A sharing of words of love in times of darkness from one ordinary person to another comes in all aspects of us facing grief. This section briefly touches upon the traumas of untimely death, as well as expected death. Our grief is unique in our unique circumstances and within our unique relationships.
Whatever we face, remember our loved ones are ok now. Whatever has gone before has left them - they are now safe, in peace and surrounded by the love who is the presence called God, throughout eternity. If you can hope this, place faith in this thought, it will, bring comfort to you on your difficult journey onwards.
Challenges
Where our loved one has died as a result of an unnatural or untimely death we are challenged in our grief by a battle between how much we have loved, and our inability to act out of that love to prevent the unnatural death which has taken our loved one from us.
This feeling is very real, profound and cannot be eliminated from our thoughts and injects itself into our grieving.
What I believe we are faced with here is the challenge of being just a human being, versus the empowering and eternal presence of love. The presence of our humanity presents us truthfully with our own weaknesses, the human weaknesses of our loved one, despite all our efforts as humans to help them, and the human weakness of anyone else involved in the situation which resulted in their unwelcome and unnatural death.
In accidents or worse, we are faced with the trauma of the offender who caused the death accidentally or intentionally. That causes an emotion additional to grief and will need further counselling.
Unexpected death comes naturally too, and can leave us in shock which again is additional to grief. while we find ourselves in a nightmare situation having to cope with those things we prayed we never would have to face. Extra counselling and support is needed here too initially. There are links to those help sources hopefully on this site or can be googled. Don't go it alone. Take that help to start you off.
For profound and natural grief in all situations though, hopefully these thoughts will help a bit:
We may find ourselves demanding of ourselves:
Why didn’t I see this coming?
What should I have done to prevent this?
Why wasn’t I there so I could have …..?
What if…?
Other demanding questions relative to the circumstances both before and at the time of death.
These questions too are part of our human weakness.
They allow us to forget that we are human and dress us with the powers of a superhuman who can and will fix everything, prevent all wrongs and harm and have the power to change thoughts and minds of our loved ones or anyone else involved so that the outcomes would always be positive.
As human beings, we do not have those powers despite our powerful love.
We are a combination of human in body and mind and love in spirit.
The body and the mind as part of that body, is always the weakest part of us. It lets us all down in different ways in both life and death. In life, it can reach its heights and display wonders in both action, and physical attributes, thought patterns and wisdom. The body can be something to be admired and wondered at. It misleads us to think that the physical us hold superhuman powers or capacities for power which is above this world and all that is in it.
When we lose a loved one to the tragic circumstances surrounding unnatural death, whether by their own hand, or by the hand of another; whether accidental or intentional, we are not only confronted by the tragedy and heartache of death itself but by the realisation that we have had no control to prevent it taking place. We visit all sorts of imagined scenarios in which we have done something which would have prevented death occurring; but we know they are imaginary and only torment ourselves by thinking them. Yet thinking them in the first instance we must, because it is part of the processing of the tragedy we have no choice but to face. However, there comes a point when we must lay those imaginary scenarios to rest and embrace what is, however hard that is.
Humanity and Spiritual/:Love
We are human, all involved are humans, and humans are imperfect. Lovable, yet imperfect. We fall prey to our own mindsets whether they are at their strongest and best, or whether they are at their weakest and most vulnerable to negative thoughts.
As humans we need to embrace ourselves as humans and forgive ourselves because we are humans - all of us; we are imperfect in an imperfect world, and forgiveness means just acceptance that we are weak and make wrong decisions in life; or are inadequate in preventing the worst from happening no matter how hard we try to overcome this.
What we do have though, as the other part of being human, is the spirit of love who resides in us all. That love with which we have loved and received love in return. That love which may have been subdued in our loved ones during their dark times; or by the hand that brought about their death. That love still exists; always did exist and always will exist.
The purpose of love is to give life.
The strength of love is superhuman.
No matter what has happened, no matter how it happened; no matter what brought about the tragedy or the circumstances in which it happened - that love has not been tarnished. That love, known to us once at its best, is still greater than all things humans can do.
That love cannot be terminated.
That love existed to bring life.
That love still exists to renew life.
Life is more than physical; it is a spiritual encounter with the physical.
It can and is brought to us during life; it returns to empower us beyond death.
That love is forgiveness itself. It lays to rest all wrongs and picks up what is right and good and says go forward in love and let love be your strength and your guide in all you do from now on.
In that way, we let our loved ones live on in us and with us.
We put to rest the awful thoughts and negative tortures.They do us no good and hinder the everlasting love of our loved ones from continuing life in us.
Closing words from a human to a human but in the spirit of love that exists
When awful things happen, no words can express the ripping apart that is done to all involved. My own words here will seem inadequate. I too am human.
Yet I know love. You know love. Love is real. Love never dies but becomes an eternal presence for us to live.Love is not spiteful or harmful. Humanity can be. Love is kind, love is patient; it does not hold onto wrongs but celebrates all that is right and good.
In these situations where our human hearts have been ripped apart, we need to grieve.
We can accept we are angry, intolerant, sometimes even partly insane as we go
through the heart wrenching process of accepting we could not change things.
We are travelling, however challenging the process, into our futures where we begin to accept that the love we have shared in our past, is now an eternal life-giving force - given for us - despite all the human weaknesses and negativity which brought about their unnatural human death.
There are a wealth of poems and stories of experiences from people who have faced these challenges of love and grief in their own lives.
For myself, as a person of faith, these words come to my mind and I hope you don’t mind me sharing them with you now::
‘Because I live, you also will live’,
is one of my favourite quotes from Jesus speaking hope to us all (John 14: v.19).
Because the love of our loved ones lives on, (in the promise of Jesus for us all, no barriers), so we can live too. Faith can give us hope in these situations when we need something to grasp onto.
If you have no religion, that doesn’t matter, but hear these words in your darkness and if you can believe them for the relationships you have known, then may they bring you the strength and hope you will need to survive not only for yourself, but to live with your family and friends and all that is in this world, but most of all, to be able to forgive yourself, and forgive the hand that brought about the unnatural death, so that you can bring new life to your loved one by letting them live on in you.
I hope these shared ideas help bring you some hope and comfort for your future.
I am just an ordinary person like you, and have known my own grief and have sat with many through their grieving. These are just simple words and will, in my humanity, be inadequate in many ways, but I hope in the spirit of love, that they will bring about life in that love you have known and can always know so that you live on in love too.
Love is the only perfection that exists. Hold onto it. Its powers are eternal and love is given especially for you.