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Often we hear people say that someone is in denial after the death of a loved one, as if this was a cause for worry. However, this denial can serve a purpose as we face the shockwave of losing someone we love. Denial can help us to survive these early days. In this stage, we feel that life makes no sense. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on. We struggle to find a way to simply get through the day. It may feel utterly impossible to pray. It is important to recognise our DENIAL is a protection; it helps us to cope and makes survival possible in these times. There can be a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.
Then, as we very slowly begin to recover a little bit of strength, the denial begins to fade. The pain and reality intensify.
Reflection
Reflection
"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."
Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me – not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"
And that is dying..."
Gone From My Sight , by Henry Van Dyke, American author, 1852-1933
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