In the last months of grad school, I got the same question grad students everywhere answer countless times: “What is your thesis about?”
Now, what is the least-shocking way to tell people that you’re interested in human death and decay?
I couldn’t just tell them that I was studying dust in scripture—seriously, is there anything less interesting-sounding than dust? So I would explain it in the context of a larger philosophical/theological question, and the fact that it’s neglected by nearly everyone who will, in fact, return to dust.
It wasn’t always a comfortable moment to share stories of grief and loss, but the truth is that there’s more to my interest than merely academic curiosity. In fact, I’ve been contemplating death from a young age.
I won’t go into too much detail here—partly because some of these stories don’t feel like mine to share, and partly because I’ll probably say more about them some other time. But I want to give you a picture of my experiences so that you can understand a little of why I am the way that I am.
It started in high-school.
High School
My family moved to Minnesota in June of 2002—the summer before my freshman year of high-school. I started at a new school that fall, and to be honest, that first semester (okay, the whole year) was pretty rough. It was a small school. The kind of school where you “know” people without even necessarily talking to them—you have most of your classes together, so even if you never have a one-on-one conversation you still have an idea who they are and what they’re like.
In the spring semester, one of my classmates became ill and missed a lot of school. I remember hearing updates occasionally, and then learning finally that he had cancer. We continued to hear updates, positive and negative, throughout the school year. Sometime mid-summer, he passed away. My grief was different from my classmates. I had only known him for a few months—most of them had known him their whole lives. Even so, close proximity, with or without a relationship, to the death of a peer at 15 is not something to discount.
The following spring I was a sophomore, a little more secure in my new school, though still in the “new kid” category—something you never quite lose when everyone else has grown up together. In the early morning, before my sister and I went to school, my parents received a phone call. I didn’t hear it, but my sister came downstairs, knocked on my door, and told me that our cousin had committed suicide. He was just a few years older, and we weren’t close. But there’s still something profoundly shaping about losing family, another peer, in an unexpected and violent way. My sister and I went to school anyway, not knowing what else to do with ourselves, and knowing we’d be missing school to travel back home to Montana for the funeral.
Within days of the one-year anniversary of my cousin’s death, compounding my grief, a school-mate in the grade below me, was killed in a car accident. My junior year was nearly over, and I had yet to have a year of high-school not marked by loss.
My senior year rolled around and I think we were as hope-filled as any senior class. You never think catastrophe is coming. But then one day three of our class-mates never made it to school. They were planning to meet before driving to attend, if I remember correctly, the state basketball tournament. After a stress- and rumor-filled morning, our principal confirmed to us that there had been a car accident and two of our classmates, weeks from graduation, had died in an accident just a few miles from school.
And then we were adults…
Fast-forward through happy college years—where I began to let go of the expectation that the last week of March would bring unexpected news of loss. And since 2006, it hasn’t, thankfully.
This week has been filled with joy for the last nearly-four years—it’s the week of my daughter’s birthday.
But even her birthday is a reminder. Before my daughter was born, we lost her older sibling in a miscarriage. An unexpected loss in a season that we had reason to expect to be filled with joy—for us and many of our friends.
My son’s birthday is in March too, a little earlier. He just turned one this week, actually. But even so, I see the age gap between him and my daughter and remember that there is indeed enough space in there to have been filled with the birth of a second child lost through miscarriage.
Heavy Weights
Do I make more sense now? The last fifteen years of my life have brought significant sorrows nearly every year. I haven’t even included the stories of my aunt and uncle, and various others from slightly more distant circles whose loss I’ve grieved. Each new grief adds a little weight to the others, an extra dose of empathy for the closest mourners.
And do you see why this matters? None of us are above this sort of experience. We don’t think about it often, but we, and everyone we love, are one speeding car, one bad decision, one illness away from a close encounter with grief, death, and decay. No one is exempt—age, health, and habits are no guarantee.
Are we prepared? Do we have the tools in our belt to deal with loss? Can we answer with confidence that even in our weakest, saddest moments that God is still love, and that he is still kind? I
I’m not encouraging fear or paranoia. But my own experiences have taught me that we should be ready to undertake the task of grieving and dying well. And it is a task—there is nothing easy about it. But, like muscles grow able to bear heavy weights with practiced motion, I think we can prepare our souls to bear greater weight as well. Great weights never get lighter; great griefs will always be heavy. But we can practice so that just as weight-lifters perfect their form, we know how to bear them when they come.