Wonderings on Grief in Eastertide

The Tenth Doctor once said time isn’t quite like what we expect it to be like. He said, “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff” (from the episode Blinkin Doctor Who). I’ve only ever experienced time as linear – I lived through middle school once and I DON’T ever have to do that again. Time, as a process, I think, as a law of nature, works in a linear way. But when it comes how time as how we experience emotions – I think it’s more complicated. 
            This week I’ve experienced a lot of grief. In the middle of quarantine, my dad gave us a health scare (he’s okay, for which I am VERY grateful), but my husband and I also lost two of our cats to illness in a span of three days. Grief is incredibly hard, and our fur babies are our real babies. They are family. I’m not sure why the universe though it was necessary to end Holy Week by taking two of our greatest loves away from us, but that’s how it worked out. 
            I say that, and even as I type that, my grief says to me, “Yeah. But it shouldn’t have worked out that way.” And I know from experience time will heal this. I know (because I’ve lost loved ones, including pets before) that on the other side of grief is comfort. And what brings you through grief is hope: hope that there even IS another side after grief. But knowing that does not make my heart feel lighter in this moment. In the next moment, I might be fine. And then I’ll see one of Joel’s cat toys or a towel left over from where Kitty used to lay and the pain will start all over again (seriously, my husband and I could use some really good energy right now). Grief is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. 
            And then in the midst of that, there’s Easter. Yesterday was Easter. Yesterday was the day that I talked about how Jesus defeats sin and death and in the face of death (yes, I believe pets totally have souls!), I find myself reaching for that hope. When my grandmother died, when my grandfather died, when I do funerals that are hard for me, even as a pastor, or maybe especially as a pastor, when I think about the finiteness of people that I love so dearly, I reach for this hope of Easter: that death is never the end of the story. Death fits into the linear picture of time, but grace turns the time tables upside down and breathes new life into dead spaces. That’s the hope of resurrection. 
            I don’t know what that means for an afterlife, and frankly, I’m not all that concerned about what “the other side” looks like. And no, I don’t know if that means I expect that I’ll see Joel and Kitty waiting for me on the other side. There’s a lot I don’t know, and a lot you don’t know, and a lot no one will never know because it’s not for us to know. But Easter. Easter gives me hope, though, and that is enough. It is enough to tell my sad, sad heart that it’s okay to have her ugly cries now, and there is healing in those tears (I remind myself as I sob through another box of tissues). It’s enough to tell my brokenness that even in this, Jesus holds me close. 
            And yes, I totally find it ironic that on the week when it hurts so much, I have to plan a service on Holy Humor. I’m not finding much funny right now. All I can hope for is that in planning that service, God will bring me a unique kind of healing. 
            Our third cat is named Hope. She is watching me type this from the hallway by the water bowl that may or not be filled to a level of her liking. If she is aware that she is now an only child, I can’t tell you. But her name is my reminder of Easter. Hope will remind me that even in grief, we are not alone. Death is never the end of the story. It wasn’t for Jesus. It won’t be for us, either.

"You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word." -Psalm 119:114
"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope." -I Thessalonians 4:13

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