grief and fear

I see a lot of grief.

Sometimes I see it in a raw and naked form. Today was such a time.

The man who'd died was only 37. It was his funeral this morning and I didn't really know just what I should expect.

I hadn't found it easy to prepare - and in fact was still preparing right up to the point I left to go along the road to take the service at the local crematorium.

It was the small chapel (which seats maybe 65) that they'd chosen. Which surprised me - when a man of that sort of age so suddenly dies, the attendance is generally large. There were maybe twenty people there today. Not a lot.

When the coffin came in the man's mother and brother came out to the front and clung to the coffin with tears and with cries of sorrow, distress and despair. It's hard to comprehend how deep a mother's grief can be when her son is gone like that.

I haven't seen anything quite like that for years. Raw and naked grief. Clinging in vain to a past and a person that's gone. For ever.

His partner had invited one of his friends to speak. Which he did. He'd prepared what he wanted to say, but when it came to the bit and he came to the front he simply said that it shouldn't be something he read, it should come just straight from his heart.

Except the heart doesn't quite behave like that. It speaks a different language at a time like this. The vocabulary of grief doesn't use that many words. Cries and sobs and groans again. That's pretty much all that would come.

Raw and naked grief.

I didn't know how long or short he'd be and so I was aware I'd have to adapt. I had longer than I thought. Which was maybe just as well.

I spoke to them in a fairly personal way. Slowly. Pointedly. Carefully (and I mean, full of a genuine care for them). And I tried to give them something that would help them all go on.

But it's hard.

The man who'd died - the mother of his child was there. Not the woman he's been living with in recent years, the one he'd come to love.

And here this woman was in tears throughout. Another grief, so raw, so very naked in the way it was expressed.

I felt like Florence Nightingale, addressing the gaping wounds of countless different mourners on this battlefield of grief. The Lord alone can heal. And I'm sure that he was there.

* * *

Another man called by to see me in the afternoon.

I know the man, a softly-spoken, gentle man in every sense. Death was on his mind as well.

"I'm now well into my eightieth year," he said. He needed to know about death.

What happens when we die? What happens after death?

He'd been reading some magazine, I think, while hanging around in some waiting room. And he'd read a bit going on about re-incarnation. It had got him rather worried, poor man.

We had a good chat and I think I managed to put his mind at rest. I gave him a copy of 'Forever Alive!', a booklet that we have which deals with all these issues in a farily comprehensive sort of way.

Death certainly always troubles us. Fear. And grief. Sometimes really very raw and naked. Both of them.

* * *

In between, I was along at the Scripture Union Group for the last one of the year. One of the girls had written a card and gave me a packet of chocolates to say 'thank you' for doing SU with them. It was sweet of her. Quite made my day!

Little things like that do us good. I think that's just what Jesus did. Good. He made people feel good. He made people good. By going around and doing good himself.

Which is what I tried to say to the folk this morning gathered at the crematorium. Another man who died quite young. But the man who changed the world.

And that's how his life is summarised - he went around doing good...

I hope they caught a glimpse of him, those grieving folk today. The mother of the man who'd died came up to me and thanked me at the end for what I'd said.

Maybe something got through. Maybe some small glimmer of light got through the wall of darkness that her grief has brought.