I had watched my wife grieve the sudden passing of her mom over twenty years ago. I saw that grief come over her like an eclipse of her normal shining self. She was veiled in grief for many, many months.

But I had not known that same grief. Until the past weeks.

My dad had been showing the signs of a body slowly fading. Parts were giving out. But he was holding steady. Ornery as ever.

The stroke, though, was sudden, unexpected and severe. It claimed his right side, his speech, his ability to swallow. He was not going to recover from this. After two days of tests, it was decided by the family to move him into hospice. Over the next 10 days he held firm, until the final day.

God got me to his side in time. I was honored to be in that sacred space and time of his passing from this life. I watched over him as he breathed his last. What is it to take one’s last breath? How is that experienced? I witnessed it but I still don’t know.

He had been with me when I breathed my first breaths. I was able to be with him when he breathed his final breath.

The grief had already been present. At that moment though, it gained an entirely different weight. I am stunned by the finality, the totality of passing from this life to the next. There are no more conversations. No do overs. No opportunity for further clarification. Done. The race run. The pilgrimage ended.

The waves of tears take me like a tsunami. I can’t hold them back. Without warning. The slightest reminder. A memory. A story oh-so-familiar. Tears. Waves of a deep ache rising. Our culture in the West has little space and lesser comfort with this gift of grief. Yet, it is a gift to grieve.

God has designed us to do so in the presence of such loss. Grief feels like something is breaking when in fact it is a means of healing. To not grieve is to truly break. Oh, yes, it is exhausting like wading against a current too strong. Relentless. I am learning to give way to it.

Every change is loss and every loss is to be grieved.

Of course some loss is weightier than other losses. Yet each loss is to be honored. Named. Described. Stories need to be told.

Some of the unhealthiest people I’ve met have stuffed their grief. That grief is still holding enormous sway.

Some of the most courageous people I know have grieved well. They carry a grief with them in their beautiful, well-lived life. There is a truth, a beauty, and a weightiness about these ones who grieve well.

If there is a right way to walk this path called grief, I don’t know it. It’s like asking if there is a right way to blink. (I am aware there are healthy processes to grief, but when one is raw with grief, it feels like a fog bank).

May you be in-couraged to walk your own path of grief.

May you have someone wise to companion you with few words and a steady presence.

And above all else, may you know the love of a Father who knows grief and envelopes you in his love along the way of grief.