Austin's Blog

How do you describe the “process” of grief? I put “process” of grief in quotes because though it is commonly described as “stages” at a pop culture level, grief resists any sort of systematic categorization. There are no “stages” to work through. There is no neat plan to work through and then once you’ve made your way through it, you’re finished. The best description I’ve heard recently is grief is like traveling down a road. After losing his spouse, C.S. Lewis remarked in A Grief Observed that “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” The newness is two-fold. First, it is “new” in the sense of it is uncharted territory that you must now travel. This is not the journey you would have taken by your own choice but this rocky road is now your path. Second, it is a “new” normal that has to be forged where everything you once knew is now different and everything is now out of place. The furniture of your life is no longer where it ought to be. The world is different. Even “old” places are now soaked with sadness. That’s new and foreign. Everything about the scenery is different now.

Gary Roe writes, “Grief is a long and winding road. It meanders over many hills and through multiple valleys. As we travel, the landscape is forever changing, as do the people around us and our circumstances. We trudge on, one small step at a time, leaning forward as best we can. It is a journey through uncharted territory. Eventually, calmer terrain greets us. The sun shines a bit more. The air grows lighter, fresher. Even some flowers begin to appear along the side of the road. We carry our child with us, inside us, to greet the next portion of the journey. Which way the road will turn, we don’t know. But we do know we love our children, and that we will live to honor them any way we can. We will walk on, telling their story, for it is our story too. Love endures. It always has. It always will.”

The path forward is now inevitable and necessary. There’s no going around it. You simply must go through it. The manner in which you travel though makes all the difference. Will I move on in bitterness, anger, and rage or will I move on in trust, not denying in the dark what I know to be true in the light? Frederick Buechner writes, “The world is full of dark shadows to be sure, both the world without and the world within, and the road we’ve set off on is long and hard and often hard to find, but the word is trust. Trust the deepest intuitions of your own heart, trust the source of your own truest gladness, trust the road, trust him. And praise him too. Praise him for all we leave behind us in our traveling. Praise him for all we lose that lightens our feet, for all that the long road of the years bears off like a river. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. But praise him too for the knowledge that what’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and that all the dark there ever was, set next to the light, would scarcely fill a cup.”