Introduction

      When my editor at Our Sunday Visitor, Bert Ghezzi, left a message on my answering machine asking if I would be interested in writing a book of meditations for people who are grieving, my first impulse was to say no. I was still in the throes of my own grief over the death of my mother. My mother had been ill for a long time. She still lived in the old family homestead. I had quit my job in order to spend more time with her and watched her gradual decline. I thought I was prepared for her death, but I was not.

       How could I do a book of meditations on grief when I was grieving?

      I decided to pray about it.

      I was no newcomer when it came to grief. I had undergone bereavement training when I was working as a pastoral associate and had started grief-support ministries in several parishes. I had given talks on grieving. I had written articles about bereavement and a book for Our Sunday Visitor entitled Grieving with the Help of Your Catholic Faith.

      But even with all that bereavement information in my head, my mother’s death was more difficult than I had ever imagined. It struck me in the heart. I felt as if something deep inside me had been ripped out. I had difficulty concentrating. I felt sick to my stomach most of the time. Thoughts of my mother consumed me. And I faced the additional pain of having to clean out and sell the family homestead.

       How could I do a book of meditations on grief when I was grieving?

      So I kept praying.

      Then my editor asked me to write a few meditations to see how this book might be structured. I sat down and asked God to help me. The meditation on tears seemed to unfold in my mind. I prayed some more, and the next meditation that came to me was dealing with doubts.

      It wasn’t long before I realized that writing a book of meditations is not like writing a how-to book. I discovered that this book of meditations would be rooted in prayer, in the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, in my own experiences of grieving, and in my desire to help others who were grieving.

      So I agreed to write the book. I quickly realized that this little book of meditations was helping me grieve the loss of my mother. I sincerely hope it will help you grieve the loss of your loved one.

      Grief is a very individual process. Every person grieves differently. You may find that some of the meditations describe exactly what you are experiencing. Other meditations may not relate to your particular situation at all. Don’t feel as if you have to read this book cover to cover. You can pick and choose the meditations that are most helpful. There may be some that you will want to read often and some that you will read only once. It’s okay.

      If there’s one message that I would like to present throughout this book it is that you should never feel bound by anything that someone else tells you to do when you’re grieving. You will know in the depths of your own being what is right. Follow your interior guide. You will eventually come to realize that what you feel inside is the Holy Spirit — leading you, inspiring you, comforting you, and healing you.

      My final prayer is that the Lord will bless you and give you peace as you journey through your grief.

       1. The Journey Through Grief

       Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.

      — C. S. Lewis

      Grief is the painful journey that we embark upon when someone we love dies. It is not unlike the recovery period after a serious surgery, when our bodies need time to heal and our muscles need time to regenerate.

      When we lose a loved one, a significant part of our lives is torn away. In trying to describe the severity of the loss, Madeleine L’Engle wrote: “The death of a beloved is an amputation.” But unlike a physical amputation, where we lose a limb, the death of a loved one is an emotional amputation, where we lose a person that we loved deeply.

      Grief is the process by which we allow ourselves to come to grips with our loss. It is a journey that will be different for each of us, depending on our personalities and our relationship with the person who died.

      Some of us will travel through the classic stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, sadness, and gradual acceptance. Others will jump back and forth from one stage to another. Some of us may skip some of the stages entirely. There is no right or wrong way to move through grief.

      Grief is not an illness or an abnormality. It is a natural process. We grieve deeply because we loved deeply.

      Grief is also a holy process. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mt 5:4). Jesus is telling us that we are blessed, not because the loss of a loved one was a blessing, but because we will be comforted in our loss. Jesus doesn’t tell us how we will be comforted. He only promises that he will help us through this difficult time. Is our faith strong enough to believe in that promise?

      Prayer: Lord, be my comfort and my strength as I journey through grief. You know the depths of pain in my heart. You know how lost and weak I feel. Guide me through each stage of this journey. Strengthen my faith and my trust in you. Never let me be separated from you. Amen.

       A good reflection for beginning our journey through grief comes from the prophet Isaiah, who assures us that God will be with us, no matter what we encounter on our journey:

       When you pass through waters, I will be with you;

       through rivers, you shall not be swept away.

       When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned,

       nor will flames consume you.

       For I, the Lord, am your God,

       the Holy One of Israel, your savior. (Is 43:2-3)

       2. The Initial Shock

       The shock of her death froze something in me.

      — Vladimir Nabokov

      Whether the death was unexpected or whether we had been anticipating it for a long time, there is always a sense of disbelief when it happens. We feel numb — almost as if we have been frozen in time. We may feel as if we are in a trance — going through the motions of what we have to do and say — but not feeling anything.

      Shock in the early stages of our grief is God’s way of protecting us from the harsh reality of death for a while. We know that our loved one is gone, but the full impact has not gripped us yet. We keep saying, “I can’t believe it.… It doesn’t seem real.… I don’t

---

Скачать книгу