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January 29 marks three years since Erich and I lost our first daughter. The first year was filled with shattering grief and figuring out how to survive when getting out of bed took everything I had in me. In the second year the tears were less frequent and I was able to go hours without being caught off guard by something that reminded me of what we lost. Now facing the third year of grief, pregnant with our second daughter, my grief is still present but it's more like a chronic pain rather than a open wound.
But as those of you who are living with deep grief know, the stages of grief don’t happen neatly or necessarily in order. And the idea of time healing the wound isn’t quite accurate. It’s more like you grow around the wound and learn to live with it, but it’s forever part of you. An ache just below the skin, just below your conscious awareness that throbs. Sometimes hard enough to force you to stop and catch your breath. Other times as a tingling reminder of the person you loved, but always there.
After we lost Teigen several people gave me books to read about grief and child loss. They were all helpful in their own ways, but the one I’ve returned to again and again was sent to me by my seminary buddy and fellow minister Taylor. Pastors have this habit of wanting to give people things to read all the time, but particularly in moments of high emotion. We all do it! And when I opened the package from Taylor in the weeks following Teigen’s loss I laughed because he’d sent me a book. And it was one I already owned!
But then I cried because what this dear friend sent me is exactly what I would have sent him in the same situation. The same book I’ve given others in times of grief. A book of blessings by one of my favorite writers, Jan Richardson.
The title of the book is The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief and was written after Richardson lost her husband. The blessings in it are all beautiful and hit on the myriad of ways and forms grief takes. I’ve read both my copies over and over again finding myself in Richardson’s words time after time. Now, almost three years after losing Teigen, the blessings for early grief don’t hold the same sting and the ones about living with grief long-term are resonating in a new way. That strikes me as perhaps true for all of us as our world continues to be plagued by illness and fear that takes and changes things, not least of them our ability to have control. With that in mind, I’d like to share a specific blessing with you that’s my current heartsong. I hope it will bless you as it does me.
Blessing for the Dailiness of Grief
Sorry I am to say it, but it is here, mostly likely, you will know the rending most deeply.
It will take your breath away, how the grieving wait for you in the most ordinary moments.
It will wake with your waking.
It will sit itself down with you at the table, inhabiting the precise shape of the emptiness across from you.
It will walk down the street with you in the form of no hand reaching out to take yours.
It will stand alongside you in every conversation. Nearly unbearable in its silence that fairly screams.
It will brush its teeth with you at night and climb into bed with you when finally you let go of this day.
Even as it goes always with you, it will still manage to startle you with its presence, causing you to weep when you enter the empty kitchen in the morning, when you spread fresh sheets on the bed you shared, when you walk out through the door alone and pass back through it likewise.
It is here.
You will know it best - In the moments that made up the rhythm of your days, that fashioned the litany of your life, the togethering you will never know in the same way again.
But I will tell you it is here, too, that your solace lies. It will wait for you in those same moments that stun you with their sorrow.
I cannot tell you how, but it will not cease to carry you in the cadence that has forever altered but whose echo will persist with a stubbornness that will surprise you, bearing you along, breathing with you still through the terrible and exquisite ordinary days.
-Jan Richardson
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