“Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven. Would you be the same if I saw you in heaven. I must be strong and carry on.”
Lyrics from the song “Tears in Heaven”, Eric Clapton (1991)
As I concluded another Bereavement Program in our parish community this past week, the question that always comes up during our final session of the Program is “Jack, how long will my grief last” or “Will I always feel this way”.
It’s one of those questions that is unique to each person grieving the loss of a loved one as each of us grieves differently at our own pace and on our own timeline.
In addressing that question, I shared a moment with our group that I recently experienced with someone who like me, swim laps at our local health club. I have interacted with this person for about 10 years now and it’s always a very pleasant conversation and fairly typical of the conversations many of us have every day.
I had just finished my laps for the day and was getting ready to leave the locker room when my friend enters and says “Hi Jack, how are you” and then my immediate response “I’m doing well my friend, and how’s everything with you?”
So many of our daily interactions with people follow that same script but this time when I asked my friend that question, his answer was one that I was not expecting or prepared for. “Not so well Jack — I just returned from attending a Mass for my wife who passed away 42 years ago today”.
My heart just sank as I heard that and so I said, “I am so sorry for your loss and I will pray for her and your family and thanks for letting me know”. He then went on to tell me how difficult the loss was because of its sudden, unexpected nature and having to raise a son who was only 5 years old at the time. We continued to talk as my friend needed to have his grief witnessed and validated. As I walked to my car for the short ride home, I couldn’t help but think of how many crosses of grief we all carry forward for the rest of our lives, with each cross weighing a ton for that special person no longer here with us in this life.
For me, that question of “how long will my grief last” always resonates not just in my work as a Bereavement Counselor but also through the lens of my own loss history, especially losing my late brother Dennis who died suddenly and without cause 53 years ago today at the age of 19.
In those early days of grieving his loss, I was consumed with feelings of shock and anger with questions that had no answers like “How could this happen and there be no cause of death for someone so healthy and vibrant?” “Where’s God in all of this — did I or our family do something wrong to deserve this?” Why did it have to be Dennis and not me or someone else’s family?”
We didn’t have the bereavement support and resources back in the 1970s like we have today, something I am so grateful for because those services can really help people navigate the pain that comes with the grief journey. But in answering that question of “how long will my grief last” I realize that what I grieve now is different than in those earlier days of my grief journey because Dennis will forever be 19, frozen in time and space while I am now 70 years old. Yet all these years later, I still grieve so many things:
I grieve that Dennis was never able to take me out for my first beer like he had promised me as he dropped me off for track practice at Paramus Catholic High School just two weeks before he passed.
I grieve that he was never able to see me play basketball again, our favorite sport growing up.
I grieve that he would never be able to share my experiences at college, graduate school, or my career.
I grieve that he was never able to meet my wife.
I grieve that I couldn’t ask him to the best man at our wedding.
I grieve that I couldn’t ask him to be the godfather of our three children.
I grieve that he will never get to meet my four grandchildren.
But here’s what I now treasure more than ever having lived through this journey of grief.
I thank God I will always be Denny Kirnan’s little brother for the rest of my life and that he will always be the best big brother I could ever hope to have — always looking up to him, wanting to be like him in every way, wanting to walk like him, and him always being there for me and including me in his life. No one can ever take that part of my life away because Dennis will always be a big part of who I am.
His life with me and so many others who loved him was cut way too short. But my faith teaches me that I will see him again, someday in the not too distant future. And until that day comes, I take comfort in those beautiful words of that great E.E. Cummings poem “Denny, i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)”
Forever 19 and forever in my heart. Love always, Jackie
