Tom

One of the greatest lessons I have learned about grief for myself is that we can never anticipate how we might respond when we lose someone close to us. Our responses will most likely surprise even us. My older and only brother died 7 years ago of a sudden heart attack. Tom was 2 years older than me, and we had gone through times (as most brothers and sisters do) of intense closeness, and separation. At the time of his death, we were unfortunately in a time of separation.

One Sat. morning in August of 2001, I went down to my office at the church to get another commentary for my sermon the next morning. It was there that I received a phone call from my mom, that Tom had been found dead in his home. He was a builder and was all dressed and ready to go to work on a project at one of his friend's. The coffee pot was full, and all he had left to do was put his boots on. Hearing the news, was so unbelievable. I screamed, "NO, NOT TOM!" I am one of the blessed people who is surrounded by close friends and thus did not have to experience this pain alone. Within minutes of getting to my home, I had a dozen close friends in my living room, and someone who would drive my son and I home. The next 2 weeks are a blur mixed with facing my parents, planning the memorial service, and all the other tasks at the time of death. The emotions of grief came at me as waves of an ocean: sometimes bowling me over, receding and then returning, but more gently.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross spoke of Grief as shock, denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and finally acceptance. And while I know these emotions exist, not everyone will experience them all, and they may experience one or more phase multiple times. But I have also experienced grief as a time of movement from orientation, to disorientation, to re-orientation. With Tom's death came a time of disorientation, because so much of how I defined myself was now changed forever. I was a sister to one brother. I was one of two children in a family. I now had no sibings, and am an only child. It has been a time, over the last 7 years of reorienting myself to who I am now, and what all the implications of Tom's absence means practically, as well as spiritually. It is a time of answering the question of who I am now without Tom. With that comes who I became because of him; this one person who shared my genetics and my history, my experiences, my joys, my sorrows.

And a big piece of my grief process was and has been how I could resolve the fact that we weren't speaking at the time of his death. Attempts for reconciliation had been made for which I am grateful. The gift for me was that I found a letter I had written to Tom in attempts to reconcile, in his home after his death. I read the letter and truly believed, even with the new information that he had died, I would not change what I had said, and that I had expressed my love for him. It was important to me that he know I loved him deeply. It was that letter that enabled me to let our silence and separation go. I forgave him and myself.

So who am I today? I am still a sister, a daughter, a friend, a pastor. And in the moments when I struggle with caring for elderly parents alone, I think how wonderful it will be for my parents when it is their time to go. They will have one child on this side of life and one on the other. I can hold their hand here, and Tom can take them by the hand and lead them to the Jesus they love, and to their family members who have gone before.

A Gaelic Blessing:

Deep peace of the running wave to you;
Deep peace of the flowing air to you;
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you;
Deep peace of the shining stars to you;
Deep peace of the gentle night to you;
Moon and Stars pour out their healing light to you;
Deep peace to you, the light of the world to you,
Deep peace to you.