It was an odd Friday night. I was working in my newly refurbished office reading a passage from the Bible for a series I was preaching on titled “soul care”. Just a week ago I had begun this series and had quoted Jesus saying “what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his soul”. The longer you are in pastoral ministry the deeper you see the pains, tears and struggle that people go through which hurt and can at times destroy our souls. Add to this the challenge of reaching people living in the richest place on earth with an overdose of affluence, distractions and pleasures of the world that gets even the most spiritually oriented. For many who live here relishing this extravagant lifestyle, God starts diminishing from their radar and disappears like a slow truck you pass on a California freeway driving 20 miles over the speed limit if we do not watch out for our own souls.
The passage I was reading was from Psalm 103;.. as for man his life is like the grass of the field…the wind blows over it and it is no more..”. Just as I was reading this I heard my wife rushing into my office with her phone (as she was here along with my mom who had just come from India to recover from a health issue and were attending our Friday night exchange group in one of the rooms nearby). Her face panicked and her voice quivered. It was from another pastor friend calling from my sister-in-laws phone at 30 mins past midnight from New Jersey. He broke the dreadful news to me in less than a minute that my dear brother-in-law Inba who turned 40 recently had collapsed while playing Volleyball preparing for a fundraiser to provide homes for destitute children. He could not be revived despite the best medical intervention and left us a few minutes ago. I did not have much time to break it to my wife who was sensing something unimaginable and kept asking what happened to her brother. This was her younger baby brother Inba whom she dearly loved. Having no time to process and being in a state of terrible shock myself I broke the news in two words “Inba died”.
It took us three days before we could see Inba in a funeral home. My heart almost stopped seeing my brother-in-law who had become my own little brother too. He had just visited us a couple of months ago to meet our newly adopted children and we had wonderful times together. It was even more traumatic for me to see my darling wife hurt terribly seeing her baby brother lying speechless, cold and leaving us in a hurry without any hint. My lower jaws began quivering (and still does) which I guess is my body’s way of expressing grief.
Shock is the first of several phases of grief according to those who have studied this in-depth. The manner in which Inba left us aggravated this shock for all of us. Some cry, some don’t, some get busy, some shutdown and become still. Everyone’s different and express grief differently. I could see myself going through all of the above within the first two days as we rushed to take the last red-eye flight out of San Jose and crying the whole flight along with my wife and getting busy with all the arrangements to help take Inba back home once we landed and finding a few quiet moments in between to be still. We went to the place where Inba collapsed along with his friends less than 24 hours since he died. I felt helpless that I could not be there for my brother when he needed help the most.
Healing cannot begin without grieving. In some cultures men don’t cry as it is seen as a sign of weakness or being less masochistic. For some crying symbolizes lack of faith in God. Jesus wept seeing his best friend Lazarus die (though he knew it was going to happen and that he will be brought back alive again). The Bible does not tell us not to grieve. It only reminds us that we don’t have to grieve like those who don’t have hope but never encourages us to suppress grief. It is never healthy to suppress grief.
Grieving is even more complicated and traumatic for children for whom it happens in short on and off bursts according to Norman H.Wright and others who have written good resources to help children deal with grief. It tore my heart to hear Inba’s three and a half-year old son experience nightmares during the first two nights asking for his dad who usually puts him to sleep. He wanted to put on his blue shoes and go to the hospital to see his dad in the middle of the night as he was rushed the night before wearing his blue shoes to the ER where his dad would leave him while he waited outside. I had to break the news to him through a story that he is no longer with us. He watched his dad being buried and said he does not want his dad to be trapped in the box under the mud. What do you say to a child who is not supposed to experience these feelings. Still, he is learning to grieve watching us and we ought not to fake it or suppress it for him as he will find other unhealthy ways to release his trauma now or later. And so we grieve. Not in hopelessness but out of love and the fact that Inba will be terribly missed on our sojourn here.
I began reading C.S. Lewis who penned “A Grief Observed” in his journal as he was mourning the loss of his beloved wife whom he loved dearly. C.S.Lewis has the gift of giving voice to our deepest feelings, fears, doubts and grief and articulating them in vivid manner. He wrote, “The death of a beloved is an amputation….The same leg is cut off time after time”. A limb lost is a limb lost. A prosthetic can pretend to be the limb and even do most of what it can do but it still is not the same. And so we grieve – not in hopelessness but for love’s sake. After all it’s the first inevitable step toward healing and hope.
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