Mourning Well
This past week I watched the memorials honoring 9/11. Listening to the names of those who died 25 years ago, read aloud by family members, made me pause. I watched their faces as they spoke the name of their loved one. Time had passed, and their grief remained.
Earlier in the week, I watched the images of the devastation and damage in Kauai, in the exact place where I was last month. The clear path I had walked was covered in dirt, sand, tree limbs, and debris. The aftermath of wind and waves came barreling in and demolished the beauty of the trees and lush landscape.
Before and after. Then and now.
Grief comes in to wreak havoc in our lives and leaves an aftermath of debris. We feel pain. We’ve experienced a loss. Our grief needs words, space, and ways to be processed. Our grief represents our love for our person.
I love this quote by Amanda Held Opelt, who wrote about her journey after the death of her sister, Rachel Held Evans, who died in 2019 at the age of 37 from complications of the flu.
“To mourn well is to hold together in the space of your heart multiple complex emotions at once. Sadness, regret, anger, longing, nostalgia.”
― Amanda Held Opelt, A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing.
Mourning well sounds contradictory. The process seems strange. To mourn well allows us to acknowledge what we feel, where we are, in order to not stay there. Bringing all our emotions together, without judgment or guilt, is the way we move forward. We are not meant to stay stagnant. We will find hope as we move through the journey.