Grief and Lament

Cultures vary on their interpretation of death, both in the way expired persons’ bodies are treated and in the social/personal management of the change that death brings into the lives of those remaining.  As at birth the family is accented in the life origin, the family is usually accented in life ending.  The family is not only perceived as something of the beginning and ending of an individual’s life, but is treated legally as a means of managing the beginning and ending of a life.  The death of a person has an ongoing meaning, no matter how small, in a period following the death.  At this writing a new prince has been born to the royal family of Windsor in England.  The news has touched on an exhausting list of facets about the birth of a male, third in line to the throne now held for decades by Queen Elizabeth II.  Nothing is said about ultimate death of the new prince.  The first thoughts of that event are for life, and then extended to the family – then to the nation and the world – perhaps on the cusp of a different sort of century in this Christian era.  Birth and death are social events (legal) as well as personal (private), and managed by us in a variety of ways.

How should the Christian manage death – either one’s own or another’s?  Here we are concerned with the perception of death in the implications of Scripture, in forming what a person develops as a context of death.  How should it be included in our view of death and its effect on our lives, beliefs and conduct?  The world may actually celebrate some deaths as observed in the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini toward the end of World War II.  The deaths were interpreted as the end of the tragedies they created in life.  For the normal person, living life generally as nature offers, death is deemed a loss of something that we wish were not lost.  The loss may be quite extensive in that the person is major to the physical welfare of his or her family, but generally it is turned into grief that impacts the emotions, even the well-being of those who loved, and may continue to love, the deceased person.  There is lingering meaning.  (Noted earlier in these Pages – after the death of my wife, I did not consider remarriage because I would not want to risk either my own feelings or those of another by comparing the succeeding person to my everlasting love.  There are other factors such as the interpretations possible in the responses of my children.  To some degree my children make up for my sense of loss, even though there is lamentation and manageable sense of loss.)

There is the rub, the prevailing sense of loss.  It is not meant for weeping which is usually the evidence of grief in death’s context, but not always.  For the Christian the grief (self) is related to a much larger understanding of endings, whether the ending of the life of a loved one, or the ending of some other beneficial thing in our lives.  The first understanding is lament.  Jonah grieved the loss of the gourd that provided shade for him in the desert.  Mary and Martha both grieved and lamented the death of their brother, Lazarus, and that was accented in the persons engaged to show grief and lament at the tomb.  Jesus arrived, and also wept.  This is the only event of public weeping by Jesus in the Bible.  The weeping was partly in the lament for Lazarus, and partly to share the grief of the mourners.  He could accept the death of Lazarus as a good thing, but lament the death in the loss of a human factor of relationship.  In truth why would we want to bring back, or be brought back, from death, if the death is indication of a better context for life than earth can provide?  In lament there is room for gratitude that God’s plan for this loved person has turned an enemy (death) into a transition (new life).  The lament is more related to the living concepts.  Grief is related to the death concepts.  Lament focuses on the whole event, including grief, and so recognizes God in the course of events.  My sudden grief on knowing my wife would die turned to lament for loss and acceptance that this was God’s will for good.  If anything that interpretation has grown stronger, even though I would have preferred that she stay on with me even if I had to give my full time to her care – which was the case during her last weeks.  We do well to settle the matter early in life so to see that death is a part of living, even in our lament for those we love who pass this way before us.  There is a silence in it, but victory as well.  I have seen it in children dying from incurable diseases.  These children often minister peace to their parents.  I am silenced by their solemnity, words and faces.  Prayer helps.