The Grief of Two Benches

Today is the last day of Lent and it has been a Lent unlike any other I have experienced before.  In the congregation I serve, we have had three members pass away and I also lost my dear friend Lisa following her three year battle with cancer.  This Lent has been a season of a lot of new and ongoing grief.   

This day of Lent is known as Holy Saturday and in the Christian story is remembered as the full day of Jesus’ death between the crucifixion on Friday and the resurrection on Sunday.   This is the in-between day - the day between death and life.

So on this in-between day / Holy Saturday, I took Scout on a long and muddy hike at Rowe Woods.  On the trails we hiked, I noticed two brand new benches.  I’ve been out at Rowe enough times to know that new benches mean that they were placed in memory of someone who had died.  In these cases as I read the shiny new dedications, my heart broke.  One was for Tyler, a 22 year old and the other for Lea Grace, a 48 year old.  Both were too young and my heart aches for the family and friends of these two people.

It also raised my own grief and brought to my heart who are in the midst of grief.  As I came to the second of these benches, I sat down and prayed for those who grieve - for the families of Tyler and Lea Grace,  along with those for whom Jim, Bonnie, Jim, and Lisa were close and dear.  I then read this blessing from Kate Bowler about Holy Saturday and prayed these words for me and for those who I have named.

Oh God, there are no more answers. 
	Only silence,
	and the echoes of yesterday’s questions. 

God, have mercy. 
Christ, have mercy. 
Spirit, have mercy. 

Oh God, soften my heart to be able to mourn 
	what is lost.

	Help me to name it now. 
		The people I thought I couldn’t live without. 
		The hope I can no longer conjure. 
		The joy that used to come quickly. 

Oh God, unbind this sorrow.
	Let me lament and cry and tremble, 
		for one lies broken— 
		poured out and spent, 
			entombed. 

I want to listen in the quiet of this small space 
	and wait 
		until I get used to the dark. 
So I can see the cracks
in the foundations of the world 
	left by the thunder of your passing, 
to see all the ragged truth of what is,
to touch and feel and love and 
hold the edges of what was, 
to honor what is forever gone. 

And to love well
what is eternally given. 

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” —Matthew 5:4, ESV

Bowler, Kate; Richie, Jessica. The Lives We Actually Have (p. 209). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

And so on this Holy Saturday, we are in the in-between and I am grateful that God is present in the in-between.