Is death the only thing that can pull me back to blogging? Eh, maybe. I write more on Facebook these days, if I write at all. Three children don't leave much time for typing or holding a pen. Anyway, I didn't want to think this out on social media because it will seem too linked to whatever specific events are going on at the moment, rather than an accumulation of thoughts.
Basically I'm just tired of the appropriate public-facing grief language of Christians while at the same time using it myself and seeing its use. I think it's a social media problem, because we're all our own little news agencies and there are people who do not deserve to be let in to our inner sanctums waiting for a comment or an update or whatever. So of course we fall back on the tried & true language of faith, and we do of course find comfort in these ideas, but it also just seems so incredibly shallow.
We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
So true. So very, very true. But death, even a good death, even a waited for at the end of a long life death, still has pain and sorrow because it is still a loss. And I wish that we had a lot more openness around that, because honestly death is pretty shitty. Or if not death itself, being left alive without that person in this world anymore.
I guess it's impolite to say that. It's not comforting. It's not meaningful.
I like that part in the Bible where, before he raises Lazarus from the dead, Jesus weeps. I think that's the honesty I'm looking for. This isn't an honesty that should be shared publicly, at least not for people like me. So by all means, let's keep posting the comforting Christian phrases about death when we have to be public. The public doesn't need our deepest emotions. But hopefully as we mourn the losses that time will be sure we experience, we are allowing ourselves to feel that pain as well. It is part of our humanity. We are not less than Christian to feel pierced by the sword of loss.
