When You’re Shocked By Your Sadness

Weeks before the end of school, and a student gets a phone call. His father has passed away. He wasn’t close to his father. He didn’t grow up with him around, and had only recently reconnected with him as an adult.

“So why have I been crying so much?” he asked, as he sat in my office. “It’s not like we were close. I just didn’t expect to feel this way.”

I listened as he talked. His countenance had completely changed since I last saw him in class three weeks earlier. It was obvious he wasn’t just hurting; he was lost. He even admitted he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. He frequently had to be reminded what day of the week it was. As for time, he’d almost given up with keeping up.

This was the second person I had similar conversations within two weeks — both about losing a parent. The first one was a married 30-something year old father of two whose mother had passed away. He was close to her, though they lived miles apart. And with her illness, he “thought” that her passing wouldn’t jolt him the way it had. After all, they’d been given the fatal diagnosis a while ago. He thought he had done everything to prepare himself for the inevitable news that would come. But he was not.

Now here sits before me a young 20-something year old college student; barely a week from graduation. And he was having a hard time coming to terms with the loss of his father.

“Maybe because you weren’t close to him, is the very reason why you’re having such a hard time with his passing,” I finally said. “Maybe it’s the loss of what could have been that’s hurting you more than the actual loss of someone you were just getting to know.”

He looked at me with agreement in his eyes; as if I’d given him a word of truth he’d never thought of or heard before. Perhaps I had.

One of the things I’ve learned from talking with friends, coworkers, family members, and certainly my own personal experience, is that a loss is a loss. The overwhelming grief, emptiness, and sorrow comes over us — to different degrees with different people — but it comes nonetheless.

In some cases, just as I told my student, we grieve not just what or who we had that leaves us, but at times, we grieve what we didn’t have; what time didn’t give us a chance to experience, and now, never will.

In the midst of this student reaching out and trying to finally get to know his father, years after abandonment, he lost him again, before all could be said. Before life could be shared. Before new, fresh memories could be made. His father didn’t get to see what he’d made of himself, working his way through college, mostly alone, and preparing for graduation. Such a great accomplishment for a kid from a broken home; but now he wouldn’t have his father to share that with.

And then there’s my friend; thinking he had prepared himself for what was to come with the passing of his mother.

‘I honestly don’t think there’s any level of preparation you can make to deal with the passing of a mom,” I said to him. He admitted he was close to his mother, but was still shocked by his reaction to her death. He’s the thinking kind of guy; analytical and logical. Being overcome with emotion was not likely something he’d planned for; certainly not anything he expected.

But that’s what can happen when we grieve. It brings up emotions and feelings sometimes previously buried deep, and at other times those with daily visits. On the one hand, your brain acknowledges what is about to or has just happened. But then your heart gets involved, and it become unimaginable. The permanency of it all. You will never, ever, ever see that person again in human form; if ever again at all.

I’m not convinced that in our humanness, we were ever made to understand all that our mind, body, and soul goes through when we experience a personal loss. We can just hope that there’s someone in our lives who knows that tomorrow will never be like yesterday; and that it’s okay to not feel okay with that.

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”   Revelation 21:4