Monday, 28 July 2008

  • My Close Friend Died....And Now I'm Dealing With It

    maple by mr maple

    funeral2 Even as Christians, it is hard to deal with death.  Even though we know in our hearts and minds that those we lose have gone on to a place of unimaginable beauty and joy where their tears and suffering are wiped away by the fingers of God himself, we hurt.

    Almost exactly a year ago, a dear friend of mine passed away.  It was the first time I knew the death of a friend and it was not the last.  There are times when I doubt the mercy and goodness of God.  The moments I look in the faces of those left behind by death have become the hardest of those times.  This weekend, many of us at my church have had to go through another such moment.

    Friends I talked to in medical school or in church – those whom I had expected to understand my struggle and accompany me through it – said that such a fixation on death and suffering was unhealthy and perhaps even pathologic: “It’s over now; she’s in a better place,” “Everything’s going to be all right,” “Life just goes on.” I couldn’t understand why words like those hurt. They were true, but I resisted them fiercely and was even irritated and angered by them.

    On hearing those words, my ambiguous sentiments and tensions revealed themselves for what they were: fear. Crippling, disabling, and terrifying fear. Toni Morrison once said that humans react to fear by naming it, attempting to feel as if we have some understanding and therefore some control over it. We name our diseases and our disorders and our bogeymen. We name our failures and our enemies and the secret longings of our hearts. But in the end, a name is all we have. A name is not much.

    I named my fear The Gravity of a Moment. For me, the death of a friend is the lost opportunity to sing in harmony, to shout at, to laugh with, to cry on each other. It is shocking in its finality and irreversibly strips my future moments of something precious, the weight of which I cannot measure. How many more moments will lose gravity and appear a little thinner and gaunt? Will I ever realize the magnitude of what has been - and will continue to be - lost?

    Shortly after the death, a close friend of hers told me, “I don’t understand why people didn’t want to come to the funeral or the memorial service… maybe they didn’t feel ready, but somehow it feels like they’re just trying to move on. At the funeral, her parents told me, ‘Don’t forget her,’ but I feel like that’s what we’re doing… forgetting and moving on.” When I heard that I felt guilty because, deep down inside, I wanted to move on too but simply couldn't. I wanted to find a tidy closure and a proper perspective from which to define the experience. I didn’t want to forget, but I didn’t want the remembering to be so painful either.

    Suffering is and must remain an integral part of our human experience. It cannot simply be a byline in our pursuit of happiness, for if we fail to embrace suffering, we fail to embrace Christ himself. Paul, in describing suffering as the loss of things he once considered profitable, wrote with paradoxical conviction and mysticism, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

    I write about death because it represents one extreme in our human experiences with suffering and, for better or for worse, reveals the raw power of our reactions to pain. It exposes our tendencies to sentimentalize it, to avoid it, to explain it away, to do everything except embrace it. We may refuse to acknowledge suffering but in doing so we eliminate an opportunity to experience the true and piercing presence of God. If we cannot experience pain, how can we understand the comfort of healing? If we do not understand death, how can we comprehend the victory of resurrection? And so, while we ought not to idolize suffering or intentionally inflict it, we cannot ignore its centrality in our journeys toward the divine.

    Perhaps all the moments that are torn from this life are really just being transported, in the twinkling of an eye, to a place where the weight of the world becomes the weight of Glory and everything I thought I lost will be found in even greater measure than before.

    Have you dealt with death before?

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Comments (28)

  • viola1032_v2@xanga

    I've had to deal with it both on a family level and a friend level.  I've lost all but one grandparent to cancer/old age.  I've also lost one of my best elementary school friends due to muscular dystrophy.  I still can't put in words how I wish I could have spent more time with these that have died.  To hear stories of my parents growing up and to have more fun adventures of sleepovers, gaming away into the night.  I wish that I could have had more time.  However, I realize that for them, they were suffering as their bodies began to fail (under the abnormal destruction of muscle or invasion of other systems from other cells).  I am only comforted that in three of these cases, I know that I will be able to spend eternity with them in the presence of God, but I am also heartbroken that one will never have that chance...

    It is something that we must live with in the world after the Fall.  This is why we need to treasure the moments we have with our families and friends because these moments may be their last or our last to share company in this life as well as for them to hear the Gospel.  I pray that we will not waste our time with petty arguments and useless banter and activities.
  • xxmusicxxfreak@xanga

    A few years ago my best friend killed himself. Dealing with his death was so painful. I considered taking my own life. The thing that stopped was knowing that he wouldn't have wanted me to do that. It's easier to just accept what happened. Not to move on  or forget but not to mourn forever either. Just accept it.


    Your second to last paragraph reminds me of the song "life is beautiful" by sixx am:


    "You can't quit until you try
    You can't live until you die
    You can't learn to tell the truth until you learn to lie
    You can't breath until you choke
    You gotta laugh when you're the joke
    There's nothing like a funeral to make you feel alive"
  • firefighterswife@xanga

    Death is one of those things that we all one day have to deal with, I have done this on a few different levels.  I lost 3 friends in a horrible car crash when I was in high school. It played on my mind and heart for many years, even though I have been out of HS now for almost 30 years, the memory of that loss is great. They too knew Christ as their savior, and I look forward to the day that one day we will once again see each other, though this time perfect. I have lost all my grandparents too, but somehow their loss, though difficult did not feel so sudden and cut off. I think its when someone dies young we think of all those things they never got to do, and the joys we missed out sharing. The final one that I will share was my niece, she was 3 months old and died of crib death. Nothing could be more shocking, nothing could feel more wrong, nothing has compared to this death. She was beautiful, tiny and perfect, but God took her home just as her life began. It had a profound effect on my brother and sister in-law, sometimes I am not sure this is a loss any parent can live through. They live but a part of them is lost forever.


    We understand your loss, and I am sorry you are missing your friend. I pray that God will comfort and himself known to you in a real way.    
  • blackroselovesjesus@xanga

    I'm sorry about your loss...so I prayed for you just now, because I know a little bit of how you feel. I heartily agree with your biblical view of suffering, in fact, 1st Peter is my fav. book, though I sometimes fail to live out what I believe, and turn to God for comfort when I feel bereaved. Keep remembering that, as soon as the Lord comes back or you die, you'll be reunited with your friend, if both of you are born-again Christians. I like to sing "In the Sweet By and By" to myself when I'm mourning, and I find it very comforting. Hope and pray often for Christ's return! Love in Christ!
  • Over_my_coffee_cup@xanga

    So sorry about your loss, it feels like someone tore out your heart...the pain is so intense!


    I just returned home from a funeral of a 40 yr old father of 8, he was crushed beneath his van when it rolled off the ramp.


    Last yr I buried my 16 yr old sister in the spot next to him. Death is a painful experience! I miss my sister every day, she was also a close friend. Deep inside I know I will see her again...I have no doubt tht she is with Jesus and VERY ALIVE...much more then any of us...
  • xbveilsidedx@xanga

    I've had many people pass away in my life. One of my best friends died sitting next to me in the car...blood running down his face, looking at me with cold eyes. He was killed instantly. My other friend was stabbed to death in front of me, and all I could do was watch and scream. I've seen friends pass away all my life. I've been in so many situations where I could've been killed but here I am. Still alive.  Sometimes I ask God why he keeps me alive. Why am I the only to survive all the fucking time....


    Why does everyone act so convincingly emotional when someone passes away, but a couple weeks later, life goes on? I see them doing the same exact fucking thing that got their friend killed in the first place.

  • bittersunday@xanga

    I hate it when people get preachy when someone dies or when something else bad happens.  It doesn't bring comfort--it makes you look foolish.  The best thing to do in situations like that is to keep your mouth shut and your arms and ears open.  Remember Job--and what his friends did immediately after he had lost everything.  They sat with him in silence.

    Death has been very real to me, on both a personal level and a general level.  I grew up as a missionary kid in a third world country.  Death was everywhere.  People died in the streets from starvation.  Corrupt policemen and political assassins would gun down people in broad daylight.  I had seen more dead bodies by the time I was 8 than probably most Americans will see in a lifetime.

    On a more personal level...a close friend of mine committed suicide when I was 13.  When I was 16, one of my dorm brothers (I went to a boarding school) died of heart failure during his senior year.  He was only 17.  When I was 15, I saw people I was close to being murdered.  Or some of them bled to death because of severe wounds.  I know about death.  I've seen it happen.

    Those were very difficult, but the death I have never been able to get over or fully deal with was the death of my daughter.  She would be 8 this October.

    I've lost grandparents (as many people have) and friends, but there has never been anything more painful in my entire life than losing my little girl.  Losing a child to death is something that goes completely beyond pain.

    I don't think there is anything worse than losing a child.
  • cllns_smm@xanga

    Sorry to hear your friend died. I had two aunts that died and it was a pretty hard loss for me. I hope you are OK.


    S.C.
  • mrsviolet

    I am so sorry for your loss. 

    Ecc: 3:4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance.

    Weep and mourn- it is the only thing to do, for how ever  long it takes.  You will know when the other seasons have come.

    x
  • RanCiDRaBBiT@xanga

    i'm sorry to hear about your friend.

    but why don't you realize how ironic you are? you cover up situations and feelings and you just put the name christ in front of it. a name isn't much. thats why i don't like your religion. it's all names, it's all just silly comfort overlaying what things really are. but things can be beautiful and right without having a phony name and phony preacher to throw on them. i love that you, a lot of times on your weblog prove my points.

    you're still only naming things... facing them is the hard part.

    god is a name. a name. a name. a name. it's nothing more.
  • SwordAndSacrifice@xanga

    I am so very sorry . . .


    And you're right. Focus on resurrection. Death is temporary for those who are in Christ.
  • Such_Were_You@xanga

    I am sorry for your loss.   Profound grief is one of the greatest evidences that God never meant man to die.  

  • scarecrow_dreamer@xanga

    I have had to deal with the death of two friends--one of which was my best friend, and two close family members.


    My two family members that died were my grandmas. They were both older (one being 97 and the other being 80) so those were much easier to cope and accept. My friend John on the other hand...one of the hardest moments of my life.


    Our birthdays were only a couple weeks apart, both born in February of the same year. He was 17 when he was going down a dirt road way too fast and hit some chatter bumps, which sent his car crashing into a tree. He was knocked into a coma instantly and was brain dead on the scene. After a few days his parents decided to give up his organs for donation, and took him off life support.


    The visitation was the hardest for me. I had been crying a lot before it...but when it came time to see my friend in a open casket...it took me an hour before I mustered up the courage to look at him. After I looked at him...I came to terms with his death. It was before my very eyes, it was proof. My friend was also a commited Christian with a tender, loving heart. He touched so many people with his short life...over 1,000 people came to the funeral.


    The pain stayed with me for a long time. Five years later, I will tear up if I think about it too hard, and he never leaves my thoughts. When you loose a good friend like that, a peice of your heart also goes with them.


    I am so sorry for your loss. I can relate to the pain you are going through, having lost such a good friend myself. It's okay to be sad, it's okay to cry. Heal in your own time. And I'm praying that God will comfort you and help you release the pain you have inside.


    --Dreamer
  • Bella_Mabel@xanga

    My brother passed away in a really bad car accident when I was 8. My cousin was driving the car, but managed to survive. Ever since then we've kinda had a secret hate for my cousin. He has a wife and a family now, but we still can't help and think that he killed my brother whenever we look at him. It's one of those things that you just can't wipe from your memory, nearly 10 years later.

    My grandpa passed away about a year ago, due to complications with his heart after surgery. It was just such a sad time all around, I had to tell my Dad himself that he died. My Dad had a brain tumor and didn't fully understand. He just thought he was physically still here and he'd come back sometime. He sat by the door for a long time, waiting for him to "come back." I cried.

    My father finally passed away at the end of April, due to complications with cancer (Brain tumor, as I said above). He had been suffering for just over 2 years, and there was nothing more they could do for him.

    Honestly, I have a very complex relationship with god. I know everyone has told me "God puts suffering into our lives to teach us his love." How does suffering=love? How does this bullshit improve my life at all? I don't have a grandpa, I don't have a brother, I don't have a father. I'm not going to have a mother soon also, she's starting to see some serious complications arise with her obesity, while doing nothing about it. I'm not even 20 years into life and half of my family is gone.

    So, frankly, I believe god kinda took a shit on my life and has left me in the dark to just figure out shit on my own.

    Or he has some seriously awesome stuff in store for me in the future.
  • rachelserine@xanga

    I'm sorry to hear of your loss.  I know it touches everyone eventually, but that doesn't change the reality of grief and pain.  I've lost distant family members, friends in high school and, most recently and painfully, a little two year old that was like my own child.  It still hurts, even a year later and I know it always will a little. 
      I feel that the worst part about death is that life goes on.  Your loved one has departed and nothing changes.  The whole world should stop, but it doesn't.  Your own personal world should end, but doesn't.
    Less than a week after Aidan's death I was on a plane for a mission trip in Uganda.  That was awful.  But also extremely healing.  Life went on for me, I had no other choice.  I had to give of myself when there was nothing left to give and I had to see the pain of others when all I wanted to do was focus on my own pain.  God used that opportunity to teach me to rely on Him and to focus on others - to be selfless, even in grief.  Nothing has ever been harder. :)
    And yes, I still grieved.  I still do.  As long as I know that God is bigger than my own grief, I can be sad and mourn and not despair.  God will bring healing in His time and in His way and once He has worked in you for good.
    Praying for you.
  • agnophilo@xanga

    I'm an atheist so you probably don't want to hear from me.  But I can tell you that death is nothing to fear or regret or hate whether or not there is an afterlife.  We have been dead much longer than we have been alive.  It doesn't hurt, we are truly beyond this veil of tears.  We are beyond fear, beyond pain, beyond regret.

    Regardless of what we believe about the afterlife.

    So if you have any doubts or worries, don't.  Your friend is not suffering or sad or lonely.

    Sorry if anything I've said is offensive to you.
  • Be_A_Revolution@xanga

    I just recently had to deal with this. My friend's fiance (of one day) was killed by a roadside bomb 5 weeks ago tomorrow. I knew the guy but not as well as I would have liked. It was tough for me. I cried a lot and asked God why. It has been easy to deal with because I know that Joel knew the Lord, but at the same time he was only 20. It's still a little painful, but I know that this was God's plan and that He works things for good.

    Two years ago this coming October, I lost my grandma--my last living grandparent. She had been sick through most of May (2006), but she seemed to be getting somewhat better in July and August. She was up walking and such when I left for school in the middle of August. She suddenly took a turn for the worse and was gone in late October. It was my first semester in a new state and a new education program. It was really hard to lose her during school. I miss her so much. There isn't anything I wouldn't give just to see her one more time. I hated the fact that I didn't get to see her again before she died. I am thankful that my grandma knew Jesus, but the loss still hurts.
  • mo_chic_for_jesus@xanga

    This is a very good post.  I think as Christians we want everything to be neat and tidy, we want to have all the answers, we want the answers to our pain to be simple.  But the truth is, that's not how it is.  Pain is complex, confusing, and difficult.  And it is not wrong that it should be so.


    I personally dealt with death by stuffing down all my grief and pain for years, until I was in a place where I was mature enough to deal with it.
  • cinnaminflava@xanga

    "For me, the death of a friend is the lost opportunity to sing in harmony, to shout at, to laugh with, to cry on each other. It is shocking in its finality and irreversibly strips my future moments of something precious, the weight of which I cannot measure." I UNDERSTAND THIS FEELING SO WELL. I AM ONE MONTH AWAY FROM THE ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF ONE OF MY DEAREST FRIENDS(BOYFRIEND) AND THE PAIN WHEN IT FIRST HAPPENED WAS UNBEARABLE. HE WAS THE FIRST VIOLENT, SUDDEN, AND PEER DEATH I'D EVER ENCOUNTERED. AND ALL THOSE PLEASANTRIES WERE GUT-WRENCHING. PEOPLE DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO W/ PAIN, ESPECIALLY W/ PAIN THEY'RE UNFAMILIAR W/, SO THEY TRY TO RATIONALIZE IT AWAY. ON TOP OF THE PAIN, I HAD AN EMENSE AMOUNT OF ANGER, OVER THE FACT THAT HE WAS AN INNOCENT BYSTANDER AND MALICIOUSLY MURDERED. I DIDNT KNOW WHAT TO DO W/ THAT MUCH ANGER AND HURT. I FELT STUCK IN TIME, AND MAD CUZ THE WORLD AROUND ME CONTINUED TO GO ON, MOVE FORWARD, AND I DIDNT WANT TO GO W/ IT, DIDNT WANT TO LEAVE HIM AND MOVE ON, BUT I DIDNT WANT TO FEEL THE PAIN ANYMORE EITHER. YOU COULDNT HAVE TOLD ME A YEAR LATER I WOULD BE THIS OKAY. I NEVER THOUGHT THE PAIN WOULD SUBSIDE. I FELT GUILTY WHEN I WASNT CRYING OR STOPPED THINKING ABOUT HIM FOR A MOMENT, LIKE I DIDNT LOVE HIM ENOUGH, WHICH MADE ME CRY MORE.


    I AGREE W/ YOU THAT IT IS THE LOSS OF A DREAM THAT HURTS; THE REALIZING THERE WILL BE NO MORE MOMENTS IN THE FUTURE.  THE ADVICE "REMEMBER THE GOOD TIMES TO GET YOU THRU" DOESNT HELP; IT ONLY SERVES TO REMIND ME THAT THERE ARE NO MORE COMING.


    I NEVER BLAMED GOD.  WONDERING WHERE HE WAS TO PREVENT THIS. I KNOW THAT'S NOT HIS JOB. HIS JOB WAS TO HELP ME GET THRU THE PAIN, THE DAYS WHEN I DIDNT WANT TO LIVE, OR WANTED TO HARM MYSELF JUST SO I COULD HAVE A PHYSICAL REASON TO FEEL THE PAIN I FELT EMOTIONALLY. AND HE'S DONE HIS JOB. I STILL MISS MY FRIEND, BUT IT DOESNT HURT SO BAD ANYMORE, AND I'M HEALTHY AGAIN. I REALIZE, THE BEST GIFT I CAN GIVE MY FRIEND IS NOT TO WALLOW IN HIS LOSS, BUT TO APPRECIATE AND MAKE THE MOST OF THE FACT THAT I STILL HAVE MY LIFE, TO LIVE OR BOTH OF US, CUZ AS LONG AS I LIVE ON, HE DOES TO. CORNY AS THAT MAY SOUND.


    ANYWAY, DIDNT MEAN TO LAY ALL THIS ON YOU. HOPE I HAVENT UPSET YOU.  JUST WANTED TO SAY I SINCERELY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU WENT THRU.
  • Soapie@xanga

    sorry to hear about your loss. =(

    grieving over the loss of your friend is not pathologic, or unhealthy. grief takes time, and it varies from person to person. i hear it takes at least a year, or several years. and in some ways, you never really stop grieving.

    at work, i deal with death or near-death moments pretty regularly. it is a very humbling experience. even though i see it often, it is still difficult, hard to wrestle with, struggle with, regardless of whether i know that person.

    i think you summed it up nicely, about how experiencing pain or experiencing death allows you to feel the piercing presence of God. i don't think i could've said it any better.
  • AngelBeast777@xanga

    This is an excellent, well-thought out and well-worded post.

    '“It’s over now; she’s in a better place,” “Everything’s going to be all right,” “Life just goes on.” I couldn’t understand why words like those hurt. They were true, but I resisted them fiercely and was even irritated and angered by them.'

    I would have felt hurt because these sentiments seem to be saying, "Leave me alone.  I don't want to walk through this with you.  Don't burden me with your pain!"

    I just lost my Best Friend for Life of 16 years last November 30th.  We found out her cancer was terminal on June 30th.  The ride to the end was a rollercoaster.  She had surgery to replace her L3 vertebra which had almost crumbled, then, two days out of the hospital she went back in because the ball on her left femur had broken off.  She had too little pain killer, then too much.  So I didn't have much room to grieve as her body went downhill and her spirit cried out to find some way to take care of her sister and me who were trying to care for her.

    I'm just now about to enter grief counselling because my first review on the job was the worst by far that I've ever had.  I thought time would heal the wounds.  Apparently it takes more than 6 or 7 months.

    One cannot prepare for such a loss.  I feel as though the better half of my being has been ripped away from me, and that somehow I'm supposed to function as though I were a whole person.

    I'm struggling to find my identity without her.  I fear going back to being the black and white, boring person I was before I met my technicolor heart.  Life was so dismal before she came along.  Will it go back to that?  Will I retain some of her vivaciousness?

    Will my Abba be able to reach into those bloody arteries and supply me with the love directly that He did through her before I cease to exists?  Will I let Him?

    I felt comforted as I read through this original post when you opened your heart to reveal your pain.  It reached in and touched my heart, brought tears of pain and comfort at the same time.  I'm thinking we need someone to hurt with; someone to help bring out exactly what we're feeling down deep inside, but have trouble accessing.  Somehow there is great relief in that release, and great comfort in having released it all - to know that there's nothing left hidden inside to snipe at us when we least expect it; to have it all displayed before us so we can know what to expect.

    Thanks again for the post.
  • AngelBeast777@xanga

    @bittersunday@xanga - Thank you for reminding me of this.  I'll try to have more mercy on my mother-in-law.  April & I weren't able to have children so I can't come any closer to that pain than what I'm going through now.  May you find what you most need concerning your loss.
  • bittersunday@xanga

    @AngelBeast777@xanga - Thank you.
  • AngelBeast777@xanga

    @Bella_Mabel@xanga - "How does suffering=love?"

    Its more that suffering produces an increased ability to love.  There are two parts to it that come to mind at the moment.  One is that the trauma you experience gives others an opportunity to help you get through it.  You receive love and, in doing so, you learn how to love.  The other part is that in suffering you learn intimately what those who suffer really need.  This equips you to love those who suffer similarly to how you have.
  • AngelBeast777@xanga

    @cinnaminflava@xanga - Thank you for your post.

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