Page 74 - Senior Link Magazine Summer 2023 - Online Magazine

SENIOR RESOURCES

GOOD

GrieF

by Ted Wilson

“ ood grief!” That was were droughts, accompanied by lost to us. Yes, we grieve over lost
Charlie Brown’s go-to hailstorms and the occasional things, lost dreams, lost abilities,
Gexclamation when things “100-year flood.” It left me heavily lost relationships, and that is
didn’t go well. That statement in debt and feeling destitute. In where grief gets so real, or even
seems like an oxymoron. Grief, that dark time, I turned to the surreal. Lost relationships define a
good? I’m once again facing grief, only One who could fill that separation of a bond that only love
this time after the death of my vast void I was experiencing. can form. And initially, at least, it’s
wife, Jody. In the midst of her own I prayed and wept, . . . and I like existing in a dream-like world
grief, our daughter in the Lord, consumed the Scriptures. The where reality is upended. Love
Stephanie Bolton, has written an psalmists, especially David, could was reality, and it now seems so
article in this magazine describing express for me my complaints, lost.
their relationship over the last disorientation, and distress and
25 years. Jane Bromley, one of then of reorientation through Over the intervening years, I
the editors of Lubbock Senior Link thanksgiving and praise. have “lost” my best friend, other
as well as Jody’s two books, is a friends, my parents, and now
fellow traveler in this grief process, As a C.S. Lewis fan, I read A Grief my wife of nearly twenty-three
her husband, Bert, dying six Observed, written after the death years. But the hardest was the first
days after Jody. We can be fellow of his wife, Joy. He begins, “No because love was rejected more so
travelers, but grief is unique to one ever told me that grief felt so than lost. And I was less mature in
each one of us. I can grieve with like fear. I am not afraid, but the my faith. But on the upside, that’s
someone but never for them. sensation is like being afraid. The when my faith and love for God
same fluttering in the stomach, the grew by leaps and bounds. The
This is not the first time that I same restlessness, the yawning. Holy Spirit is a very good Teacher,
have faced grief of immense At other times it feels like being Counselor, and Comforter.
proportions. Almost four decades mildly drunk or concussed.
ago, my wife and mother of my There is a sort of invisible blanket But now I am fresh in this season
children decided she no longer between the world and me. I find it of grief. Jody was such a gifted,
loved me and filed for divorce. hard to take in what anyone says. Holy Spirit-filled presence, and her
That was a devastating time for Or perhaps, hard to want to take absence leaves a huge vacancy as
me, for not only was I losing the it in.” I sit here surrounded by pictures
love of my youth, but I was also of her. The emptiness is tangible.
losing my children, in a sense. I could and can identify. There I miss so many things. I miss our
The pain was unbearable, a deep is a sort of lostness associated regular lunch dates at Red Lobster,
soul pain. I was a farmer, and with grief, primarily because and I especially miss being able to
my memories of farming then something or someone has been tell her I love her. Here is where

74 Lubbock Senior Link