I hope some of you read the comment to a recent blog written by a very sweet woman who read one of my books several years ago when her husband was killed in a car wreck. Talk about someone raining on my desert, she had some things to say that make all of the things I do more than worthwhile. Her comments were about the book Don’t Take My Grief Away From Me. That was my first book about grief and it is still one of our most popular.  

The title is based on the experience that helped me find my life’s work. One of the young couples in a church where I served as minister had a child who became suddenly ill and died. The mother was hysterical of course and both her husband and the physician were telling her to get ahold of herself. She looked at them and said, “Don’t take my grief away from me, I deserve it and I am going to have it.”  I have always thought that was one of the most profound statements I have ever heard under that kind of duress and pain. Those words made me realize I did not know anything about grief and led me to spend the rest of my life trying to discover every thing possible about the journey. 

My friend was wrong in one statement she made. She said she would “like to tell me her whole story but I already knew everything about the subject.” Most everything I know comes from people telling me their whole stories and I never tire of hearing them and I learn something new every time. I look forward to hearing not only her story but anyone who reads these blogs. I am still learning, and am so anxious to do so that I now have a dedicated email site to make contact with those who read these articles. The address is doug977@gmail.com

In the comments she mentioned a little thing I wrote at the first of one of the chapters about a cut finger. The squib read:

A cut finger

Is numb before it bleeds,

It bleeds before it hurts,

It hurts until it begins to heal,

It forms a scab and itches until 

Finally the scab is gone and a small scar is left 

Where once there was a wound

Grief is the deepest wound you have ever had.

Like a cut finger, it goes through stages

And leaves a scar 

That was written thirty years ago so there are some things I would change of course, but the analogy really does a fair job of describing the grief journey. 

I would change the wording so it does not sound as if the pain stops when the healing starts, and would add that we knock the scabs off again and again and when we do the bleeding starts up again. There are no perfect analogies for the grief journey but the concept that there are progressive movements through our grief is an important point to stress. That concept says that when we are in grief we are in transition. Where we are today does not mean that is where we will be tomorrow. The steps are unique to each person so there really cannot be clear cut stages to grief, but there is an overall plan to the process that leads us toward the day when the bleeding stops and we move toward some healing.

Maybe the best part of the analogy is that a scar remains. We never really recover from the loss of a love. In time the bleeding stops, but there will always be a scar on our hearts. Scars never go away. Scars always remain tender to the touch. Scars change everything they touch. A finger never looks the same after it is cut. A heart never fully heals, and we are left with what they call scar tissue.

As I read the comments and then read the cut finger analogy, I was reminded that each of us go through grief in our own unique ways and what works for one person may or may not work for others. I remember one man telling me of a thought that somehow made the loss of his daughter much easier to face. I was excited to hear that and immediately tried it out the next time I spoke to an audience about grief. No one in the audience had a positive response to the idea. Some were even offended by it. That is when I learned that each person finds those things that speak to them and those things speak to them in such an unique way that perhaps no one else will find meaning there. It would be a great study if everyone who reads this blog would write and share their response to the  cut finger analogy. If we did, I predict we would be amazed at how the views would vary. That would be a most helpful activity indeed. We need the freedom to find our own meaning in whatever touches us whether it touches anyone else or not.  

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Doug invites you to log in and post comments at the end of each blog entry. He looks forward to hearing from you. Any of Doug's books, CDs or DVDs are available at www.InSightBooks.com.