Setting out on this trip two months ago, I anticipated a lot of epic moments: a retreat, a conference, a move with a friend out West. Trips-within-trips started forming along the way as I made plans to meet friends on the road or even have them travel with me outright.
A moment I didn’t anticipate would be the funeral of my grandfather.
And I’ve been grieving ever since.
First, I grieved with a friend out West.
Then, I grieved alone on a two-day sprint across America for services.
Then, I grieved alongside family members as a pallbearer, wearing the cheapest suit purchased from Boscov’s with nothing else packed to wear.
Now, I’m grieving alone again. Back on the road on an unexpected, new course through New England.
But I’m grieving more than just the loss of my grandfather — a hero, a giant, an embodiment of God’s love.
I’m grieving all relational brokenness. I’m grieving human death for the first time, yes, but I’m also grieving everything else that separates humanity. Divorce, war, disagreement, misunderstanding, vitriol. Friends who aren’t friends anymore.
I’m grieving it all. For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I have nothing in this relational tank.
A text feels draining.
A phone call, dreaded.
Staying in someone’s house, impossible; hostels and highway rest areas only for me right now.
It’s cruel irony: considering all the ways my grandfather loved people well as people everywhere are driving me crazy.
The woman on the beach frantically asking if I know whether the boat picks up here. The toddler who accidentally pulls the bus stop cord. The family of four who barges onto my spot in the park for a picnic.
Go away, I want to say to all of them.
Leave me alone, my only thought right now.
I’m a shadow, a belch compared to the love my grandfather would have showed each soul.
I’ve retreated from Philadelphia to Maine as a course-correct for this trip that would have had me in Michigan right now, and I don’t want to interact with anybody. Anybody here, anybody far.
I feel the love from afar, and I’m grateful for the love from afar. I am. I’m a man of many friends, like my grandfather before me.
I just have nothing to reciprocate right now.
I’m an emotional person. I’ve known this since watching Mufasa fall from that cliff, and it’s only gotten more emotional as cartoons and youth have fleshed into adulthood and four dimensions.
A Four on the Enneagram, I feel the gamut and depth of human emotions. Sometimes simultaneously. Some folks struggle to name the single emotion they’re feeling; meanwhile, I’m making a list.
I’ve often felt a lot of shame for feeling all the feelings I feel, made worse when people have told me to “get over it.”
Sure, there’s maturity in bucking up and working through something. Overcoming.
But there’s no maturity in disregarding one’s emotions. No wisdom in pushing them down in hopes of smothering them from your soul.
I need to feel my feelings (I used an additional adjective in a blog post once), and you need to feel yours, too. I know that once I feel them, feel all of them, they don’t need to control me anymore.
And I can continue about my life.
But that feeling part . . . takes time. Sometimes, a lot of time.
This time is a lot of time.
I’m grieving my grandfather, and I’m grieving everyone else grieving my grandfather, and I’m also grieving so much more. All while attempting to piece together my next chapter, this life beyond the road.
I know I’ll “get over it” eventually. I won’t always see the guy asking for my parking spot as the most obnoxious human on the planet. Or is it the guy scraping the chairs against the floor in this coffee shop?
I won’t always skirt text messages and avoid long overdue phone calls.
But I need to feel the sadness, I need to feel the angst, and I need to feel the brokenness. Brokenness around me; brokenness within.
I need to breathe this darkness.
Maybe when I return to the light, I’ll act a little more like Ahh. Gosh, I hope so. I want to experience every human, certainly every friend, with the delight he expressed toward all while he was alive.
While he was alive . . .
Man, that stings.
