My mom passed away from a stage IV brain tumor on January 17th, 2021. It feels really strange tosee those words so starkly on a page. But, since beginning graduate school in DC and moving 1,200 miles away from home, I have had to try and learn how to non-awkwardly and concisely communicate about this tragedy in a way that is (somewhat) socially acceptable. While the past year has been marked by the Lord’s kindness and abundance, it has also been disorienting to go from everyone knowing every little detail and milestone about my life and family condition to suddenly having to explain everything anew to each person I meet.
Until recently, I don’t think I actually understood how deeply Mom’s illness impacted me – particularly my energy levels and desire to communicate. It’s not unusual for me to process something months after the fact – my friends will tell you that my emotional awareness is often a few days or weeks behind the real-time events. I think this has been especially true with something as monumental as my Mom’s journey. Usually, when clarity does strike, I externally process to one of my closest confidants – my iPhone Notes app. Below is an open letter I wrote in the fall of 2020 when my mom’s condition was rapidly declining.
Written November 2020 (edited for grammar January 2022)
“To anyone who knew me in my prolonged grief,
I want to apologize. I’m sorry you haven’t gotten to know the fullest version of me. I’m sorry I lacked energy and radiance and discipline and effort. I’m sorry if you felt slighted or forgotten. I’m sorry for the distance. I tried so hard.
I’m still trying so hard. Some days, someone asking me “How are you?” feels intrusive and exhausting and triggering, a leftover reflex from years of inviting people into the everyday reality of my family’s overwhelming suffering.
But while my apology is well-intentioned, it is only half true. I’m genuinely so sorry for the lack you saw in me. It reveals the brokenness that has always existed, the fault that exists in us all, manifested in each of us in unique ways. But, even still, I hope the way I carried my lack & my brokenness pointed you to Christ. I hope I confused you in a good way, and maybe encouraged you too. I can’t pretend to understand the “whys”, but I do know it is certainly a thing to celebrate that I am broken and Christ is not. When I fall, He catches me, and then I get to broadcast it— for His glory. This is the story I hope to tell forever and ever, even when it hurts and is hard. Especially then.
While you haven’t known me outside of grief, you have certainly known me in the season where God showed up the most in my life – where He has revealed truth to me in dark and deep places. Where He has both confused and comforted me with His majesty, mystery, and power. When I’m stuck sitting on the floor, unable to move or speak, He’s there. When I’m driving late at night, head spinning, attempting to process the fragility of our humanity, He’s there. When I’m silently weeping in church, trying to force the words of praise out of my lips – because what else is there to do – He’s there. His mercy is unmistakable.
I didn’t always feel like He was there. But, I know better. What I know about God is not based on a feeling. Though my fleshy heart is deceitful, God is renewing it more and more every day, making it more like His own. This is my great Hope. He is my great hope. The more I seek Him, the more I find. This makes my heart sing. I should have known – this is promised to us! (Jeremiah 29:13) Lord knows that despite being explicitly told things in scripture, I often try to discern unique & divine revelation on my own. And yet, none of the questions I ask today are new. Oddly, I take comfort in that.
This is where I stopped. I could have tried to write an ending to that, but honestly, I think that grief is often raw and unfinished – just like this letter.
I wrote this to no one in particular, based on the realization that most of the people who knew me most deeply had never known me – or had not known me well – before my mom got cancer in 2017. At the time, and even still sometimes now, I felt sad about “losing” some of the spirit I felt that I had before Mom got sick. Mostly, I just became tired in every dimension possible. I used to feel bad about how much it affected me. But now, I can see that God used this prolonged grief to fortify me, multiply my empathy, clarify my convictions, and give me a unique ability to be unafraid of pain. Grief changed me, and I think that’s okay – good, even.
My friends tell me the way I grieve is really strange. This is amusing to me, because I’m not quite sure what could ever be “normal” about the way each of us individually experiences and processes loss. But, I think they have a point. When important anniversaries arrive or painful memories of my mom resurface, I don’t want to be distracted or placated. I want to pause and remember. I want to remember the stages of early sickness where the only thing that was different was that I had to be the one driving Mom around. I want to remember her doing “laps” in our living room during the height of the pandemic before her stroke robbed her of the ability to walk. I want to remember how when she lost the ability to speak, she would blow us kisses or kiss our hands, her lips getting weaker and weaker as the weeks and months went on. I want to remember the fact that she ate a lot of pears in the last month of her life, and that I painted our fingernails the same color a week before she died. I want to remember that her last meal was pork chops and jelly beans and chocolate chip cookies. I want to remember the way she looked in the hospital bed and the scary, rattling sound it made when she breathed those final few days. I want to remember the last words I ever said to her.
Thankfully, I am the kind of person who writes these things down. I’ve learned over time that if I don’t take great care to document specific moments, I’ll forget them. And maybe that’s my fear – forgetting Mom. Maybe that’s why I lean into the unusuality of my grief and press in, even to the difficult memories.
It’s one thing to remember the happy stuff – it’s another to remember the visible pain in her eyes or how often she would cry. But, to me, this is one of the most dignifying things I can do. To discount the reality of these things is to discount essential pieces of her story – and, my story. Caring for my mom in her gradual decline shaped me in more ways than I could ever describe and has convinced me that to look away from people when they are suffering is heartbreaking, insulting, and, frankly, dehumanizing.
I think Jesus would agree with me. John 11 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible, because it displays my favorite attribute of God – His disposition to linger with us in pain. In fact, though Jesus knows He is going to raise Lazarus from the dead, He takes great care to prioritize mourning with and comforting Mary and Martha first. First, He weeps. He could have fixed it – and He does fix it. But first, He lingers. He is present in grief:
When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept.
John 11:32-35
I think this is an important precedent for how we are to grieve, and also for how we are to sit with others in their suffering. None of us can be Jesus, of course. But there is great value in honoring the reality of earthly pain, and even more value in remembering a human life. Not only is it a matter of honor and dignity – it’s simply healthy for us to grieve. And, when we do, it’s going to change us – our perspective, our emotions, our capacity. It’s okay to mourn, and it’s okay that life isn’t always “better”, because He is better. Our longing for relief from suffering points us to the very one who has become relief, who has done more than we could ever ask, think or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).
Perhaps the most important aspect of all of this is that Jesus sits with us in our grief. From His own mouth, Jesus tells us in Matthew 6, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” – by Him. In Him. With Him. It’s the doing it with Him that matters. In this way, we are truly blessed, supported, comforted. He has experienced suffering to the fullest and embodies mercy to the fullest. I pray that in your pain, you would see that Jesus has done something, and is doing something about it. Even more so, I pray that your suffering might allow you to see the great care and intimacy with which Jesus draws near.
