Good Grief

Losing my father has taught me the value of grief and allowing people the space to fully process their emotions, just as Jesus did.

By Denise Kruse

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his wasn’t a new scene for me, but the noises weren’t yet commonplace. I was still startled by the occasional dull warning beeps from the constantly sighing ventilator; the IV notifications—which were plentiful, because of the upwards to a dozen medications and various bags of fluid fed into my father’s central line—still made me jump up and look frantically around the ICU floor for his nurse to tend to it. It was five days post-op on my dad’s third heart surgery, and as I watched the blur of the medical team, and heard the echoes of seemingly distant whispered risk factors as the tracheostomy consent forms were placed in my hands as his sole caretaker, I knew this time around would be different.

It was 2016, and even though he had been very much alive, I had been grieving my dad for six years at this point. Six years prior, my parents’ nearly 30-year marriage fell apart, and my dad’s private sins had been laid bare. Theirs was the first divorce of his generation in his very externally devout Filipino American Christian family. The “I knew it” and “I told you so” and “See, he never really changed” of the loudest voices of his extended family reverberated like screams in a cathedral. 

I would later find out, through grief counseling, that often there is a distinct “before” and “after” period of grief trauma. As much as you long for “back to normal,” there is no normal to be found in the wilderness of grief. There is only raw, unrelenting newness. Wilderness with no visible oasis, one that absolutely must be “gone through” to proceed with mental health intact rather than “gotten over.” Brand-new life norms to be forged.

In retrospect, this was my crash course in grief and mourning—terminology that, at the surface, seems redundant, but actually carries very different meanings. Dr. Alan Wolfelt, founder and director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition and a leading educator, author, and grief counselor in North America, explains it this way: “Simply stated, grief is the internal thoughts and feelings we experience when someone we love dies. Mourning, on the other hand, is taking the internal experience of grief and expressing it outside ourselves.”

There was much to mourn over the next six and a half weeks until my dad took his last breaths, surrounded by loved ones, as my pastor prayed over all of us. My open mourning and lament, a level of vulnerability previously unknown to my extended family, was met with love and comfort by some, but indifference and shockingly, outright hostility and character assassinations by others. 

While I’m sure there is a lot to unpack here regarding the impossible standards, both visible and not, of assimilation, and the strong immigrant spirit of the stiff upper lip to be afforded respect from our white contemporaries, all I knew was that I was experiencing loss from all sides—both the inevitable death loss of my father, and the cultural and practical life loss of the poison-eaten veneer of a unified extended family. Because even if so many of our familial relationships were a facade, they were familiar.

As promised in the Psalms, I saw firsthand how mourning could be turned into dancing. In his final days and moments, through miraculous clarity of mind after weeks spent mostly comatose, my dad and I discussed the Filipino culture of shame and performance-based scale of righteousness that had dominated his family relationships and colored each day of his life as he was denied his family’s approval. I talked with him of our understanding of God’s grace through faith spoken of in Ephesians 2, and how that grace is not selective to performative piety. How Christ should come before culture—always. His energy was limited in his last days, but I watched as he dedicated every waking moment to repairing relationships—including, blessedly, the one with my mother—and looking forward.

In the years since, I have continued to learn about biblical lament—which remains a less-spoken-of topic in mainstream American evangelical churches. Lament, bringing our griefs before the throne of grace with hope, swims hard upstream against the idolatrous stronghold of American individualism and self-sufficiency. 

There has been a lot to lament. Senseless loss of life. A global pandemic. Racial inequity. The American church’s perpetuation of white supremacy and politicization of the full gospel of Christ that includes affirming and defending the Imago Dei in all humanity. The loss of friendships due to the transition from “token” to “truth-teller.” 

“Many grievers,” Dr. Wolfelt says, “do not give themselves permission or receive permission from others to mourn. We live in a society that often encourages people to prematurely move away from their grief instead of toward it. Many people view grief as something to be overcome rather than experienced.” Give yourself grace—and time—in your very legitimate grief.

I’m reminded of the story from Mark 6, where Jesus goes up on a mountain to pray and sends his disciples off to Bethsaida on a boat. From there, he had a bird’s-eye view of the storm that was coming, and knew exactly where his disciples were as they were in the thick of it. He saw them in the storm. He heard their fear and lament, and “at the fourth watch of the night,” it says in verse 48,  he intervened. 

Jesus saw the storm coming in my family’s life. He knew exactly where we were as we rowed on with seeming futility in the thick of it. Like the disciples, our faith was being strengthened and grown through this storm. And at the fourth watch of the night—redemption. Reconciliation. Freedom. Pain and beauty in staggeringly equal measures.

I’ve had to unlearn the idea that grief and lament demonstrate a lack of faith. Rather, bringing our laments to God shows our dependence on and hope in him to help guide us through the wilderness of grief.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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Denise Peñacerrada Kruse is an editor with the Asian American Christian Collaborative, a proud Chicago native, and pandemic-induced homeschool mom. She and her husband Vince live with their three kids in a suburb of St. Louis. If you’re into nonsense kid quotes and oft-irreverent musings, follow her on Twitter and Instagram.