Skip to main content

Stopping Traffic For Grief





To the middle-aged woman who gestured angrily and yelled as we passed...
To the 30-something man in the power suit who honked and forced his black SUV through our line...
To the person who tried to pass us and then moved his car into our lane to block our progress...
Perhaps you don’t know. Perhaps you didn’t recognize the hearse and the flapping flags on the first few cars. Perhaps you didn’t notice that we all had our lights on and our hazards flashing. Perhaps your mama never taught you to show respect to the dead by showing kindness to the grieving.
You couldn’t know, of course, that the woman inside the hearse was only 20 years old. You couldn’t know that she leaves behind parents and siblings and a young husband and a one-year-old baby girl. You couldn’t know anything about the person in that hearse or the many people who followed. But you still could have stopped. You could have waited. You could have recognized that someone else’s pain was greater than your need to get to lunch.
A funeral procession is not about getting to the cemetery at the same time. A funeral procession is a chain of connection, a visible sign of the invisible bond of grief.
Her parents saw you — you were just the first of many who will be impatient with their grief. Her younger siblings saw you — breaking the chain of cars that separated them from their sister’s body and their parents’ arms. You see, a funeral procession is not about getting to the cemetery at the same time. A funeral procession is a chain of connection, a visible sign of the invisible bond of grief.
To the grieving, it is inconceivable that the world keeps going when their world stopped. They cannot understand how the rest of the world keeps spinning, not aware that it has lost something precious, when their world will never be the same. They will go through the coming weeks and months and maybe years with a hole in their gut that will be virtually invisible to everyone who passes. But for this day, this moment, they are seen. And if their grief doesn’t stop the world, at least it should stop traffic.
As a pastor, it is my job — and my honor, my blessing and my burden — to sit with families in the midst of their pain, to hold their hands, to try to bring them comfort when the unthinkable has happened. I listen to their stories. I help them plan a service that honors their loved one. I help them choose a scripture for the service, whether they know many by heart, or know only that their loved one believed, or know only that they want something religious just in case. We create a bubble, or maybe a cocoon — a safe space where they can remember and cry and laugh and sit together in grief and anger and know that whatever they’re feeling is OK.
It is heart-breaking to sit in those front pews, and it is gut-wrenching to watch those who sit in the front pews. But we are in it together — this thing called life, this thing called grief, this thing called love. And then we move from that space, together, for one last difficult act after so many others — one that nobody ever wants to imagine but always fears—to see our loved one’s remains laid in the earth. So we follow the car in front of us, knowing that we are still in it together, still bound by our shared grief even as we go out into this busy, impatient, insensitive world.
To the grieving, it is inconceivable that the world keeps going when their world stopped. And if their grief doesn’t stop the world, at least it should stop traffic.
So for those of you who were so angry that a funeral procession made you a few minutes late, I have a few suggestions. The next time this happens, try not to think of the fact that you missed one rotation of the lights; think instead about what the people in those cars will miss. Try not to think of being late for your lunch date; think about the people who will never again get to meet their loved one for lunch. Try to consider that maybe you could inconvenience yourself for one moment to allow a hurting family to stay together, to show them that you see them and you recognize their loss.
I hope you can do this because one day, you’ll be the one driving with your lights on and your hazards flashing, needing to follow closely so you don’t lose your connection, don’t lose your way. And I hope the world will stop for you.

A version of this post originally appeared on pastorcindym.wordpress.com.
This post is part of Common Grief, a Healthy Living editorial initiative. Grief is an inevitable part of life, but that doesn’t make navigating it any easier. The deep sorrow that accompanies the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage or even moving far away from home, is real. But while grief is universal, we all grieve differently. So we started Common Grief to help learn from each other. Let’s talk about living with loss. If you have a story you’d like to share, email us at strongertogether@huffingtonpost.com.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Letter to My Father

Originally POSTED ON  JUNE 3, 2015   BY  AMANDALYLE1986 Read the ORIGINAL post https://insidethelifeofmoi.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/a-letter-to-my-father/ I have included this post on Brilliant Blog share because it ENCOMPASSES everything that this blog has set out to discover, basically the most exceptional blog posts around and this post IS exceptional. 229 Dear Dad, It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since I said goodbye. The absence in my heart still yearns louder than ever. A missing piece, forever lost and irreplaceable. All that remains are memories, ever-fading and ragged around the edges. I grasp onto them with all my might, trying to savour each one, but as time trickles by like sand in an hourglass, so do the memories I have of you. Five years on, I still find it hard to look at old photographs without feeling overwhelmed by sadness. I tread cautiously through a minefield of memories in fear of setting off an explosion o...

The Vineyard

A short story by Elizabeth Newton  Originaly published on http://elizabethnnewton.com/2015/07/01/the-vineyard/ Elizabeth Newton has (so far), published two amazing books. 'Riddle' a twisted and interwoven story about murder, betrayal and revenge in a small town. The second is ' View from the Sixth Floor: An Oswald Tale'  which is a story of “what-if's?" What if the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 was a conspiracy? What if accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent? What if....Below is one of Elisabeth's short stories, it may just give you reason to take a look at her books.  The Vineyard   My family has been producing one of the finest wines from the Carmargue region for several generations. Although we are a very small vineyard many have said our grapes are the sweetest and our wine has an indefinable “something”. Of course the distinctive color known as “grey of grey” contributes to the uniqueness of...

A confession... or at least a revelation.

I’m jotting this as I travel in a car, it's okay, I’m a passenger, not the driver. I realise many people like to know about the authors whose books they read, so this post is a reveal, a confession... I am a bit of a petrolhead. I'm on the right, wearing sunglasses. Although I do mention cars in several of my books, I do not often go into any intricate descriptions. I like to leave much of the detail in my stories to the reader's imagination. I think this respects the reader, allowing them the freedom to create such subjective images, and for their imaginings to become an integral part of the story. My belief is allowing the reader personal visualisation is what makes books far superior to a film, or a movie, where every detail is spoon-fed to those watching, it leaves nothing, or very little to the imagination. Whereas with a book the author simply suggests many things, it is the reader whose mind interprets and creates the fictitious, fanciful world they find the...