by Greg Lincoln
Coping with the loss of a loved one calls for the bereaved to adjust to the new reality that life will be different. Perhaps one of the most difficult things to adjust to is the physical absence of the one you love.
When a person is physically absent, your arms ache to hold them. Your heart yearns to talk with them, to laugh, to share what is in each other’s minds, and to plan the rest of your life together as you always have. Your senses crave to smell their hair, to feel their hand in yours, to experience that closeness that brings comfort and contentment.
Humans crave togetherness and the physical closeness and cooperation that you find in families. Family members share the same home space, eat the same foods that they love so much during mealtimes, share and care for the same beloved pets, and work together to create the home that they have made.
Even now in your own family you can think about how much you love being with your most dearest possessions that are yours alone.
When a member is no longer there due to moving out, empty nesting, going away to school, or because of the ultimate unfathomable loss, family members have to learn to adjust. For sudden losses, it is harshly forced upon them no matter how much they don’t want to.
Adapting to this new reality brought forth by bereavement loss is difficult beyond all human endurance. It pushes you to the absolute end of your mental, emotional, and physical strength. That is why no one can do it alone. Only with help, loving patience, kindness therapy, can this flood of pain be endured as it rages over and over again.
For us and the limitations of our human nature, time can seem so long. Especially for children who always want everything right now and do not yet understand patience or have yet to develop the concept of having to wait. For those of us who are suffering from grief, we have a lifetime to wait. So very long, so much time, so much to bear.
And so we all must keep striving to reach that goal of ours, living one day at a time even though it hurts, even though you are dealt the most devastating of blows, even though your world ends as you know it and it crashes down upon you like a demolished building unable to stand on its own.
That is where others can pull you up out of the rubble, extract you from amongst the chaos of the broken debris with the tenderest of care, and lift you up from under the crushing weight of the destruction of the life you once knew.
Even now, today, at this very moment, our grief still hovers, like a relentless cloud of mosquitoes with only one thing on its mind – to never leave. We do so crave and covet your prayers for not only us, but for all who are in this same state of being. Thank you for being there for anything and everything.