Thirty six hours ago, my father-in-law passed away.
I do not know for certain that there is anything on the other side of death. But if there is something on the other side of this world, Aras Grabauskas was certainly made for it. He wore his non-conformity like a badge of honor. He lived off the grid and thought outside of the box. He loved working with his hands and challenging conceptions. He looked a lot like Jesus, in that way.
And in an instant, he was gone. Like a flash of lighting or the blink of an eye.
There is a profound and significant difference between sadness and grief. Sadness is what everyone feels, the sudden shock of things, the drooping heads and teary eyes at a funeral or while watching the news. Sadness is just a sane acknowledgment of a situation. Grief is an unwelcome tenant. Grief is something that moves into your soul and stakes a claim. It is what remains for days and weeks and months and years after sadness has had its season. When others go back and live lives similar to what they were doing before, grief has only begun. When everyone else has moved on, grief remains. It may be compromised with and dealt with, but it never leaves. Grief is to sadness what love is to physical attraction. One lingers after the other fades. We learn to live with it. Maybe that is why we cannot experience true grief without truly loving.
The hard thing about loss is that it robs a relationship of newness, It is like there is no more spring, no more blossoming of experiences, no more surprises. I love my dad, for example. I’ll see him soon. We will talk and laugh. In some ways, it is not that big of a deal. It is just life, the same intimate relationship, but we get the newness of living it again and again. Until we don’t. Grief is the knowledge that we have lost spring, or put it on a distant layaway. We only remember. There is nothing new.
Kylie and I were looking through pictures just hours after the news. It struck me that it felt like he was gone, even from the pictures. Not just that his body ceased, but that his life ceased. Everything had been knocked back one level of existence – the pictures are shadows of events, memories of memories. This, of course, is not entirely true. Because, on second glance, I realized that his life is in those pictures and that maybe his death allows me to see it more clearly, to linger and look for it and remember it well. The lack of newness does not negate what is and what was.
When sudden grief hits a community, the weight of the world shifts. We were holding it up together, that’s what a community does, and when one is suddenly gone, the axis tilts, and a desperate scramble to re-distribute strength ensues. The chance of it all falling apart feels incredibly real. It is terrifying. And even if we figure it out, the world will always be a little heavier.
The great battle of grief is between the armies of thankfulness and regret. I am thankful that Aras made it to our wedding and walked Kylie down the aisle. I regret that our children will never meet their grandfather. I’m not really sure these armies are at war with one another but with my own psyche. The most startling thing about grief is that it strips us of all understanding. We do not know what to think, what to say, or how to feel. Our emotions burst out and our thoughts run wild because all the boundaries we fight so carefully to keep have been damaged in the explosion. Grief is like a huge flaming monster, like the one that killed Gandalf. If it knocks at your door, no sane person is going to let it in. But when you discover it in your bedroom, you have no choice but to address it. Grief cannot be ignored, reasoned with, or explained away. It must simply be faced.
And so, our struggle is to face both the armies of thankfulness and regret and spend adequate time with each. When we enter into grief, we become peacemakers, trying to keep these armies from polluting one another, giving full and true recognition to each in its own right. It is absolutely terrible that our kids won’t meet Aras – I can see our first baby huddled asleep in those massive catcher-mitt hands of his (seriously, his hands were like baby bears) as he jokingly tells the baby that it is time to get to work; and I can see him playfully cursing in the company of our eight year old while Kylie glares at him from the tops of her eyes. But it won’t happen. And that sucks. That really, really sucks. And no “but…” is going to take that away. The thankfulness is the easy part. Our kids won’t meet Aras, but they will hear his stories. And, my goodness, did that man have some stories. I got to meet him and see how he loves Kylie and share that with him. I had my brief moments of connection with him. And no “but…” will ever take that away.
One time, when I was telling Aras that I was thinking that Kylie and I need to do this or that, he said to me. “All I need to do is Eat. Work. Shit. That’s all you need.” I’m sure he would urge us all to carry on in the wake of his passing. I think the challenge of grief is how to address it without letting it steal you from living. It is really hard to collar that fiery dragon and sternly say, “if you’re gonna stay, there are gonna be some rules!”
I know my wife and her family are thankful for your words of support, for sharing in the sadness of Aras’ death. He was a cornerstone in every community he was a part of. He demanded it be so. In movies and TV shows and all avenues of storytelling, we are concerned gravely with endings. Endings are the hardest part. But they are inevitable. Stories have to end. A life can only say what it can say. But it is the middle of a story that matters most – the part where love is found and exercised, where truth is wrestled with, and work gets done.
Grief should hurt us. It should scare us. Grief should never defeat us. It is not a disease that needs to be cured but a reality that needs to be dealt with. Grief is not the absence of love, but the remembrance of it and in its prolonged hope.
