JUST GET OVER IT?
NOT LIKELY

Journal of Healing – March 29, 2006

By Mary Koch

  “How did you stop the hurt you felt when this happened to your husband?” The question came in an e-mail from Gabriel’s mother, who found us on the Internet.

Gabriel, her only son, had a stroke two years ago and was diagnosed as “locked-in,” the same diagnosis applied to my husband after his stroke more than 12 years ago. Like John, Gabriel’s healthy mind was locked inside a mute and paralyzed body.

And like I, his mother feels the pain of being unable to fix it when someone you love is suffering.

“How can you enjoy life again?” Gabriel’s mother asked. “I just can’t seem to get it together. Some days are really good, but the sadness, I just can’t get past.”

Truth is, I don’t know how to stop the hurt.

I turn, as I have before, to the little book called “A Grace Disguised,” by Whitworth religion professor Gerald L. Sittser. He wrote the book following the deaths of three family members in an automobile accident.

Sittser wrote that he cried every day for weeks. Eventually the tears stopped but that meant “my mourning became too deep for tears. So my tears turned to brine, to a bitter and burning sensation of loss that tears could no longer express . . . I actually longed for the time when the sorrow had been fresh and tears came easily. That emotional release would have lifted the burden, if only for a while.”

You don’t get over the loss, says Sittser, but it does grow your soul.

*     *     *

THE STAGES of grief – described by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – are not a process to get through.

 It’s more like a never-ending dance. You two-step through denial, waltz with anger and slowly tango with depression. Just as you think you’re sashaying into acceptance, the music suddenly grabs you, forcing you back into that angry waltz. And the music goes round and round.

Various religious and cultural traditions specify time periods for grieving after a death – forty days to cry, a year to wear black. But setting a timetable for sorrow is folly, as useless as marking the first day of spring on the calendar and expecting the sun to shine.

Eventually sadness fades from the exterior part of your life. It buries itself deep, coiled like a snake that will spring unexpectedly.

*     *     *

WHEN DO YOU stop the hurt?

When do you stop feeling that pang of envy as you watch a couple walk side by side? When do you stop longing for the simple pleasure of walking alongside your husband?

When do you get over the way your heart catches because you’ve stumbled across an old scrap of paper with your husband’s handwriting on it – that hand that no longer holds a pen?

When does he stop appearing in your nighttime dreams, walking, moving, talking?

I don’t know when, and I doubt I ever will. Perhaps getting over it would feel like a betrayal, as if it hadn’t been so important after all.

The hurt is an undercurrent. If you don’t seek it out, if you instead seek life in all its fullness and wonder, the hurt comes to the surface less frequently.

I learned that from the one I love, the one whose suffering causes my pain. John has dared to accept and love life on its own terms. How can I not do the same?

You can’t stop the hurt; you just nudge it out of your way so there’s room for the joy.

© Mary Koch, Omak, Washington 2005