Bills and Wills

Grief is the process we grow through when we experience a loss. I experienced grief not as a series of stages such as Kubler-Ross wrote about, but as though I was the captive of a creaky house with many rooms.

The first Grief Mansion room that I found myself in was called “Busyness.” Here papers mounded high on desks with unseen tops. I was not prepared for the avalanche of paper work that followed Steve’s death. I couldn’t avoid it. Bills, wills, and certificates of death. There seemed to be no end. Busyness gave me purpose and focus in the midst of confusion. In a strange way, it dulled some of the pain.

I observed that men in grief especially love this room. “How’s Larry doing?” “He’s staying busy.” I watched a grieving neighbor cope with his daughter’s tragic death by pouring himself into months and months of major house projects. “Busyness” looks good from the outside. In our culture, the average person expects you to be over it in about six weeks.

"The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love," from Zephaniah 3:17