Empty Saturday

Empty Saturday. The worst.

You know what it is like when you have been bereaved. You somehow get through the hours that follow and life is thrown out of kilter. There is a sense of real unreality about what has happened. The world has changed for ever, but the rest of the world just keeps turning as if nothing remarkable had happened.

Eventually you get to sleep. And when you wake up your mind plays games with your mind. And you gradually work out that the death was real and the loss is total. It wasn’t a bad dream; it is too real. Everything in us wants to make it better, heal the deep wound of grief. But, there is no magic sticking plaster, no easy healing.

In fact, as Asian theologian puts it in his ‘Three Mile and Hour God’, when we are led into this sort of desert of emptiness, the key is not to obey the instinct to get out as quickly as possible. We need to stay there, facing the pain and the grief and the raw loss – living with it and going through it, not running away from it. For, it is through the experience itself that eventually we will be ready and able to be surprised by the light of healing.

So, today I need to stay with the pain. Resist the temptation to run away or distract myself as some sort of psychological or spiritual anaesthetic. Stay at the tomb. Feel the confusion – it wasn’t supposed to end this way. Live with the questions and face the horror.

And wait. Wait. Wait.