Grief, that wound left especially by loss, has been on my mind lately. The last ten years I have lost my mother, my father, a father-in-law, an uncle, my only cousin, a great friend (these last two far two young), and three pets. Further compounding this whole thing is that in my biological family no one is interested in communicating with one another. One can find solace in knowing, this side of heaven, that loss is common to all. It’s a wound that lasts for a very long time and even after it heals will leave its mark. That mark is the token, the keepsake, for those chapters in the story of our journey. It doesn’t come cheap, and it should be taken seriously. There is weight to it. The only way to have grieved someone is to have loved them. You cannot grieve the loss of unloved things. To have grief, there must be love.

While all must confront grief at some point, in the suffering, there is a choice to be made: How is the grief to be handled? How are the briars and sticky points to be navigated? In the book Faith, Hope, and Carnage, songwriters Sean O’Hagan and Nick Cave go deep on grief and the mark it leaves and the choices before them. Cave says, “You either go under, or [the loss] changes you, or, worse, you become a small, hard thing that has contracted around an absence. Sometimes you find a grieving person constricted around the thing they have lost; they’ve become ossified and impossible to penetrate, and, well, other people go the other way, and grow open and expansive.” Some lose hope and succumb to the grief, either in depression or bitterness. For them the focus is inward. Others turn outward, either looking for help or as a release. Both of these men suffered traumatic losses. O’Hagan, his brother, and Cave, his teenage son. But they were able to find a course in which to take the latter route.

In his 2019 album, Ghosteen, Nick Cave and his band the Bad Seeds, in what is a very different album compared to their earlier work, explores what it might be like for the ‘migrating spirit’ of the titular character. The album conceived as a double album is grouped into two sections. The first, tracks 1-8, are called children, in which he sings about imaginative landscapes and enchanted stories. The second, tracks 9-11, are the parents, in which he sings of love and loss. While there is so much to digest here, take a listen for yourself. What Cave has been able to do is bring forth an expansion of his own experience in handling grief.

As a longtime fan, I am aware of Cave’s journey through faith and his relationship with the Lord. And in his songs, there is a recognition that the hand of God is with him. And that my dear friend is what I know has been with me, even when I could not sense it. He was there. He has and is by my side. He walks with me. He is there for you too! He’s always been there and will always be. Let that knowledge soak into your being and allow you to open yourself up to all that He has for you. That is the hope and faith that I carry that has allowed me to move forward, to look beyond myself and to share His light with others. I am depending on it.

Let’s pray, “Lord, thank you for those who you place into our lives, from the day of our birth to this day. Thank you for the ability to love another, to participate in life together with them. Thank you for the way that our earthly relationships are just a glimpse into the relationship you desire with us. Help us Lord, to seek you in the morning and learn to walk in your ways. Thank you Lord.”

Working through and trying to turn grief into something to move outward through artistic creativity is a much larger topic than I’m ready to share this month. Next time I’ll discuss some of the ways that helped me navigate those troubled waters with the ever-present help of our Father.