Pause for Thought – How grief affects us all
By The Reverend Zoë King, TSSF Rectorial Benefice of Barry
MY colleague and fellow column writer Fr Robert were deeply saddened to hear of the death of the Glamorgan Star’s columnist Suzanne Vincent Jones. Our thoughts are with her family – and her journalism family – at this difficult and sad time.
Grief is a trickster none of us can avoid. We know we lose the generations above us in the ‘normal’ order of things but however much we believe we are prepared, it still hits like a freight train.
The trickster though is that while we think we prepare for the death of generations above, we are often woefully unprepared for members of our own generation to die – let alone a generation or two below us.
In the last five years, two friends of mine have died – one from Covid and one from cancer. You don’t ever consider really a friend in her 40s dying – it only seemed a few years ago we’d be dancing in Ritzy nightclub in Newport sticking to the floor but then I was at her funeral completely shell shocked. I am someone who has the privilege of walking alongside people as they prepare funerals, and I was stunned at how I had lost my bearings completely.
For grief is a trickster. One moment I would be laughing at how my friend was a fierce vegetarian and never offer her a mint with a hole for at the time they weren’t vegetarian friendly, to feel such pain for she was the one to encourage me in my vocation.
But whilst grief is a trickster, God is a constant. Many times I have ranted not just about my own losses but for families I have to visit to prepare funerals. God loves us all and he is there for us to let rip all the deepest and darkest anger, sorrow and confusion. Often, I will have these sort of conversations with God in the car, then when I’ve let the anger, frustration and pain out there is a quietness in my soul.
God cannot take away the grief, time helps us manage it better. For all who grieve there is light in the darkness, but you are never alone in the darkness, for God is alongside you whilst you look for it.
- The views expressed by columnists of this newspaper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Glamorgan Star, its employees or its proprietors.
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