It has just been a hard summer. with grief stretching throughout it. Grief complicates all the everyday normal activities of life. My grandchildren’s dad is missing from their lives. Wanting to share this burden with my older sister, I stop short at the reality of her death. This summer has been a constant reminder that someone who should be in my life, isn’t.
I think of last conversations, shared laughter and moments of connection. Grief spills onto everything. My world has been colored by loss and its scattered burdens.
Even stretching to my volunteer work at church . . . I was looking for a book study to lead this fall that fit my mood, hoping to find one on the Biblical book of Job, who had his share of grief. Instead I stumbled on Ammanda Held Opelt’s book, “A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing.” Ammanda’s sister, author Rachel Held Evans died from complications of the flu in 2019. at the age of 37. Ammanda’s book describes her search for rituals that would give her peace, and provide opportunities to heal from the death of her sister, and recent pregnancy losses.
Beginning with a quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night” she weaves her way through grief.
Ammanda Held Opelt writes, “I’ve tried hard to steel myself in the face of all this loss. I’ve tried to manage people’s perceptions of me, determined to be the resilient humanitarian aid worker, the dutiful sister, the heartbroken but hopeful mother-not-yet-to-be. In doing so, I often neglected the significant toll all this sorrow had taken on me. I’d spend my days denying my own brokenness, circling the sorrow, unwilling to truly approach it. Then, I’d spend my evenings in fits of weepy rage, despairing and wondering why I felt like I was going crazy.” * She found rituals helped give substance to her grief and physical space to acknowledge her wounds.
For two very different reasons, my summer losses were marked by weeks of separation between memorial services and burial. Yesterday, my son-in-law’s ashes were laid to rest. It was a healing space, to mourn and grieve publicly again. The gathering of family gave opportunity for mutual grief and support for my daughter and her children. My sister’s burial was a time of shared memories, laughter and celebration of her life.
Rituals make space and time to mourn. They remind us we are held in the embrace of God, even when our hearts are broken. God works in and through rituals to bring healing to our hurts, reminding us all over again, that God is near.
The psalmist says of God:
“God binds their wounds,
and heals the sorrows of their hearts.” Psalm 147:3
May you find rituals that bring you comfort and grant you peace, in your grieving times.
A Pastor's Heart 