I'll be honest, the first thing I'm writing since I've restarted this thing is not going to (hopefully) set the tone for this. If you don't know me, I don't know why you're reading this, but I imagine that you do know me.
Death.
Y'know, there's been a bit too much of it lately. I lost my great-aunt, who was one of the closest things I had to a grandmother. Now, the kicker on this particular one is that I had seen her on Saturday for my brother's wedding shower, and she was gone on Monday evening. I know that several people have said things like that. I know that it's even a movie trope (has it crossed over into cliche?). It's still staggering that it happened that fast.
If stuff like that isn't going to make you a little introspective, I don't know what will. So, how do I handle stuff like this?
It's not easy. It's extraordinarily hard to find comfort in standard things you hear people say that cross over into platitudes. They might mean it, but really, once you hear it so much, it IS a platitude. (For the sake of covering my end, platitude (noun): a trite, meaningless, biased, or prosaic statement that is presented as if it were significant and original). I try very hard not to offer statements like that, because I don't want to seem like I'm just offering generic sympathy. So how do you find comfort? I haven't dealt with the topic as much as other people, but I can share a few things.
First of all, you're going to deal with that grief sooner or later. If you've been particularly affected, which you probably have been, then dealing with grief is probably going to involve tears. I used to try and be the stoic rock and just handle everything without actually confronting it. This always made it worse for me.
Second, even knowing things that should give you comfort are not going to erase the grief. Just because I know the destination of my recently departed, I am not in a place where I can celebrate the arrival, but instead have to mourn the loss. On that front, I did find comfort when my grandfather on my mother's side died. The song "Better Is One Day" is a beautiful praise song, and I could see his boots walking on streets of gold when he realized where he was. That was comforting at the time of the loss, and at the ceremonies. I could imagine the joy, but I tried to use it to ignore the grief. It came back around by getting to me whenever I heard the song from that point onward.
So what am I getting at? I know a few things.
Philippians 1:21, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
John 14: 2, 3, "My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."
There are more that I can't think of at the moment (that's what the edit button is for), but yes, I rely on what I hold faith in. Guess who will help you through the hard time? Only the people you let help you through it.
