A
year or so ago, Matthew Warren the son of Rick and Kay Warren died. Last week
Kay Warren put up a post on Facebook in which she wrote about how well-meaning
but seemingly insensitive people expected her to let go of her grief at the
loss of her son and move on with her life (You can see the post here http://t.co/yqlYGC7nRY). According to her,
people felt she should stop mourning and get back to doing what she used to do
before the tragedy happened. They believe she is taking too long to recover
from the loss.
Last
week Sunday, someone I knew died. (Is that knew or know?). He was coming back
from his mother-in-law’s burial when the tire of the vehicle he was in burst
and the driver pressed the brake in a reflex action, trying to stop the car.
The car somersaulted, my friend, his wife, their baby and the driver all died.
Only one of his two children survived. In a moment, in an instant, she has been
left all alone in the world, an orphan.
When
I heard about my friend’s death on Monday, I was extremely disturbed. I was
disturbed and saddened for the whole week. It wasn’t the first time that
someone I knew has died but like all the other times it left me disturbed at
the coldness of the world. Like always, the world did not stop at their death,
it didn’t even slow down. The world went on. Even when I lost a nephew, after
all the grieving, we all went on with our lives. For those not affected by the
grief, there was even no mourning to slow them down. There is no acknowledgment
from the world that someone of importance has left the earth. In the same way people
are dying in war zones like Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Venezuela, Nigeria and
other parts of the world daily and the world has not stopped to consider. As I
write, Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 is still missing. While the world
wonders what could have happened, it is the families and friends that are in
mourning, whose lives have stopped. It is their lives that will never be the
same again.
Grief
at the loss of a lost one is person to each of us and that grief is expressed
in a different way by different people depending on how close they were to that
person. I still can’t believe my friend is gone. We were in the same department
in church and we used to meet regularly during meetings. Yet my grief and sense
of loss cannot compare to that felt by his family, especially his parents. There
are very few things that can compare with a parent losing a child. The normal
order of things tells us that parents are supposed to die before their
children. It’s a terrible aberration for a parent to bury their child.
Every
person will deal with grief in their own way and I believe they should be
allowed to deal with it the way they deem fit unless it is affecting their
health, physical, emotional or psychological. A parent can never forget a child
and the loss of a child is always hard. The loss is especially hard when the
child has grown to their teens and their whole life is before them or just
beginning. Until we have experienced it, it is not something we should make
light of. It is also something we should pray not to experience. We might not
be able to understand it but we should let those experiencing grief get on and
deal with it in their own way. We should not think less of them or grow
impatient with them but encourage them to deal with it hoping they will receive
comfort.
JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a
division of Thomas Nelson publishers, http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/. You can
follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal.
