in those sacred moments of silent presence, can the power of that “better place”, really be felt.
A lesson I’m learning in the valley…
