Burying

A year ago this time, we were preparing for a Spring Break trip to Georgia. It was a wonderful trip….We spent some good quality time with Ryan’s dad, stepmom, and sisters, and we even fit in a little roadtrip to South Carolina to see my cousin, as well as a quick stop in Augusta to meet some friends. It was a vacation jam-packed with adventure and touristy attractions and fun times with family. What we didn’t know was that that would be it…that that would be the last time Ryley and I would ever see Ryan’s dad, and it would be the last time Ryan would spend quality time with him. Three months later, Ryan would spend a week sitting at his dad’s bedside while he lay in a coma. Two months after that, his dad would be dead.

So now it’s Spring Break again. And we are preparing for yet another trip to Georgia. But this one will be quite different. This time, we will be putting his dad to rest.

I think the grieving period has been different, in part, because the funeral/memorial service has been delayed. There is still a lot of unresolved grief…there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

Every now and then, randomly, I will see Ryan’s beautiful blue eyes – his dad’s eyes, only darker – cloud over with unspeakable sadness. And just as quickly as they clouded, they flicker back to normal. But not before I see it – the pressure on him that he’s the oldest living of his family line…the sadness that all the people who raised him have gone on before. It pains my heart.

You see, we keep pushing off the emotions – burying them so we can deal with them later when we have time to process. But when we have time, we don’t feel like dealing with them, so we distract ourselves. Then days and weeks and months go by during which our ability to bury our feelings is astounding. And we know that one day we’ll wake up, months down the road, and we won’t be able to deal with it anymore, and we’ll break down. But nobody will understand because it’s been, well, seven months. And gosh, by seven months, we “should” be adjusting.

Should.

Ryan has an employee who keeps taking off work because “a friend died.” She has lost three “friends” in five weeks.  It’s hard for him to have much mercy for that when he still hasn’t taken any time off to mourn his own dad.

A few weeks ago, we visited the cemetery where his mom is buried. The plan was to just ask about the plot next to hers…to see if it was even feasible or affordable to bury his dad’s remains near hers. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. But we weren’t prepared for the emotional “setback.” Ryan ran inside the funeral home to talk to them while Ryley and I waited outside in the van. It was all very matter-of-fact at first. Emotionless. Then, as the minutes ticked by, I wondered if I should have gone in too. Ryan texted me that they were making him wait in a family grieving room furnished with only a table, chairs, and a box of tissues. And it began to sink in that he was there to talk to them about his dad. And after we left, the rest of the day was just blah. We were cranky and irritable and very, very sad.

And that’s when I knew that no matter how nice it will be to bask in the Georgia sunshine (after another foot of snow here today), no matter how much fun I try to make Ryan’s birthday on Thursday, no matter how nice it will be to see all our nieces and nephews and even Ryan’s aunt and uncle who are coming in from Tennessee, this trip is going to be really, really sad. The purpose of the trip is to put his dad’s remains to rest and ultimately say goodbye. I dread this and want this -- all at the same time.

Hopefully, for my husband, there will be an opportunity to share the grief with his siblings…to talk through it in a healthy way…to come to some kind of “closure,” whatever that means. At the very least, maybe it will force all of us to deal with his death at whatever stage we’re at and stop shoving it under the rug…stop pretending it didn’t happen.

It would be wonderful if, in the lovely blooming of Georgia’s spring, during Holy Week no less, we could remember that his dad is in perfect peace, perfect health, celebrating His Lord’s resurrection continuously. It would be wonderful if we learned to rejoice in that, taking to heart the promise in Revelation 21:4 that someday every tear will be wiped away.

Because we are so very tired of being sad.

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

-- I Corinthians 15:55