Pebbles at Another’s Feet

By guest writer Sister Mary Vianney Lyon, O.P.

Saint Paul writes to the Thessalonians that we are not meant to grieve “like those who have nohope” (1 Thes. 4:13). I suppose the temptation, especially among Christians, is to instead deny grief a place. We learn which platitudes to spout out in times of sorrow to make the grieving one (or ourselves) feel better. I believe this undercuts a lot of the healing that can come from really learning how to grieve.

In the days and weeks after my father died, I learned a lifetime’s worth of lessons – lessons about life and death, loving and losing, grieving and what it means to suffer. The first lesson I learned was one which C.S. Lewis also discovered after his experience of loss. He writes in A Grief Observed, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” Later, he amends this reaction, saying that grief is, rather, more like suspense.

I felt, in my own grieving process, a similar movement of my soul. Grief feels, at first, like something to fend off – to get over once the funeral ends. It produces an uncomfortable fear. As I let myself learn how to grieve and invite Christ into the grief, I began to be more patient with myself and my own experience of fear or suspense or anger or whatever emotion grief masked itself as that day. And with Jesus, I discovered, grief – though still unpleasant – can become something transfigured.

The following poem, written in those months after my father died, is a reflection on the role of grief and grieving in our journeys toward holiness and wholeness.

Pebbles at Another’s Feet:
a poem on grieving

I’ve learned to see Grief
like she’s my sister,
learned to love, to be patient with her.
I embrace Grief and she walks with me
on blistered feet,
sometimes hand-in-hand
and sometimes at a distance
and we choose the path
of most resistance,
Grief and me.

We visit many war-torn streets
and kick up the dirt under our feet
and see every mountain turned molehill…
so many backwards things
for me and Grief to meet.

Sometimes, Grief is like…
An awkward houseguest –
the morbid cousin you wish
would bother someone else
so you could get some rest.

And sometimes Grief is a dear old friend
you feel like you haven’t met in years,
who warms your heart so much
the thaw draws out tears.

Sometimes Grief shouts things
that polite company wouldn’t whisper.
Like a child, you scold her then,
but later find to kiss her
for saying the words
grown-ups were too afraid to utter.

Sometimes Grief is like a prick of a needle
or a pinch on the arm…
And other times she’s a sucker punch to the gut
or a dagger in the heart.

Sometimes Grief is like a gentle wave
lapping at my feet.
and sometimes a tsunami,
threatening to drown me –
daring me to breathe.

Sometimes she’s a memorial stone
held and gently pondered.
Other days she’s a boulder
placed on my over-burdened shoulders.
But I’m no Atlas –
the weight of the world’s
a few pounds much for me.
So I chip off pebbles and lay them
at Another’s feet.

Shared Grief can be almost sweet.

Sometimes, Grief is persistent,
begging me to look
deeply at my heart.
To her, it’s an open book,
and an intricate work of art.

So when someone says “good Grief”
and lets out a sigh,
You tell them, “yes, it is”
as you pass by.

For to mourn the lost
is good for us;
to grieve the “should-have-beens”
and the “never-was.”
To let our hearts ache

over unfulfilled desires,
so they can be healed –
purified –
by Love’s refining fire.

Sister Mary Vianney Lyon is a religious sister with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist

Photo: Public Domain

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