Lightening the Burden that Cannot be Lifted

by Eric Christensen
​“All of us are surrounded by ghosts. Now we must learn to live with them.” This insightful quote is from Vera Brittain’s memoir of life and loss 100 years ago in Testament of Youth. How true this is today when we can begin to hope that the major loss of life is behind us following a year when our country lost over 561,000 lives and an estimated 2.92 million worldwide to covid. How true it is for the individuals having to now cope with the loss of their parent, spouse, child or friend.
 
I have lived with loss and understand how grief is in many ways a coming to terms with those ghosts of family and friends taken before we were ready to say goodbye. My son Miles died in a car crash the day before my 52nd birthday. He was 19 and had the world laid out before him. Miles would have turned 31 this April 17. For the past eight years I have taken this anniversary of his birth as a time to write a letter on grief with the hope that my experience with loss can be of help to those facing the death of a loved one.
 
There is hope in my statement that it is a burden I believe can only be lightened in the first year, but not lifted from our soul. Hope and trust that embracing the grief burdening your soul can become an embrace of not just the pain, but the life lost until your love overcomes your loss and regrets. Lightening until you find your compass again and seek a path adjusted by who you lost. My own losses and the losses I have seen with others through my early career as a pastor have convinced me that a quick lifting of the weight of grief is not a real solution and also cheats the life lost.
 
The life lived with another creates feelings, purpose, and securities. These loses through the death of the one we have invested so much in, needs time to be redeemed. The at times crushing weight of loss on our soul, memories, and often practical needs, can be lightened with the trust that time will give us strength and perspective to eventually lift away much of the burden. Grief has its own gravity that needs strength and time to break out of its hold.
 
Grief forces us to live without someone we counted on. Intentionally grateful for them or taking them for granted while they were alive. Either way, we now must live life in their absence. A quote by Abraham Lincoln about the necessity of finding a new way has been helpful for me. He wrote, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must think anew, and act anew.”
 
I knew enough with loss to know that it would be two steps forward and three steps backward journey. There would be good days and bad days, days of happiness that were quickly stopped by the sting of remembering that Miles was gone. Uncertain days ahead beg for some certainty as a ballast.  I found that what I would need to lighten the burden and not exacerbate it was rest, community, diet, concentration, and exercise. Unfortunately, I knew the best I could do was to have some control over community, diet, and exercise. Good diet and exercise helped me be better able to rest and concentrate (we get in more accidents while grieving), while I was fortunate to already be in wonderful communities with friends, family, and work. Our grief is an individual journey, but the support of community is essential.
 
This trust that right practices would eventually lead to right results helped me accept the daily tears and the eventual arrival of better days. I never had the goal of “getting over it”, knowing that the gravity of grief would never be fully lifted. Grief is a type of toll to be paid for the decision to love and cherish. Embracing life and those we love, who love us, who help give our lives worth, makes grief a will cost we pay.
 
For me, and maybe you, grief and its aftermath can be different based on the people we have lost. My parents both died when I was in my 30’s. Their loss has been tempered with time as I see much of the in my siblings and me. I know they would feel good about how hey raised the four of us, particularly my oldest brother born with several disabilities. They would be happy to see the robust life he has lived despite the contrary prognosis in his childhood. They poured their passions and skills into helping him squeeze the most out of his potential. In my brother Robert, I especially see their greatness and their mark in life. It has always been a great source of comfort and confidence in this second half of life without them.
 
The loss of Miles is different in the void it leaves for me. The memories of time with him were ones I imagined he and his brother would have of time with me when I was gone. These times are now Tanner’s and mine to hold onto in a vastly different treasure box. More than this, I miss the life he would have lived, the joys of life he would have experienced, seeing how he would deal with trials, and the mark he would have made. I miss this life that will never be. I know that his loss has added greater purpose to my life and goals, but these feel like awful consolation prizes for his life.
 
If you are reading this and have lost someone close in the last year, trust that time will help you lighten the burden of today. Be honest with what is in your power to control today, what you need, what small steps can lighten your burden, trust the healing power of the future, and how honoring the life lost can be integrated into your future.