Wednesday is the first time in three years that I haven't received a barrage of texts from people expressing their sympathy and telling me they're praying for us.You see, Wednesday was my deceased brother's birthday. It would have been his 21st. He passed away over three years ago, and the rest of life has moved on.
Yet it hasn't. Not for those of us who remember him every single birthday and every single death-day. And each year the hollowness is the same, the ache is the same, the longing to see him and celebrate with him is the same. Those things don't change for the family and close friends of those who die. They remember, even when the rest of the world has moved on.
I'm not writing this post to condemn or criticize anyone; that would be silly and pointless as he was not their brother or son and they have no obligation to remember his life. For some of them, they never met him, and for others he only briefly shared their lives.
Instead, I'm writing this post to encourage all of those who have lost loved ones and who still feel the pain and the hurt and the emptiness five, ten, or fifty years later; these feelings aren't wrong. You do not need to "forget" or "move on" or "get over" these feelings, even when the rest of your life has.
I wrestled with understanding that fact this year. My life since that heartrending first birthday without him has changed so much. Yet the feelings and the pain came back, same as before, and they didn't seem to fit with the rest of my life. My life now is full of movement, sometimes chaos, and excitement. I'm looking forward to a pretty massive but exciting change in my life. I've spent countless hours planning and preparing for this change - marriage.
And then Wednesday morning came, and in the midst of the energy and movement there was a stillness. That stillness was Death revisited. That stillness was the reminder that there would be no celebration for us again this year. I realized there would be no celebration for us for many years to come. That stillness would always be there. And even though it was jarring and abrupt and difficult, I realized that my instinct to suppress and hide those emotions was wrong. We should feel pain on days such as these; we should feel loss.
But we should not despair. You see, the reason my family still mourns my brother's birthday and his death-day isn't because we want him here with us. He is finally and fully with Jesus, and there is no greater celebration for him than that. We mourn because we can't be there with him. We sit around the table on his birthday and weep because we are not with him. We mourn because we are in exile and we long to be home with him.
And this is why we do not "move on" or "get over" his loss. Our lives have, and on most days out of the year that is what you and the rest of the world will see. But on two days of the year particularly, and sometimes daily throughout the year, we revisit the loss and the pain. We let ourselves feel, because it reminds us that we are strangers and sojourners in this land. This is not our home; our home is with Christ.
My encouragement for all of those who find themselves in the same place as myself is this: embrace the loss, even though it feels strange and foreign to do so. Forget what the rest of your life and the world is telling you; the world cannot understand your grief because the world does not understand your claim in Christ. In fact, the world rejects it. But don't allow the world's ignorance to dictate your grief.
And I would say, mourn. Not as those without hope, but as those who are strangers and foreigners in this world. Mourn because you cannot celebrate with your loved one this year. But hope, because you have the guarantee that you will one day be able to rejoice together with Jesus and the saints in heaven. In that promise lies both your reason to mourn and your reason to hope. Embrace both, forget what the rest of the world and your life says, and look forward to the day when once again you will finally and fully be able to celebrate.
