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Today at Church was All Saints Sunday. In the Methodist tradition anyway, this is a day to honor the people that have gone on before us. We light a candle for the members of our Church who have passed away during the last year. It’s a time of reflection about those people and what they meant to us. Last year, the handbell choir was playing and I was sitting in the congregation waiting to go to my spot to play with one of the other bell ringers. When I realized after sitting down that her son’s name was on the list to be read off, for a moment I felt totally inadequate to be sitting next to her. I didn’t know her all that well and I wasn’t sure if I would have the right words to say to her. When her son’s name got closer and closer in the reading and lighting of the candles, I could feel her begin to tense up, preparing herself for that moment. Suddenly thoughts of “what if it was me who was standing here waiting for my son’s name to be read” overwhelmed me and the tears began to fall. As hers fell along side mine as her son’s name was spoken and his candle lit, I put my arm around her. Vicarious tears..That’s what I cried. Though the true meaning of vicarious tears would be to take the place of another, to feel the pain or take the punishment, etc for them. Certainly I didn’t do that. I simply shared her pain.
As the candles were lit today to honor those people who had gone on before us, I thought about loss. Everyone around me had suffered the loss of a loved one since I’d known them. Some years ago, like myself when my mom died. Next to me , Maddie who I knew had lost her grandmother, on the other side Marsha who had lost her son, Cindy who had lost her husband…everyone around me had experienced the pain of grief in some way or another.
The sermon, not surprisingly was called “ Tears of sadness, could they ever be gladness?” I remember a counselor telling me that everyone has a different path through their grief. That you can’t put a timeframe on when it will be to feel less painful to not have that person you love around. For my own loss, she told me that when the grass began to grow on my mother’s grave that I should be healed enough to visit it without being totally overcome with grief. I forgot all about those words until some time later while visiting the gravesite I suddenly realized that there was grass growing on the mound of dirt which had steadily gotten smaller as the soil adjusted back into the earth. And I realized she was right. Gone was the gut wrenching sorrow and tears that flowed like fountains every time I thought about my mom and how much I missed her. That feeling had been replaced with gratitude and gladness for the life she had lived and the values she had passed on to me and the love I knew still surrounded me. Hope had bubbled back to the surface. Solid faith that I would one day see her again in Heaven.
I remember reading somewhere in the Bible that God collects our tears and records them all in a book. I think it’s a Psalms. I remember during the divorce one day when the tears of sadness and hurt were flowing like a river as I thought about the loss that verse popped into my head, along with a vision of hundreds of Angels on an assembly line with buckets collecting the tears and pouring them into the “beautiful river of life” while dozens of others steadily wrote in ledgers . I think about that moment sometimes when I see someone crying. I remember after my mom died and the ride home to Muskogee sobbing so hard the car shook and Bill pulling over to put his arms around me to stop the flow. I remember he said that he had never seen so many tears in his life. And I told him about the bucket line of Angels and he laughed at the vision with me.
Today Rusty said that tears tell a story and the important thing is to find out what is behind the tears and express that sorrow to someone we trust, our own personal wailing wall so to speak. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
We had a prayer meditation written out at the top of the list of names that we were lighting candles for. It gave thanks to God for all those who have gone on before us. It gave thanks for the sacrifices that they had made. One verse in particular struck me….we give thanks for hands lifted in praise…manicured hands and hands stained with grease and or soil, Strong hands and those gnarled with age………..whether hard hatted or steel booted, head ragged or aproned, blue collared or three piece suited….they left their mark on earth for us, for our children to come.
Tears are universal. Every person on the face of the earth has shed a tear at one time……ok better say most. We share that commonality. As we were taking communion, I felt that communality with those kneeling at the altar beside me. As we spoke in unison the Lord’s prayer I listened to the voices around me, young and old and male and female and I felt a sense of belonging overcome me. Tears began to well in my eyes. Tears of joy that I am so blessed, tears of gratitude for the life I have. Mingled with those happy tears were vicarious tears. For those who are hurting. For those feeling hopeless and in despair. I’ve been there. I feel your pain. But I also know that someday those tears of sadness will suddenly be tears of gladness. Sorrow may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning. For some of us it endures a lot of nights and we keep waiting and waiting for that morning…it will come.
At the memorial service we have each year for our Hospice patients who have died the year before I’ve noticed something. There are phases and faces of grief. For those whose loss is recent, the grief has not become bearable yet. For those who have had some time to heal, you see smiles as they are reunited with the nurses and aides and others who had a small part in the life of their loved one. They can openly share a memory of the last days of that life without becoming overcome with tears. Others aren’t to that point yet. But they can look at those who are and know that someday they will be in those shoes. And those who have been through it, and know that the pain will ebb can shed some tears of empathy. At the end of our hospice service, family members release a white balloon. As the balloons rise together it always seems that they stick together until they are no longer in sight. A shared moment of grief, a shared moment of hope. Tears flow, hugs abound. It’s a priceless moment .
Rev 21:4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."
What a promise!
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