Social Distaste for Grieving

Yesterday, someone was telling me of his experience with his ex-wife's family upon the death of her mother. He said that the relatives were arguing and fighting over Mom's dishes. He said that he had said to them, "they're just dishes". To which one of the relatives sobbed that their mother had eaten off of those dishes all her life. The story was told to me as an example of the irrational lengths to which people can go over something so trivial as dishes.

I didn't respond ... I just didn't want to "get into it" ... but frankly, I have no difficulty at all seeing the bereaved family members' point of view even if accurately reported.

In fact, I feel the same way. The dishes in the cabinet in this house were Mom's dishes. She ate off of them for a good part of her life. We used mostly disposable ware within the last year of Mom's life. But till then ... yes, these were her dishes, the ones she used. And I feel ... what do I feel? Affection, gratitude, honor for these dishes as sort of icons of Mom and Mom's life. And while I have no idea what the future will bring, just for today, I do not want to part with such very, very potent signs and symbols of Mom's life.

I remember another conversation with someone on the day before Mom's funeral. She told me that her mother didn't really like to visit her deceased husband's grave, partly because of an experience her mother had had once when she was at the cemetery. She was visiting her husband's grave, and saw someone was there in the cemetery, weeping loudly, screaming, having thrown herself on the ground either on top of a grave or beside a grave. My informant said that her mother didn't want to go to a cemetery where people acted like that. I think my informant described the distraught person in the cemetery as "lugubrious."

Again, I didn't want to "get into it." But that someone might be behaving in the same manner of generations of severely bereaved persons doesn't bother me a bit. I haven't cast myself on the ground; but I have felt like it; and I have wept long and loudly beseeching Mom and God to hear me ... and would guess that God has heard many, many, many of us mortals doing the same. I can't imagine God finding such behavior as anything objectionable; anymore than God the Father would have found Jesus's loud weeping at the tomb of Lazarus objectionable; and anymore than God found the weeping and wailing of Job to be "lugubrious."

I am very, very, very deeply grateful for a God Who seems to accept those of us who mourn as we are, and not expect us to act other than as we act.

Frankly, anything that someone in bereavement does that expresses honor and dignity for the human person, and for the relationship with that person, gains my deepest respect, to that extent, at least.