Different Faces to Grief: Tools to Help the Grieving

The Different Faces of Grief

Tools to Help the Grieving
Part Three

      One of my hobbies is cooking, and when I mean cooking I mean all types of cooking.  I enjoy grilling, cooking, frying, pasta making, canning, freezing, and baking.  You name it, and I'll probably LOVE it.  But learning to cook requires you to be patient and to have a little bit of a learning curve.  Not everything that you bake will turn our perfectly the first time.  It might be like an experiment of trial and error until you get it right.  Sometimes that dish tastes good, but it looks awful.  I can vividly remember when my kids were little.  They wanted me to make cakes from scratch.  Making a cake from scratch is a breeze....but decorating one....that's an entirely different story.  My oldest requested a cake that was so ornate that I had to buy special tools to pipe the icing.  I watched Youtube videos and I even opened a Pinterest account to perfect decorating the cake.  I even practiced....but the actual cake looked awful.  It didn't look anywhere near what it was supposed to, but when every one tasted it, they said it was one of the most delicious cakes they had ever ate. 

      Looks can be deceiving.  Something can look awful but taste great.  Then there are times when something looks great but tastes awful.  I vividly remember having 'ice cream' in Rome.  It was a pink colored ice cream so I thought it must be strawberry.  It turned out to be rose flavored.  Rose.  Flavored.  Ice cream.  It tasted like I was eating one of those car air fresheners that are shaped like a tree.   I think it's important to distinguish a truth, grief doesn't always look like we expect it to look.  This is an important tool for a pastor to understand when he works alongside those that are hurting.  Sometimes grief looks like tears, and your shepherd heart needs to be prepared for that.  But there are other times when it looks like silence, or maybe anger.  Other times is might take the shape of exhaustion, laughter, busyness, or even relief.  Sometimes it will morph shapes or life to you.  Grief might look like someone telling you, "I'm doing okay," while carrying an ocean of pain that no one else can see.  They might be silent but under the surface they are screaming.  Their eyes might be dry but their soul is shattered.  For pastors, learning to recognize the different faces of grief is an essential part of shepherding hurting people.  Because if we only recognize grief when we see tears, we will miss a lot of grieving people.

     When we picture someone who is grieving we typically picture only one face to grief.  The only picture that we develop is the one of someone crying.  And certainly, tears can be an expression of profound grief.  I've been in ministry for nearly twenty years.  I've done probably 100 or more funerals in my time.  Tears are always a common showing to grief, but tears are only one face of grief.  See, some people cry frequently, others rarely at all.  Some get quiet, some, like me, get very talkative.  Some want to tell their story over and over again.  Others will not be able to bear saying anything about it.  Some withdraw and isolate.

      I've worked with over 60 grieving men in the past nine months.  One thing I can tell you is that there isn't a single outward expression that tells us what grief looks like.  If I came in with an expectation of what grief looks like I would have been sorrily mistaken over and over again.  Why does grief have different faces?  That's like asking why each of us have different faces.  Grief is personal.  Grief is personal because love is personal.  The way someone grieves is often connected to the person they lost, the relationship they shared, the circumstances surrounding the death, their personality, their history, and even what they believe they are supposed to look like while grieving.  That means we have to be careful about judging someone's grief by what we can see.  Make a special note about being careful not to judge them.

      Let's start out with the most common expectation of grief, tears.  This is the face of grief most of us recognize.  Someone cries during the funeral.  They cry when they hear a song.  They cry when they walk into an empty bedroom.  They cry when they see an old photograph.  They cry because they suddenly remembered something they hadn't thought about in weeks.  For some people, grief is very visible.  Mine was visible.  I cried until I thought all moisture had been removed from my body.  I cried until my chest hurt.  I cried until I got a headache.  I cried until I vomited.  Sometimes grieving people's pain is close to the surface, so those tears come a little more easily.  Pastor, let me invite you into something, those tears shouldn't make you uncomfortable.  I think us as pastors view our job as trying to stop the tears because we view grief as a problem that we need to fix.  Remove that thought from your mind.  You are not their savior or a white knight dashing in on our charger, and grief isn't a problem that demands an answer.  Sometimes tears are simply the body's way of expressing what words cannot.

      Let's turn the page and look at another face to grief, silence.  There are other people whose grief is almost impossible to see because they simply sit there quietly.  They answer questions with one or two words.  They don't talk about what happened.  They may appear distant or disconnected.  It can be tempting to think they aren't grieving very deeply.  But silence doesn't mean absence of grief.  Behind that silence is a brain, soul, and heart that are currently engaged in a war, a war that they probably feel like they are losing.  It's not that they aren't grieving.  Silence might be their grief language....or maybe their grief has stolen their ability to speak.  Sometimes grief can be so deeply painful that our words simply haven't been able to catch up with it.  People might not know what to say.  This especially true when a death comes unexpectedly or when it simply doesn't make sense.  Moments when a child dies or moments when a young parent dies leaving a spouse behind to navigate life alone.  Silence might be the only way that a person can process their grief in a healthy fashion.

      A misunderstood face to grief is anger.  Grief can make people angry.  A matter of fact it is considered to be one of the five stages to grieving.  Now to be honest, not every person truly goes through the five stages of grief, but we need to know that anger can be one of those responses.  What are they angry at?  They are angry at what happened.  Maybe they are angry with a doctor or hospital.  Maybe they are angry with a family member or a friend that didn't show up.  They might be angry at the drunk driver.  They might be angry at the person they loved.  They might be angry at themselves.  Or, they might be angry at God.  Anger can be uncomfortable to witness, especially when it is directed toward God.  During my grief journey I experienced one day of solid anger and my anger was geared toward God.  I sat on a bench near my home and I yelled at God.  I shook my fist at Him.  I practically cursed His name.  I threw stones into the creek in the backyard.  My audience was an audience of one.  Anyone else would have probably thought I lost my mind.  But when you witness a person grieving in anger then you have been invited into a sacred space.

      You need to understand that a grieving person may say things they would never have said before their loss.  They may ask questions that don't have easy answers, or no answer at all.  A majority of the widowers that I work with ask questions that don't have answers.  They may struggle to reconcile what they believe about God with what has happened to them.  To be honest, as a pastor, you should expect this one to happen.  Their anger doesn't necessarily tell us where their faith will end up.  It may simply tell us how much they are hurting right now.

      And yet another face to grief is when people respond to loss by staying busy.  Widowers are particularly guilty of this one.  This face of grief overly cleans, immerses itself in work, spends time taking care of everyone else, handles paperwork, makes arrangements, keep the house running, and go back to work as quickly as possible.  This type of grief is incredibly deceitful.  Most people watch this person's life and say, 'they are so strong.'  Or maybe even 'the seem like they are doing really well.'  But sometimes busyness becomes a way of avoiding the silence where grief is waiting.  It can complicate grief, maybe even prolong it.  I currently work with an elderly man who lost a child decades earlier and recently lost his wife of fifty plus years.  He is in a nursing home now and has delayed his grieving so long that it's almost unbearable.  For decades he covered over his pain with being busy, all the while ignoring a problem that didn't, nor couldn't go away.  See, the problem with being busy is that when everything finally gets quiet, the reality of the loss can become overwhelming.  This is one reason grief can change dramatically after the funeral.  During those first days and weeks, there are things to do and people to see.  Then things stop.  Visitors leave.  The phone stops ringing.  The casseroles stop coming.  And suddenly there is nothing left to distract them from an empty chair.  This face of grief can trick you as a pastor into thinking 'they don't need me as much' but I can assure you, this person needs you.

     Yet another face of grief is laughter and joy.  This one can be especially confusing.  It makes us scratch our heads and wonder, is this person really suffering through grief?  It doesn't match what our idea of grieving should look like.  The person might tell funny stories about their loved one.  They smile when they look at a picture instead of fall apart.  They seem to enjoy dinner with friends.  They can watch a funny tv show.  For a moment they genuinely seem happy.  But then something happens.  It's almost like a run is pulled out from under their feet.  They start feeling guilty for being happy.  That might sound silly to an observer of grief, but it's not.  There is a harsh guilt that cuts through a person when they feel happy.  They feel guilty because they wonder how could they ever feel happy without their spouse.  These mixed emotions can confuse the grieving soul.

      But I want you to hear an important truth, laughter doesn't mean that a person has stopped grieving.  Neither does enjoying a meal with a friend, or going on vacation, or having a good day.  When the time comes it's even healthy to start loving someone new and being loved by someone.  Grief and joy can coexist in the same heart at the same time.  A person can deeply miss someone and still laugh.  They can cry in the morning and smile in the afternoon.  They can have a wonderful memory and be devastated that the person who made that memory is gone.  Joy does not betray grief.  Do me a favor and read that again.  Sometimes laughter is simply a reminder that the grieving person is still alive.

      This next one may be one of the hardest faces of grief to understand.  It's when the face of grief is the face of relief.  When someone has watched a loved one suffer through a long illness, there may be relief when the suffering finally ends.  I can relate to this somewhat.  Tiffanie was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer that spread to her lungs.  Basically it was a death sentence.  Her last few days on earth were hard for her.  She couldn't walk.  She struggled to breath.  Her last few hours she wasn't even able to talk.  I had been her caretaker for ten months.  I had shaved her legs, washed vomit out of her hair, called doctors, went to appointments, and overall gave her everything that I had.  I hated her passing, but her passing also provided me with a feeling of relief.  Let me unbox that for a moment.  It was a relief to know she wasn't going to suffer any more.  It was a relief that God spared her from some of the worst symptoms of the cancer.  But relief is complicated because a partner to relief can be guilt.  There's that word again.  We might even ask the question "Why am I relieved that they're gone?"  We might even trick ourselves into thinking that we didn't really love that person.  But being relieved that someone is no longer suffering is not the same thing as being relieved that they died.  A caregiver may have spent months or years watching someone they love deteriorate.  They may have been exhausted.  They may have been frightened.  They may have been praying for healing while simultaneously praying for an end to suffering.  Those emotions can coexist.  Grief isn't always simple.  A matter of fact it rarely if ever is.  The reason why is because love isn't always simple.  Pastor you might struggle working with those that are grieving because they are carrying emotions that, in your mind, contradict one another.  And to be fair, for most people those emotions do contradict one another, but not for the grieving heart.  They can miss someone terribly and still be relieved their suffering has ended.

      Perhaps the most difficult face of grief to understand is the one we can't see.  It's when grief looks like nothing at all.  Someone attends the funeral.  They shake hands.  They thank people for coming.  They return to work.  They go grocery shopping.  They take care of their children.  They answer, "I'm okay."  And we assume they are.  But grief isn't always visible, and for a pastor, that can be somewhat frustrating.  We are looking for external cues so we know how to take care of the internal problem.  But some people become extraordinarily good at functioning while falling apart internally.  This is called functional grief or high functioning depression.  This person has learned how to keep moving because people are depending on them.  This usually happens with a young widow/widower who have children at home.  They may not even realize how much they're hurting until weeks or months later.  What looks like strength from the outside may actually be survival, and sometimes it's barely even that.

      Perhaps what makes grief especially difficult to understand is that it doesn't necessarily keep the same face.  Someone may cry constantly during the first few weeks and then become quiet.  Someone may seem numb initially and fall apart months later.  Someone may be angry one day and peaceful the next.  Someone may laugh about a memory and then suddenly find themselves crying.  A birthday can bring grief that wasn't present yesterday.  Christmas can reopen wounds that seemed to be healing.  An anniversary can make an old loss feel surprisingly fresh.  A smell, a song, a place, a photograph, or even a familiar phrase can suddenly bring someone face-to-face with their grief.  One important distinction for you as a pastor to realize is that this doesn't necessarily mean they are going backward.  It means grief doesn't move in a straight line.  I have often said that grief is like a toddler finger painting, it doesn't paint in the lines.

      We've mentioned a lot of different faces to grief, so as a pastor you need to realize that the face of grief might not be the one you expect.  One person you might expect to crush under the weight of grief with tears, but you find them laughing.  Others you might think will handle it well, but you find them depressed and constantly weeping.  You need to be prepared to minister to each different face of grief because each person is fearfully and wonderfully made, and that includes their grief pattern.  Not everyone will grieve the same nor should you expect them to grieve in a certain way.  This is why one of the greatest tools a pastor can have isn't an answer, instead it is having an understanding heart. Understanding that grief doesn't always announce itself. Understanding that tears aren't the only evidence of pain.  Understanding that laughter doesn't mean someone isn't grieving.  Understanding that functioning doesn't mean someone is okay.  Understanding that anger doesn't necessarily mean someone has abandoned their faith.  Understanding that relief doesn't mean someone didn't love the person they lost.  And understanding that grief may look completely different tomorrow than it does today.

      So, when a grieving person walks into your church, don't ask only "What does their grief look like?"  Ask: "What might be happening beneath what I can see?"  The person who is laughing may be hurting.  The person who is silent may be screaming inside.  The person who is angry may be desperately searching for something to hold onto.  The person who seems strong may be exhausted.  The person who seems fine may be anything but fine.  And the person who doesn't appear to be grieving at all may simply be grieving in a language we haven't learned to recognize.  We don't have to diagnose every expression.  We don't have to interpret every reaction.  We simply need to remember that what we see isn't always the whole story.  Grief wears many faces.  Some will stick out, others will be like finding a needle in a haystack, but as pastors, one of the most compassionate things we can do is learn not to judge the grief we see, but instead to make room for the grief we don't.  Because behind every face of grief is a person who has loved someone deeply enough to feel their absence.  And sometimes, before we can help carry someone's burden, we first have to learn how to recognize that they're carrying one.