I have heard of people losing loved ones around Christmas time, and I always felt rather sorry for them. To know that the loved one is not there to share with their loved ones, this usually joyful time of year seems to leave one in a quandary of just how to operate. Should we be melancholy? Should we put on a feigned sense of gaiety and frivolous merriment? Should we don total sobriety and seriousness, when our own little grandchildren are wanting their own beloved grandmother to act 'normal?.' (That is, normal, as they know you to be 'normal.')
I am not necessarily a serious person at all times, but the sadness this Christmas seems to ooze out of me when I least expect it. I have not been able to calculate when I will feel this sadness, and even then, I try to talk myself out of the morbid feeling that death likes to impose on its human beings. Take for instance, my reaction at the grave site of my mother. The graveside service, held in a beautiful little chapel, was lovely, and the song sang by many family members was rendered in a choir-like manner of splendid harmony. All was well, up to that point. I hadn't cried buckets of tears; I had told myself that my mother was much better off in a glorious place having a reunion with my deceased father, sister, nephew, brother-in-law and various aunts and uncles.
After the singing and a gracious prayer, prayed by my husband, in the little chapel, I realized that my father's grave was nearby, so I would go out to see it. What appeared to my eyes was a total shock, even though I should have truly expected the scene. There, beside his grave, was a huge, newly dug grave, ready to receive my dear mother's tomb. The emotion of seeing the open grave suddenly prompted a river of tears down my face; tears that I did not anticipate! Oh, the stab of pain and grief that went through my heart.
Suddenly, I also began to recall the day, 29 years ago, when my father was buried right next to the new grave . We had sat under a tent with a rainstorm coming down, and it felt as if the heavens were moaning, groaning and pouring tears down on us all. My father, my father! He was only 69 years old, when the shock of a sudden heart attack took him from us! My mother suffered those next 29 years without him. Now, she was going to be laid at his side and the pain of it all was cutting into me like a sword. I cried the necessary tears--cried many of them--until a different thought came to me. We had left daddy all alone in that cemetery those many years ago. We were grief-stricken, but tried to shoulder on the best we could without our father. He would never again be giving us any words of comfort. The new thought that came to me, sentimental as it may sound, was that my mother would be next to him until the rapture day, and he would have the woman he loved with all his heart, be near his entombed body. It was as if suddenly, all was well, because now they were together at last. Childish thought? The mind needs those little consolations, small though they may be. At times, it is all that keeps us peaceful and tranquil, after such a jarring event as death. Even though we know death is a common enemy, we may not know the pain it can wreak on a soul, until we experience it. What it takes to get through a painful crisis can also be different for different people. I have heard of people holding on to mementos of their loved ones, keeping a room exactly as it was when the person died. Others go faithfully to the cemetery, buying flowers for the graves, etc. It gives them comfort to hold the person's memory close and dear in their hearts. However, the greatest peace and comfort we can receive is to have the hope of a Christian receiving his eternal life from God, and hearing the words, "Well, done, thy good and faithful servant, enter into the joys of the Lord, which were prepared for you before the foundation of the world."
Jenny Teets
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