Of Grief and Hope

The early morning sunlight snuck around the blackout curtains in my Kyiv apartment, sending tenacious streams of light around the room as I slipped back into bed after feeding my infant son. I pulled the blankets around me and luxuriated in the impending precious moments of sleep before little one would wake for the day. As I started dozing off, a sudden buzz from my phone jerked me back from my dreams. Half-asleep and confused as to how a call had penetrated my nighttime do-not-disturb setting, I saw that my brother’s name on my glowing screen. My groggy logic dictated that I roll over and enjoy my last few minutes of the night. Yet as I did so, the thought suddenly hit me, “Wait. That was his second call. He never calls me in Ukraine without setting up a time first…” My heart sank. I rolled back over and saw a text from him asking me to call him. With trepidation, unsure what tragedy could have necessitated this urgency, I climbed out of bed and returned my brother’s call.

I stared out at the sun-lit high-rise apartment buildings, listening numbly as my brother told me the news. Shaken, I stumbled over to Bryce and pronounced, “Dad died.”

It’s been a few weeks now since that phone call. A few weeks filled with confusion, faith, denial, hope, anger, miracles, loneliness, mercies, listlessness, love, and the ministering of angels.

Yet despite my desire—even my urgent need—to convey my grief in writing, words pale in comparison to the aching, wrenching loneliness that ensues as a result of a person-shaped hole in your heart. Perhaps that’s part of what makes loss so formidable—surely the ability to communicate grief in cold, logical letters and sounds could reduce it to an entity you could confront and conquer. But something that is too powerful to be tied down to human language is overwhelming. Daunting. Cavernous. I’ve had an interesting relationship with words over the past few weeks, at times needing to send a torrent of them to the heavens, to a friend, or into my journal. At other times, though, words die in my throat, leaving a wreath of silence around the tears as my husband patiently sits by my side. I felt a compelling need to speak at my father’s funeral, desperately hoping that my words could provide some sense of closure, meaning—to offer at least a partial unraveling of the mysterious tragedy and to apply a balm to help heal my soul and others. Or at least to provide a fitting tribute to the man I call Dad. But I realized that, as heartfelt as those words were, no 15-minute talk could say enough. No essay, no phone call, no memoir, no book could ever perfectly encapsulate everything, could adequately reflect Dad’s influence, could package up my grief and make it understandable, digestible, complete. It may take a lifetime of words to unravel and reassemble everything. But here are a few early, unsteady pen strokes.

After the loss of his beloved wife to cancer, C.S. Lewis found himself crushed by grief. In an attempt to work through his pain, he kept a series of notebooks chronicling his feelings, experiences and thoughts. Those desperate, raw, stream-of-(ridiculously intelligent)-consciousness jottings have come to us as a little book entitled “A Grief Observed.” In this book Lewis admits,

I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history, and if I don’t stop writing that history at some quite arbitrary point, there’s no reason why I should ever stop. There is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape. As I’ve already noted, not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn’t a circular trench. But it isn’t. There are partial recurrences, but the sequence doesn’t repeat.

There is no simple light switch to flip from broken to whole; from grieving to joyful. Confusion and peace, joy and pain, grief and laughter—they’re all mixed up together, recurring, alternating, coexisting.

Each journey of grief is different. Even when we mourn the same person. I mourn my father differently than my brothers do. My mother mourns him in yet a different way, incomprehensible to me. Grief is unique and personal. But there are universal elements to it. I suppose in an attempt to share some of these simultaneously unique and universal elements of grief to perhaps be of help to someone else grieving, I’m writing a few episodes in my own grieving process.

Over the days preceding Dad’s funeral, I heard Mom several times tell friends that the grief was overwhelming, but that the outpouring of love and support from those around us was even more powerful. And that’s true. I don’t think we realized how many people loved us and cared about us until these moments of deep grief. We had certainly never needed it more. The meals that came night after night, the cards, calls, hugs, yard work, service, words of comfort, tears of sympathy were all manifestations of earthly angels doing God’s work. I never realized before how much the simple words, “I’m praying for you,” could mean, and I resolved to myself to more consistently extend those to people in grief, no matter how close or distant my relationship to them. People frequently apologized to us, wishing they could do more—or something—to take away the grief. But I realized that just their words, just the support of knowing someone is thinking about you sustains you. Whoever wrote on our porch in sidewalk chalk during the funeral will never know how much the messages “You are loved!” and “Families are forever” meant to us, smiling encouragingly from the concrete entrances to our silent, empty home. Who knew we had that power in each other’s lives?

It felt strange to sort through the loose ends of a life interrupted. The office left exactly the way Dad used it, waiting for him to come into work in the morning. (His office was of course complete with the jar of chocolate that my brothers and I of course found and availed ourselves of, figuring he didn’t need them anymore. Thanks, Dad.) The package of new slacks that arrived, ordered by Dad just a couple days before his death. The half-mown lawn showing exactly how far Dad got that evening before his mortal heart stopped beating. The secretaries at his work fielding phone calls for him, asking if anybody besides Dad could help them with their needs. The reserved hotels my mom had to cancel and the front-row tickets they had to give up, since they should have been on vacation together; instead we were planning his funeral. His clothes hanging neatly in the closet, ready to be worn. It was uncanny when all the physical objects insisted that Dad should be alive, ready to return at any moment and resume the routine we had all grown to expect.

I think whoever invented funerals was a pretty wise person. They give the grieving family immediate, mundane (albeit excruciating) tasks that must be performed within a relatively strict timeframe. It kind of keeps you from wrapping yourself in a blanket of grief and not getting up again. Because someone’s got to get out there and pick the perfect cemetery plots, you know? You have to keep moving. It also gives you a chance to celebrate the life of someone you loved. Someone told me a few days before Dad’s funeral that he was looking forward to it: “I love funerals because you get to find out just how awesome people are.” And there’s a lot of truth to that. There really aren’t any other gatherings I can think of that we consistently hold that are dedicated to saying good things about someone. (Although I guess it would be kind of embarrassing for someone still alive to hear speech after speech praising them. That must be why we wait until they don’t get a choice anymore.)

At the viewing the night before Dad’s funeral, as hundreds of friends and family members passed through, offering their condolences, tears, hugs, and encouragement, I found myself caught off-guard when someone told me, “You look happy.” I wasn’t sure if that was an insult or a compliment; an accusation of insensitivity or an acknowledgement of the denial I was living in, despite the casket being a mere two steps away. I bashfully mumbled something and shrugged through a lopsided smile that I tried to temper so I didn’t look too happy. Happy? Not sure. Numb, confused, trying to be strong? Yeah. But there definitely was a lot of laughter going on that evening as I chatted with my siblings. Perhaps it was the good old adage Mom always shares—“You can either laugh or cry.” We definitely did both that week. But it’s surprising how many truly funny morbid jokes you can make in conjunction with a funeral. (Like the fact that my brother and I both got the same timely email advertisement from Billion Graves about a Father’s Day sale. Or as we were rushing to the viewing, I observed that Dad was punctual as usual.) I think Dad probably approved of our jokes. At least, given that he wasn’t in his grave yet, he for sure didn’t roll over in it. Laugh or cry, right?

And I think Dad’s funeral was a fitting tribute to a great man. The music. The talks. The love. The service. The heavenly manifestations. The stories of angels and miracles. The countless friends and family who attended or otherwise sent their support. If we weren’t all so teary-eyed, it would have been a grand old jubilee of pure joy. But as it was, it was a bittersweet event. A rite of passage for all of us. Sending my father off in style. Signaling to ourselves the closing of one chapter in our lives and the opening of a new chapter.

A new chapter. An unknown chapter. We haven’t had to do this before—we haven’t been asked to trudge along without Dad before, doing what he used to do for us. (Oh! On the note of doing what Dad did—over the days I was home with my Mom and brothers, I frequently tried to think of what Dad would do in order to help Mom out. The evening after the funeral, as Mom and I returned home from spending time with my older brother’s family, I wondered what I could say in the car that Dad would say. With an inward smile as I thought of my Dad’s calm, quiet manner, I realized that to be most like Dad in the car, I should keep silent. But as that wasn’t exactly what Mom or I needed at that particular moment, we chatted.)

It’s funny how once you lose someone, suddenly everything makes you think of them. Maybe you just notice the things more, but I’ve definitely been doing more active thinking about Dad in the days since he died than I was on any average day of his life. You take someone’s presence for granted—Dad was just always there. I knew he would be there. But now. Anything with any remote connection to Dad suddenly reminds me of him powerfully and often painfully. Someone putting a conical hat in the airplane compartment reminds me of the slides Dad showed us from his mission in Korea wearing such a hat. Looking into my son’s eyes and seeing Dad in them. The teddy bear Mom and Dad gave my son for Christmas. The manhole covers and how Dad always told me not to step on them. An overnight layover in Paris, remembering my childhood awe when I learned Dad had climbed the Eifel tower. The Salt Lake airport and how Dad had always been there to pick me up. My son’s new teeth and realizing Dad never got to see them. Anytime I open skype and the contacts bar informed me that I last skyped with Dad on 27 May, 2018 for 24 minutes. (I made him late for church with that skype call. But now I’m glad I did. Neither of us knew it would be the last time we would see each other. It was a good conversation.) Cookies, cars, roads, mountains, songs, temples, shoes, scriptures, family history, grass, cars, maps, letters, trains . . .

These moments of memory catch me off-guard sometimes, forcing the hidden lump of raw emotion into the outside world with a cascade of tears. It happens at unexpected moments. Shopping on the cereal aisle. Changing a diaper. Walking down a cobble-stone Lithuanian street. Climbing into bed. Sitting in church. I think it’s impossible to realize how deeply integrated your life is with someone else’s until they are gone and their absence highlights every connection, every memory, every association.

A million memories—those I still have. But they’re painful right now. Grief is an exploratory process of discovering all the places, events, concepts that are connected to Dad and testing how I will handle them now without him. I suppose after a while the pain will lessen. The wound won’t be as fresh. The memories won’t be as recent. Soon joy will be able to accompany memory again, as it once did while Dad was still alive.

But then there are all the future plans I’ve had to realize are never going to happen. The skype calls we were supposed to have. The trips Dad was supposed to make to our new place in Norfolk. The games Dad was supposed to play with my baby and my other, future children. My brother’s son who was born weeks after Dad’s death, who will not know his namesake in mortality. The Christmases Dad would no longer be there for. The new shoes I bought for my baby that I would never get to show Dad. How I could never tell Dad that I bought the cereal he recommended I get in Ukraine for my son. How I didn’t get to tell him that I visited my mission, the place where I received his inspiring weekly letters where he let me know he was praying for me to become the missionary God needed me to be. The car repurposed as a grill that I can’t text him a picture of. The advice I can’t seek any longer. And I know that in some distant future I will be reunited with Dad. I guess it’s just figuring out this near future that is the hard part. The future none of us ever expected.

After Dad’s death, my routine life was shaken up. There are fragments of unwritten essays, plans, goals that I can’t quite bring myself to come back to just yet. It’s hard to pick up the pieces and go on living like you were before. To some extent that is right—things will never be the same. But on the other hand, we have to keep going. Dad has finished his mortal experience, but we have not. Mouths still need to be fed, dishes still need to be done, dissertations need to be written. It’s been hard to focus on my dissertation. It now all seems so frivolous and pointless. But it’s how I’m providing for my family right now. It gives me the opportunity to teach and to interact with students. Dad wanted me to finish my PhD. He said that I would need my PhD in order to have the influence and do the work God wanted me to. So here we are. So as fluffy as it may seem—as any career seems in the wake of the chilling reality of death—I will continue. And sometimes, it honestly is easier to just throw myself into work and try to forget emotions and feelings for a time. The monotony of research somehow has a soothing effect on a wounded soul. Healing comes through time and through immersion in the mundane. (And a dissertation is probably the epitome of mundane, right?) So we keep moving.

We’re kind of all re-learning how to live right now. We’re not entirely sure how to move along without Don, Dad, Grandpa, Brother Nay. But that’s what we must do. Because I’m sure there are some glorious things awaiting us in this chapter. Some learning and growing and struggling striving and even some joy. Because life and death are a package deal. We can’t have joy and love in life without also signing up for sorrow in death. I think grief itself is part of the refining process that is mortality. We came to earth to learn to love, but once we have learned that, we must also learn to live when those we desperately love are parted from us by death. Speaking of married couples, C.S. Lewis wrote,

“And then one or other dies. And we think of this as love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid-career or a flower with its head unluckily snapped off—something truncated and therefore, lacking its due shape. I wonder. If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation…then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance, but the next figure.”

Death is not an unexpected end to love, but the next phase for both those who pass on and those who remain behind; the phase where we learn a little more humility and a little more reliance on the Lord. This reminds me of Elder Scott and his sweet relationship with his beloved wife Jeanene. A few years before his death—and more than a dozen after hers—he said,

“I know what it is to love a daughter of Father in Heaven who with grace and devotion lived the full feminine splendor of her righteous womanhood. I am confident that when, in our future, I see her again beyond the veil, we will recognize that we have become even more deeply in love. We will appreciate each other even more, having spent this time separated by the veil.” (April 2011, “The Eternal Blessings of Marriage.”)

I am grateful to know that even the separation of death can strengthen relationships. Love and life and relationships don’t end with mortal death. That is something I have felt and understood more clearly over the past several weeks.

I could conclude here with an affirmation of eternal families or perhaps a funny anecdote or two, or even a commitment to be better because of what I have learned and felt over the past weeks. And all of those would be real and true and valid. Because I do believe in eternal families, and I don’t know how I could cope without that belief. And I have so many wonderful, poignant, and hilarious memories with Dad. And I really do want to be better and be the type of person my father was. But somehow any conclusion at all seems out of place when grief itself has not resolved; when these scattered writings are only a sliver from the beginning of a long process of learning. So I will just say that I miss Dad. Terribly. And I’m grateful for the memories we have together. And for the future we have together someday in the eternities. And until then, I guess we’ll all just keep moving along our own journeys—us here, and him over there—learning what we can from this necessary part of the plan of salvation, and trusting that the Governor of the universe is a merciful God who has prepared a way for us to live forever with those we love.