If you are in the Third Half of Life, you are probably grieving.
The grief may be passing through your life like a thunderstorm, or sitting over you like long days of rain. Or it may, for now, be part of the climate of your life.
You may or may not believe that global climate change is real, but I bet you have noticed in this Third Half of Life that the emotional climate of your life is not as bright and carefree as it once was. Your days, no matter how bright, may be tinged with sadness, the warmest of hugs and most intimate conversations may be accompanied by a chill.
This does not mean you are morbid or unhappy, it just means that you know in your bones that things — and people — can end.
As with global climate change, ignoring these changes only makes things worse. Acknowledging the fact that grief is part of the Third Half of Life enables us to savor the sunlight and find meaning even in the rainiest of days. Grief can make us more human, if we don’t avoid the work that goes with it.
My personal experience with grief has been blessedly ordinary. Like almost everyone my age, I have seen both my grandparents’ and parents’ generation pass away. I have been spared, so far, the loss of my beloved, or any of our younger family members. My only credential is that I have watched people grieve for over half a century. More than that, I have grieved with them.
I was not many years into the ministry before I realized that part of the psychic load of being a pastor was that I was grieving all the time.
Believe it or not, I loved my parishioners. I had to. It was the only way I could stand most of them. Given all my faults, I must have been loved by them in return. So, I grieved when they died. And, I did not have to be an empath to feel the deep griefs so many of them carried in their hearts. Not that it was a constant topic of conversation, but there would be moments when:
- A widow would recall the life she shared with the man she loved.
- A mother would recall a child who died before I was born.
- A man would mention that he still missed a cat that he had to euthanize a year ago.
- Someone would talk about father who died when he or she was fourteen.
These were the vibes that people emanated whether they told their stories or not.
Most of all, I have had a ringside seat with people when they lost loved ones. I sometimes had to bring them the news myself. As we prepared for the funeral, I coaxed them to describe their loved one. I would follow up with them in visits weeks and months afterward.
That work helped me develop some deep convictions about grief — especially what the work of grief is. Most of that work is subconscious — it is soul work. It cannot be described in words.
A colleague of mine, the pastor of a neighboring church, pointed to this inner work when he described how he handled his brother’s sudden death in an auto accident. The two of them were a about a year apart in age. They had been close all their lives. So, my colleague felt the loss of his brother very deeply. He said that he mowed his lawn almost every day for months after the funeral. Pushing his mower back and forth over his large lawn gave him the space to do that inner work that no one can describe.
However, there are four things we do when we grieve that can be described imperfectly, haltingly, because we tread on the edge of mystery. These four things are:
- We remember
- We make sense out of our memories
- We forgive
- We decide what we believe about life, death, and life-after-death.
These are not “stages of grief.” You can find lots of books on that subject. This is the work we do for everyone we love and lose. It never really ends. Right this moment, you are doing that work for people who have been dead longer than a lot of the adults you know have been alive.
In the next few weeks, I am going to go into this work in more detail.
It would help me to hear from you about how you have handled the grief in your life.
Image credit: Raul Diaz, Berlin Germany, Holocaust Memorial https://www.flickr.com/photos/radzfoto/2621999611/in/dateposted/
I so appreciate your insight and shout out about grieving in the third half of life – grieving for what the future might bring to our children and their children even is we escape the apocalypse through our passing; grieving for our own shortened days; grieving for the loss of who we were and adjusting to who we are right now. Thank you for this reflection as a new Jewish year begins.
Thanks, Howard. That’s an aspect of grief that I’ve been running into in my conversations with friends that I hadn’t connected with my main thought. In some ways, it may be the primary grief that many of us are carrying these days.
Hey Roger,
You mentioned being present with some parishioners to share their grief. I’m sure you remember the circumstances of my mother’s passing. You were there with us at the moment she left. An experience I’ll never forget…and I still grieve for her loss, 20 years now.
As a Police Officer I grieved for many many souls, death occurs in many ways, Auto accidents, Homicide, Suicide, overdose, and what we call natural causes. I can still recall every death I encountered in 34 years of service. People I never knew but I was present either at or shortly after their death. I grieve for them as well.
I like you have watched my grandparents and parents pass on and I now see the concern for me and Kim in my childrens eyes, We all know the end result, we just don’t know when. I look back and grieve for mistakes I made, and i look forward and grieve for the world we live in and what will happen to my grandchildren.
We hope for the best, in my third act i just try to enjoy the time, grieve as little as possible and rejoice as much as possible.
Thanks for your perspective on this Ken. Yes, I certainly remember being there when your Mom died. It’s the way we would all like to go, peacefully and surrounded by family.
Thanks especially for giving me your perspective as a police officer. I’ve been reading about the officers and firefighters who had to recover bodies from basement apartments not far from where we live after our huge downpour. So hard.
Roger
Yes, we do bear the grief of all those we knew as dear family and friends and congregants. I think we had so many funerals in our older churches—many more than baptisms and weddings—that Jim and I almost prided ourselves on how well we could witness to the dying and care and comfort those left behind. But there were always tears and grieving on the inside. And when my dear parents died six months apart, I went for several counseling sessions to deal with that deeper grief and sense of loss that felt like it impeded my ability to minister clearly and or authentically. Maybe I never shared my grief with the congregation.
And of course, grief somehow never ends. A few days ago Jim shared his autobiography with a small circle of members here at Shepherd Village, and when speaking about his mother’s death when he was 15, he couldn’t keep himself from crying. Grief was one reason he went into ministry, he said.
Thank you for writing and sharing about grief. We all will be experiencing it more and more, the older we get.😘🙏🏼
Cathy
Thanks for your comment, Cathy. It is helpful to me.