I first learned to love the darkness after my mother died. Not initially. At first, after holding her body close in those minutes after her last breath, and then during the weeks and months that followed, I railed against the cold, black night of loss. I tried to send out a flare again and again. I once was a child of summertime, relishing the long days of brilliant sunshine and intense heat. I used to love the way summer would illuminate everything, making it seem filled with possibility.
Now I am a daughter of winter and moonlight. Night was the only place where I could begin to weave the thread of my loss through my life with any meaning, where doubt and despair had a home and were welcomed to the table. Where faith is not an assumption but something wrestled with like the biblical story of Jacob in his long night with the angel. He walked away from that encounter blessed but limping. He would carry the sign of that struggle with him always.
We are not taught about the gifts of darkness and descent in a culture that worships light and productivity. But the mystical tradition teaches us that these are seasons of life to be trusted. St. John of the Cross wrote about how we can only come to a more intimate knowing of the divine when our preconceived ideas are stripped away.
I believe that central to our spiritual path, we must hold the tension of lament and praise—we must learn the language of descent as well as ascent. We need to allow ourselves to grow intimate with the contours of each. To praise without acknowledging our pain is a superficial and shallow response to the realities of the world in which we live. To lament without offering gratitude or praise is to unbind ourselves from hope and become mired in cynicism and despair.
The whole of the spiritual life is wrapped up in paradoxical tensions, which we must learn to live into rather than figure out. My mother’s death was in many ways life-changing for me. I was confronted with questions and sorrow I had not known before. I was ushered toward a much more vibrant sense of my own mortality and the clarity that can accompany such a realization.
My own multiple journeys through grief have demanded that I take seriously what I call the midwinter God. That I look her fiercely in the eye until I see the reflection of my own dread and stay with it, breathe through it, begin to enter it with curiosity to see what it has to teach me about living in meaningful ways, to even welcome it in with compassion and tenderness, to live a life of depth that takes seriously both suffering and joy. I am called to become friends with the thing I resist most—the inevitable loss of everything I love.
Grief and sorrow are fundamental parts of our lives and have much to teach us about our own potential for compassion and kindness. They enter us into solidarity with those who struggle with depression or a sense of meaninglessness in life.
As I walked winter mornings in the months following my mother’s death, I became aware of the bareness of winter branches and the beauty of naked tree limbs dark against the sky. The questions of winter stirred in me. When I let go of all the embellishments of my life, what is the core that remains? What constitutes the bare bones of my life?
Winter reminds me that I know very little, that mystery pulses through creation, through my own beating blood.
It is the time to lay aside any easy answers offered by many religious people who seek to assure me it will all be okay, so not to trouble myself. Grieving is a season of radical humility.
Some deaths bring relief, the laying down of the commitment that had become draining, the end of a relationship that had become destructive, the shedding of an identity that had become too narrow, or a long and painful illness finally ending. That relief is still accompanied by grief’s draining sense of the familiar rushing out like blood pouring from a wound, the long, dark night of unknowing still ahead.
One of the things I love about Holy Week in the Christian tradition is that, while we know resurrection is the end of the story, we still have a day dedicated to Good Friday and to sitting with the suffering and death of Jesus and our own grief. We also have a day dedicated to Holy Saturday, that liminal space between the death and the rising when we are called to sit in the space of unknowing what comes next.
Grief demands our vulnerability. It asks our hearts to soften their stony exteriors and allow ourselves to be undone by loss. To really feel the impact of our love. Grief is the agreement we make when we open our hearts wide to another person or being. It reminds us for the rest of our lives how much we have been impacted by another.
Why do we work so hard to resist our tears? Jesus wept. We see him in John’s gospel shedding tears over the death of his friend Lazarus; in Luke’s gospel, we see him weeping over the whole city of Jerusalem because of their indifference. He grieves over both personal relationship and social injustice.
This vulnerability also can open us to the sacred presence beneath the surface of life at all times where we touch another world. Grief, fully entered into, is a place of encounter with mystery.
Practices for seasons of grief
Journaling. During seasons of grief, it helps to have a safe container for expressing our emotions, which a journal can provide. Show up each day to the blank page and share what is on your heart. You might look to Psalm 13 and feel connected to the ancient cry of “how long, O God?” Let that be the start of writing your own psalm of lament.
Find a sacred image. Find images of the holy that meet you in your grief. Consider the image of Mary, Mother of Sorrows, who held the grown body of her murdered son in her arms. Mary knows our sorrow and feels it with all of her being. She can be a companion in the darkness. Many of the saints—for example, St. Ignatius or the desert elders—experienced their own seasons of great loss as well. Ask them to be present with you and for their support, for them to help to hold you in your grief.
Honor the gift of tears. Read Psalm 56 where it addresses God, saying you have “put my tears in your bottle.” When I was grieving my mother’s loss, I found it comforting to think there was an enormous bottle out there somewhere holding all my tears. Create a regular daily practice of setting aside a certain window of time to give yourself over to the river of grief. Let it flow. When we create a ritual like this, it can help us to cope with the rest of our hours, knowing that the grief has a space.
This article also appears in the October 2024 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 89, No. 10, pages 23-24). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
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