Finding Closure

Two weeks ago a friend called me and said they were going to church in Cary, NC at Colonial Baptist Church and suggested that I ought to head on down there as well. So I did and I am so glad I did. There was a baptism of an NC State student and a great film on their local Awana program. It was so amazing to see how Awanas has grown and stuck around since the days we were in it as kids in Hong Kong.

Pastor Steven Davey would get up to preach in a kind of subdued melencholy manner as he just lost his kid brother to a brain tumor. He made the statement that you can't rush grief.

Wow! How true. I don't think everyone understands this as each person in life has their own experiences and we are all differant. I've had people tell me that I need to stop sitting around and feeling sorry for myself. Well, that may be partly true, but I do think I have been bearing a grief that is no differant than losing a loved one in death. In this case, the passing of my wife or the passing of January. I called her January because we met in January and she was born in January. That girl is gone. The one still living in her body I no longer recognize or know. Really. I guess I can see where there was a growing rift in our marraige, but we had a very close love and she rested in my bosom for years....and then one day I looked around and she was gone, but there was no one there to meet me at the hospital or at the funeral home. Like vapor ascending into the atmosphere...it all just wisped away. In many other marraiges I hear about how there is so little love lost and how quick and painless it was for them. This was not the case for me. I really loved that girl and the rejection I faced in the face of that love, that at one time was so close, just sent me into a tailspin and into the recognition that this was death, the death of a long love that I thought would have lasted forever. I discovered, even this love must die and I must live on.

Still, that same friend who invited me to church told me something once that greatly helped me find closure. The person said they had to go to the graveside with flowers to find closure on a broken relationship that had lasted for years. When I first heard that a great peace settled into my heart, but I was not ready to do this until recently. I did go to the graveside and sometimes still do, talking to January and I sometimes find myself singing this song to a person who no longer exists and has died.




I then of course had to ask the question: How do I face the future? I think often of an old favorite movie of mine from back in the 80's that I saw during the time I was in the Marine Corps. In fact I remember watching it in the barracks at Camp Lejuene years ago with some other Marines. The Highlander. I think of the scene where he carried his dead wife up the hills to bury her and envision myself doing the same thing with my wife and burying her. We were so close in just the same ways as he was with his wife in that movie. Still he had a problem with the future. He couldn't die until he faced an ultimate battle 500 years or so later. After he watched his wife grow old and die while he remained young he realized that he could not open himself up again to another woman, and I have found myself in the same dilemma and the main reason is that you do not wish to deal with this grief again. The grief of death and so at this point, you lay your loved one to rest and you find closure there, but realize you cannot go any further than this and that you must stop and find your peace here.