Grieving

A mere generation ago, “heartbreak” was an overused literary metaphor but not an actual medical event. The first person to recognize it as a genuine condition was a Japanese cardiologist named Hikaru Sato.

In 1990, Dr. Sato identified the curious case of a female patient who displayed the symptoms of a heart attack while testing negative for it. He named it “Takotsubo Syndrome” after noticing that the left ventricle of her heart changed shape during the episode to resemble a takotsubo, a traditional octopus-trap.

A Japanese study in 2001 not only confirmed Sato’s identification of a sudden cardio event that mimics a heart attack but also highlighted the common factor of emotional distress in such patients. It had taken the medical profession 4,000 years to acknowledge what poets had been saying all along: Broken Heart Syndrome is real.

Nowadays, there are protocols for treating the coronary problem diagnosed by Dr. Sato. But although we can cure Broken Heart Syndrome, we still can’t cure a broken heart.

Many funerals today are not about mourning death but a “celebration of life.” As our culture discards all-black attire and other formalities of a traditional funeral, families create more personalized—and often more up-beat—experiences to honor the deceased.

The BBC has reported on the trend of “happy funerals,” noting that Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” had become the UK’s most popular song played at memorial services—replacing Verdi’s Requiem.

After celebratory memorial services, we are encouraged to “move on,” comforted by memories and knowing that the person we’ve lost is no longer in pain. But this positive focus can afflict and baffle people deep in grief.

As Daily Mail columnist Bel Mooney wrote, “Even though modern, cheerful funerals can be hugely touching and beautiful, a part of me wonders whether they show how petrified people are of death, and of the long agony of bereavement.”

Jesus, the One who sustains every life, was not immune to the ravages of death. In John 11, Jesus learns that his friend Lazarus has died. He goes to his grieving friends and does what anyone would do: he cries.

Jesus knew that while death is not the final word for the deceased believer, it brings a full range of heartache to those left behind. Jesus’ response shows us that the gospel promise does not exempt us from sadness over death. Death is real, it is sad, and Jesus himself felt it.

We can grieve over this, while also recognizing the hope of a resurrected body for all of us who cling to the Jesus who perfectly did both. This same Jesus who wept over the reality of death sent blood rushing back through the cold veins of his dead friend—and promises to give us new life too. Death is imminent, but Sunday is coming.

Tara Edelschick was raised in a home that was loving, loud, and fun, but an undercurrent of anxiety coursed through it all. The world was seen as a scary place. Tara said, “The message of my childhood was clear and insistent: Work, play, and love hard. Stay in control at all times, because something scary is waiting to take you down. I heeded that message into adulthood.”

She went to a great college, found the perfect job, and chose a wonderful husband. She thought to herself, “Weaker souls might need a god, but I needed no such crutch. I can orchestrate the perfect life. But that belief was obliterated when my husband, Scott, died from complications during a routine surgery. Ten days later, I delivered our first child, Sarah, stillborn.”

During the next year, she began a search for God. She visited psychics, read New Age thinkers, and attended meditation classes. Her forays into faith were attempts to make sense of what had happened to her and to control a world in which she had far less control than she thought she had.

Then she started reading the Book of John with a friend. Tony was the only Christian she knew who didn’t try to explain away the loss of her husband and baby. He said that if she would just read the Bible, God would do the convincing. So, they read the Bible together over the phone on Saturday mornings.

Tara writes,

I especially loved the story of (Jesus and) Lazarus. Unlike the Eastern philosophies that maintain that suffering is the result of our attachments, this story was about a man who was unashamedly attached. A man who behaved as though death was not natural. As though everything was broken, and that the sane response was to snort and weep. I loved that man.

After months of reading the Bible, Tara had to admit what she had fought so long to resist: She was hungry for Jesus. For the Jesus who hung out with whores, who wept when his friend died, and who claimed to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life. She said, “All of my searching for something in which to place my faith … led me to God who offered me himself in the form of Jesus. I didn’t have to find him or explain him; I just had to say yes.”

After that, Tara returned to school to study childhood bereavement. She married a wonderful man, and they had two beautiful sons. After getting married, she facilitated a support group for surviving parents whose spouse had died, and taught a class at Harvard on bereavement. She often found herself the repository for stories of loss, told in lowered voices at parties and grocery stores.

She says,

I try to listen deeply as people share those stories, nodding in agreement with how awful it is. I bear their story and, in so doing, remind them that they are not alone. These days when I sit with the broken and mourning, I pray for God’s love to do what I cannot: to bind up the wounded places, leaving their scars to bear witness of the power of both loss and love.

By 2018, country artist Walker Hayes had gotten sober but then tragedy struck. He and his wife, Laney, lost their seventh child, Oakleigh, at birth. It's a moment he now recognizes as a "real test down here on earth." He described it by saying, "Just holding a lifeless child. It's indescribable. I can't imagine a worse pain." He admits that for a moment, his sobriety was in jeopardy. "I'd been sober for three years when we lost Oakleigh. I was ready to not be. As soon as that happened, I was like, this is why you drink."

The loss of Oakleigh is what Hayes credits with helping him find his faith. He said, “When we lost Oakleigh, I would have called myself an atheist.” Hayes said that he grew up in a Southern Baptist church but that as a rebellious child he did not connect with religion. He grew to resent it. But when faced with a kind of grief he'd never experienced before, things began to change. "I think I found out in a roundabout way that I was screaming at somebody. I would have called myself an atheist, but I was looking for someone to blame."

But it wasn't just one thing that suddenly brought him to church. Laney had befriended a fellow mom and that mom invited the family to her and her husband's new church. Hayes said that although he went in kicking and screaming, he suddenly felt the opposite of how he'd felt in church before.

But the final push came while reading a book late one night on his tour bus. "By the grace of God somebody recommended a book to Laney called Secrets of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield. This woman's testimony, it's exactly like mine except I hadn't surrendered yet … I wolfed this book down. I finished it by the time the sun came up.”

Hayes explained that he didn't "come to Christ" that morning but rather he bought a Bible and began to read on his own and learn. Slowly, his faith was restored. But he is confident that the catalyst for this huge awakening in his life was a direct result of immeasurable loss. He said, “I know for some reason losing Oakleigh led me to Christ. I would not know Jesus if I had not known the loss of my daughter. That's what it took for me.”

For over half a century, the voice of Oswald Laurence was heard on the Underground Transit System in London. He made a simple but needed public safety announcement, warning passengers to "Mind the gap."

When Oswald passed away in 2007, his widow Margret felt heartbroken and alone. She missed Oswald's love and zest for life. To ease her pain, Margret would visit the Embankment Station, sit on the platform, and listen to her beloved husband's voice saying, “Mind the gap.” Then, one day in September 2012, she sat down, and his voice was gone.

In modernizing their systems, the London Underground officials had replaced Oswald's voice with an electronic recording. Margret was distressed by the change and requested a copy of Oswald's recording, so she could listen to it at home.

When the London Underground staff learned of Margret's story, they were moved by an extraordinary act of compassion and kindness. The staff got past all the red tape, searched through the archives until they found Oswald’s recording, and then had it digitized. It was also decided to continue with Oswald’s recording at the stop nearest to Margret's home. Today, if you find yourself at the Embankment Station on the Northern Line of the London Underground, you will still hear the 1950 recording of Oswald Laurence's voice.

Has that message saved lives? Who knows? But has that message touched at least one life? Absolutely. In fact, that’s why it’s still there. One act of kindness can change a life!

You can watch the short video and hear Oswald’s voice here.

A South Korean virtual reality (VR) company has undertaken the challenging task of reuniting a mother with her deceased daughter in VR. Jang Ji-sung wanted to see her 7-year-old daughter again, who she lost to blood cancer in 2016. It took the company almost a year to create the simulation. The documentary on the project, titled Meeting You, aired in South Korea on February 2020. A segment of the documentary has more than 20 million views on YouTube.

Nineteenth century inventions like the photograph and motion picture were heralded at the time as preserving life after death and declared as “man’s triumph over death.” VR resurrection allows the mother to “touch her hand, and they float into the sky to a twilight-toned afterlife.” The daughter falls asleep “after telling her mother that she’s no longer in pain. ‘I love you, Mom,’ she says.” The mother’s emotions are real. She later described the experience as a “wonderful dream.” The daughter’s character and personality were developed through extensive family interviews.

Psychologists and ethicists caution, “We just don't know the psychological effects of being reunited with someone in this way. ... Is it a one-time opportunity to enable closure or do you then prolong that relationship? ... The story strikes me as very much high-tech spiritualism with all the potential for fraud and deception that used to be associated with fraudulent mediums.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus is the only true comfort for grief and the only true hope of reunion with loved ones (1 Thess. 4:13-18).

Richard Lee had been the lone police officer in the small town of Croydon, New Hampshire for 20 years. So, when the local board decided to outsource their law enforcement needs to the state police, Lee walked out, disgusted.

But disgust was likely shared by many of his fellow residents and onlookers, because after surrendering the keys to his cruiser, his badge, and his firearm, he also took off his uniform. All of it. Lee said, “I gave them my uniform shirt. I gave them my ballistic vest. ... I sat down in the chair, took off my boots, took off my pants, put those in the chair, and put my boots back on, and walked out the door.”

Lee later explained that he didn’t want to face the prospect of arrest for unauthorized use of police gear. After leaving the board meeting, Lee walked for almost a mile before his wife came with the car to pick him up.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the Bible, servants of God often used their clothing (or lack thereof) to express displeasure, heartache, or mourning; such bold prophetic displays are meant to convey God's heart for justice and righteousness and the deep shame of falling short of God's standards.

Source:

Associated Press, “Police chief stripped of duties disrobes, walks into storm in underwear,” KomoNews.com (2-19-20)

Shay Bradley loved laughter. In the end, he made sure to get the last laugh. Or rather, he made sure that he gave one last laugh. Friends and family mourning the loss of Bradley at his funeral were treated to one final joke; a recording of Bradley yelling out in protest while his coffin was being lowered into the ground. “Let me out, it’s … dark in here!”

In a now viral video of the event, mourners encircling the gravesite first stand still, in complete shock. Then, eventually, laughter fills the air as people realize what they’re hearing. The recording closes with Bradley singing “I Just Called to Say Goodbye.”

When Bradley got the news of his terminal illness a year prior, he made secret arrangements with his children to make and play the recording as his last dying wish. Two days before the funeral, they alerted their mother and other immediately family, so they wouldn’t be too shocked.

Bradley’s daughter Andrea posted the video to Facebook, along with a few thoughts in tribute. “To make us laugh when we were all incredibly sad … what a man.”

Editor’s Note: The video contains profanity making it inappropriate to view during a service.

Potential Preaching Angles: All of us have gifts that God can use to bless others, even in death. As laughing aids us in our grief, as believers in Jesus was can grieve with hope because we believe that death is not the final word.

Grief refuses to flee the past just because it is gone and things have now changed.

My son-in-law, Alan Jones, told me a story of a Hassidic rabbi, renowned for his piety. He was unexpectedly confronted one day by one of his devoted youthful disciples. In a burst of feeling, the young disciple exclaimed, "My master, I love you!" The ancient teacher looked up from his books and asked his fervent disciple, "Do you know what hurts me, my son?"

The young man was puzzled. Composing himself, he stuttered, "I don't understand your question, Rabbi. I am trying to tell you how much you mean to me, and you confuse me with irrelevant questions." "My question is neither confusing nor irrelevant," rejoined the rabbi. "For if you do not know what hurts me, how can you truly love me?"