May, the Month I Mourn

Soon my body will begin to grieve. We are about to enter into the season of Grayson Owen's (a beloved family friend) birthday and soon after, his untimely death. My body always remembers this no matter how many decades pass. In many ways, Grayson's accidental death was the death of my own spiritual illusions.

Growing up in a family that flaunted rules, I took a different path - the one less traveled. I thought if you followed the rules, played it safe, loved Jesus, and returned your cart to the appropriately designated area when leaving stories, nothing too terrible would happen.

I was wrong.

After the loss of Grayson I was busy feeling helpless. Have you ever noticed how many people tell you the wrong ways to support grieving people? But NO ONE tells you how to do it "right". Of course, I'm old and now I know better: there is no right way to support people in grief. No matter what you do, it is not enough nor should it be. Because there is nothing this side of heaven that fully comforts a family and community who have lost one so dear, one so precious as a son, a friend, a beloved mischievous boy with beautiful brown eyes and gorgeous shiny hair.

But life continued. My kids still required food on the table. So off to Sam's Club I go. It's warm out, early July is my best guess. And it hits me as a trudge to the car with my cart full of food and several useless items that were too good a deal to pass up. Not the grief of his parents, or his brothers, or my daughter. Not the grief of his grandparents or friends. My grief.

So I unload those groceries and trinkets into the back of my mini-van, a vehicle that was accustomed to toting this young man to and fro on adventures with the surviving musketeers, and I DO NOT RETURN THE DAMN CART. I just leave it sitting in the middle of the parking lot.

Because I learned my lesson. Parents can do the best they can and still lose their kids. People can be and do good and none of it is protection from pain.

It is a great con, an attractive one, but a con nonetheless to teach people that if we are very, very good God will protect us from suffering. The worst rebuke Jesus ever offers is when the disciple Peter dares to object to the predicted suffering and death of Christ. Preach him crucified.

We have an opportunity, this Easter season, if we sit with the crucifixion long enough, to realize that what scares us the most is not cured by magical thinking. But if we let it, the resurrection can bring us hope. Not a hokey hope, not wishful thinking, something different.

What do you fear so much that you are willing to buy snake oil to cure it?