Grief as a winding valley

Yesterday I mentioned going to a parish that I haven’t gone to for a while.

Specifically, it was a parish I had not been to since my wife died. When she was alive, she enjoyed going to different parishes and disliked always going to the same parish. This parish, though, is closer to us, was one that was somewhat regular.

Yesterday, I could not help but think of her in the context of this parish. So during Adoration, I read through the readings ahead of Mass and was annoyed that the first reading regarded Abraham burying his wife and then the setup for Issac meeting Rebecca.

It did not help that it seemed the majority of those there for Adoration were Filipinas.

Plus, today is my late wife’s birthday. So today, in the mail was a certificate for the Gregorian Masses I am having said for her. So I am doubly annoyed by all this intrusion into my attempted Vulcan-like stoicism.

C.S. Lewis observed:

“Grief is not, as I thought, a state but a process: like a walk in a winding valley which gives you a new landscape every few miles.” (Letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, O.S.B.)

It seems I often writing things that I would rather keep personal and separated off from the world. Yet, I find being helped by others who do so and try do the same. Jimmy Akin, for example, is very frank about the loss of his wife and that has helped me.