Today I marked next year's calendar with upcoming appointments, birthdays and anniversaries, as I do every year about this time. When I got to March 14th, my mother's birthday, I automatically filled it in before realizing I did not need to do that this year--or ever again. My mother is dead. A day not marked on a calendar seemed such a small thing to evoke tears. Though I have felt sorrow at the fringes of my consciousness for weeks, though I let myself click on the touching Facebook links promising to make me cry, tears have eluded me. Until now. Marking a calendar. Missing a birthday. It is as if not having a birthday removes her even further from existence. And fresh from that sorrow, I attended the funeral of a friend's son and shared her grief.
There is a story I like, in which a young man falls in love with his teacher. In those days, unlike our own, it was unthinkable to act on such feelings. The boy's family eventually moved away. His teacher said he would forget her. He promised to find a way not to forget her. At the end of the story the now grown young man brings his wife back to his hometown to visit. His teacher had been gone for years, but the description of his young wife was the same as it had been for the young teacher. He had married someone just like her. He had found a way. From my own experience, when my dear friend Elsie moved into a nursing home, I found a way not to forget her in the midst of my busy schedule by having a weekly Bible study with her.
I did not know how to mourn the complicated double loss of my mother, but Jesus knew. He helped me find my grief through Garth's death, through small pangs as I'm shopping and see a gift mom would have liked. And I found grief again today, through marking the calendar. Jesus has been showing me that He will find a way to help me grieve. He's good at that--finding a way.
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