Move
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” —C.S. Lewis, from A Grief Observed.
Today, I’m remembering my friend Jason—sort of.
As I write this, it is nine years to the day since our friend Billy called to deliver the news that Jason had collapsed and died. A few minutes later, I called him back to ask if we’d really had that conversation. He told me I wasn’t the first to do so.
Some people relive trauma as a blur, but not me. Even though some of the details have faced with time, the 48 hours after that phone call live in my brain in painful emotional clarity. I remember driving to Russellville, AR, talking on the phone to mutual friends. I remember the painful confrontation with some fellow pastors, who saw Jason’s death as a chance to bolster their reputations among the grieving. I recall the sleepless night, the long stretches of silence, the drive with Billy to watch the sunrise on Mt. Nebo. I remember going to see his wife Emory, hints of her unfathomable grief and confusion written in her every move.
I don’t entirely understand how a traumatic loss gets hardwired into our brains, but I know it does—to the point that I sometimes have to fight to remember Jason as a person and not merely as a loss. Nearly a decade later, the feelings of those days after his death are instantly accessible, if not so intense as they once were. I won’t cry anymore, but I probably could.
As I sorted through these things this morning, I came across the above quote from C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed, a book that has reached near gospel status in our house thanks to Denise’s research in grief and loss. Even though I’ve read it before, today it struck me anew how similar grief and fear feel, how they cloud your perception and disable your cognitive skills, how they imprison you in a cycle of despair. When your mind tells you that these desperate feelings will always be there, that you’ll never be yourself again, you know it’s not true. But you can’t help believing the lie.
That’s grief. That’s fear. These days, the two are harder and harder to tell apart.
My hunch is that lack of distinction is true on a macro level. Grief and fear mingled during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, impacting our already fragile national mood and further fracturing our politics. Louise Erdrich writes movingly about those feelings in The Sentence, if you’re looking commentary on the big picture.
What I’m talking about, though, is more anecdotal and personal, and as a result closer to home. When I talk to friends both in my current hometown and across the country, I hear similar stories about problems areas of their lives—jobs or marriages or family dynamics. “It sucks, and it’s taking a toll on me. But what can I do? This is the way things are. I just have to deal with it.”
Grief and fear both do that. They pull us down, tell us there is no future that is different than our present, that we are stuck. In the months after Jason’s death, I certainly felt trapped by the pain, immobilized and impotent in the face of an immense personal and professional loss. Every other struggle in my life was magnified, the weight too heavy to lift. I thought maybe I could just outlast it, but knew at the same time how easily it could crush me.
In the end, Denise and I decided on a change. We didn’t have much plan outside of “anywhere but here,” but that was enough for us to start looking for new careers in a new setting. We landed in a place that was perfect for us at the time, but I vowed even then not to let myself get stuck in that cycle ever again, never to be such a slave to circumstance that I was afraid to look for something new.
I’ve heard stories of mountaineers lost in frigid, low-oxygen environments who wanted nothing more than to sit down and rest. But being immobilized by fatigue would mean giving in to the elements, which in turn would mean death. Staying put would feel better in the moment. It would also kill them.
Eugene Peterson once said that grief is not worth a lifetime of attention. Neither is fear. Both are fine while they last, but they are not the only reality.
The grief and fear I carry from Jason’s death will always occupy a space on my canvas, but they do not get to tell me to stop painting. As time goes on, they occupy a smaller percentage of my life’s landscape. I can honor their presence without acquiescing to their power.
Grief and fear may knock us off trail, but they don’t have final say. We have to keep reminding ourselves and each other to carry on, to not give up, to trust that the sun will rise again. We have to keep this central message before us:
I know you’re tired, but don’t give up. You don’t have to know where you’re going, but you’ll die if you just sit there.
So move.
