Songs that say goodbye

Lately I've been dealing a lot with loss. We lost my grandma in early August. Her funeral was August 6, the exact date her husband, my Pop, died seven years before.It's also the date I was baptized when I was nine. I don't know why that means so much to me, it just all seems like it fits together somehow. When Pop left us, I felt at peace about it. I just kind of mulled through it. His body just went out on him, and I was okay with that. And we still had Grandma, with her dog and huge, ancient farmhouse and property we used to explore. When she died it felt like my entire childhood was gone, too. I ache for it, still. She was absolutely, 100 percent ready to leave this world, but I wasn't ready to let go of mine with her in it.

I did cry a lot at the funeral, but I think it was mostly for my family. We were all a little bit wrecked, and I was crying a lot in response to their emotion. I didn't really feel the sorrow for myself. But the next Sunday I was back at church, I completely lost it, in the middle of worship. The song was "Blessed Be Your Name" - which was a song that meant a lot to me when my cousin Ben died freshman year - and I lost control of myself. They were full-blown sobs. My parents just held me for awhile, and I know I made my mom cry. And she's a lot of the reason I think its been so hard... my mom is an orphan now. Both of her parents are gone.

But I had a ton of distraction, and the grief got swallowed up for a month while I went to Denver and moved back to school. Not a lot of my friends at school knew it had happened so it wasn't brought up. Then, last Tuesday, September 6, the first song of our chapel session was "Amazing Grace." It played at her funeral, and like a revelation, I realized how long she'd been gone. I sat down in the dark auditorium and sobbed, uncontrollably. I was so loud, and I couldn't help it. Breathing became a secondary action. I can't imagine what the people around me were thinking... but Sarah sat next to me and when I could breathe again, I told her what made me react.

Death sucks. Cruel, needless death is even worse. And on Sept. 11, you can think of almost nothing else. I tried to stay away from the news at first. But tonight in my film studies class we watched United 93. I never wanted to watch this movie, because I know how I react to things like this. My head hurt so bad by the end of it, I was trying so hard not to cry out loud. But I'm not sorry that I watched it. Because you cannot hide from the stuff that sucks, even when it is six years old, especially because it feels as fresh as if it had occurred yesterday.

My great-uncle died on Thursday, my mamaw's brother. My great-aunt, my grandma's youngest sister who is really close to our family because she doesn't have any immediate relatives, is dying of pancreatic cancer, doctors say she has mere months to live. And it sucks. I feel like everyone in my family who is over 60 is going to leave me. But I don't have to feel like this, this heavy, uncontrollable feeling crushing my lungs. Jesus is here. In good and bad, to deal with this crap right along with me. He's here to bear the burdens so I don't have to be sad forever. He beat all of this... the sickness and the death and the sorrow and the hatred and the violence, all things that lead to loss and misery.

It's not un-Christian to be sad. But Jesus is about hope, and I have hope that God's going to bring the good into my life, right alongside the bad. Its why I can smile though there are tears welling up in my eyes. Hope.

These words are heavy on my mind
like songs that say goodbye
like songs that say goodbye - Schuyler Fisk