Last post we talked about loved ones who die leaving unfinished agendas. Parents and children who never get to work through the conflicts of childhood. People who die without our having a chance to settle old scores or deal with the hurts they caused in our lives. I hope someone found some ideas for working through those unfinished agendas.

There is another side to this kind of issue that we need to think about. Even though there were unfinished agendas, unhealed hurts, and a great deal of anger, we will still grieve the loss. That grief has an element of our being cheated out of the chance to clear things up or maybe get even, but it is deeper than that. We grieve the loss of the person.

Many years ago I walked with a woman as she struggled with a very tough and unrewarding marriage. Her husband had rejected her physically and emotionally. There not only was no sexual contact there was no touching of any kind. He told her it was her looks and personality and that she turned him off and cold. This was extremely painful for her but she did not want a divorce. They had children to raise and their business was entwined with family so deeply there was no way they could work together and finding any other way to exist financially seemed impossible. 

She and I agreed that my role would be to help her stay there and still have some sanity. Our relationship evolved into her coming in periodically to explode and rant for about an hour and somehow that got her through until the next time she got over full and we would repeat the process. I was the safe place where she could come and cuss him out. That is not very good counseling nor does it cure anything but it worked for her. I was a Baptist minister in a large city at the time, so I hoped the secretaries were not listening in during these sessions.

Then she discovered a large cache of child pornography stashed in the attic and nearly went ballistic. She was not the reason for the physical rejection at all. It was his sexual hang-ups and she was taking the blame and feeling unloved and ugly to cover for his problem. I am sure the secretaries got an earful from the volume of those sessions.

He died watching one of those videos. She found him lying in the floor in front of the TV with one of the programs playing. When I arrived at her home she whispered to me, “All I feel is relief.” It was finally over.

A few months passed and she called me asking if she could come in immediately. I was free so she arrived in minutes. She said, “I wanted to see you first because I did not want you to hear that I was saying this to other people and think I was crazy, but I miss him. I have no idea why and I feel like a fool but I am grieving the loss and I miss him very deeply.”

I said, “You are not crazy nor strange. You are grieving the needs he did meet. He met some of your needs or you would not have stayed with him no matter how many children you had to raise nor how many businesses you had to run.” 

She began to list some of the things she missed about him. He was a good father, they enjoyed traveling together, he bought her nice gifts and clothes. The list seemed to pour out of her as she realized the depths of her grief. 

That is called conflicting emotions and too often folks don’t have safe places where they can share the things they miss even though they have ranted and raved about the person for years. We get angry with people. We get hurt by people. We get rejected by people. But when they die we often still grieve the loss and need a place to say so and a place to mourn.