But as a child, my mother read me - and I'm sure you know it - the story of Hansel and Gretel, those two children lost in a dark wood. If you were like me, suddenly as you heard the tale, you became a small and terrified Hansel or Gretel. No matter how well you knew that forested landscape by day, you know that everything changes and shifts at night. The shadows are black and obscure everything; now the sounds you hear are the sounds of the night hunters, their footfalls tracking their prey in the underbrush or their screeching high overhead in a sky lit by a few stars and a dim moon. Terror-stricken, trying to move quickly, you bump into tree trunks, stumble over roots, get caught in vines. And ominously find yourself going in circles! You cry helplessly. There seems to be no way out.
The journey of grief is like being lost in a dark wood. The landscape of your life that you knew so well by day has been engulfed by the darkness and shadows of a strange, never-ending grief. You don't know which way to turn. All your familiar routines are up-ended: no-one home to share the day with or the bed with; no call from that child on your birthday; no one to tell you the best way to get that stain out of your pants or to fold your socks or underwear the way you like them, or how to run the snowblower or how to do that simple plumbing chore; no hug from a parent or sibling whom you could share every secret with and lean on when you felt empty or disconnected. The person who has died is the one whom above all you would have shared your grief with!
And there is no road or path through these dark woods. You try to get through the tangles quickly, and you stumble over the roots of your own impatience, slam into the hard wooden trunks of the reality of empty days. You're choked by the vines of memories. You hear the unseen predators gathering in the underbrush around you: anger, despair, cynicism, lack of faith, a numbness that prevents you from feeling emotions, a vast weariness with life that makes you want to end it all. You think you see a clearing ahead, or even enter one for awhile, slack with relief, but the dark woods begin again on the other side. Sometimes you feel as if you're going in circles. You cry helplessly.
Sooner or later, we have to admit to ourselves that we are crying for ourselves. If we have faith, we trust that the one we love has gone before us into a realm of light, of peace, of joy, of healing. We are crying because half of ourselves is gone and we are stumbling around like someone who has lost a limb and so has lost his balance. We are crying because we are lost in a dark wood, a world we knew well by day but that has become strange, unknowable, dangerous, and hostile because of our loss. The peaceful solitude of a wood by day has become the agonizing loneliness of a wood by night.
Yet, Hansel and Gretel, to prevent themselves from being lost, did leave a trail for themselves - of bread crumbs. They were resourceful and took the initiative to care for themselves. Death forces us back on ourselves so that we can encounter the deep reserves within ourselves that we were totally unaware of until we were thrust into total disorientation, grief, and near-despair.
"Death is a moment of enlightenment. It is that pause in life that gives us the right to double over with pain, without apology, without embarrassment. It is the moment God uses to remind us that we alone, not someone else, are responsible for our happiness, our attitudes, our development, our failings. The truth is that death throws us back on ourselves. No wonder we cry so hard." (Joan Chittister, in "A Month of Memories.")
What are the breadcrumbs that we have thrown down which end up guiding us through this dark wood? Our relationship with the person we've lost is a guide: his or her love for us during his earthly life with us has shown us our worth, has undergirded our wills with the steel of endurance, has shown us like a blinding light in the darkness that love which someone has placed in our souls lasts past death.
The simple comforts and rituals that we have long enjoyed are our guides, and we must not give them up: the daily ritual of drinking hot coffee while sitting to watch the dawn at a kitchen window; the daily ritual of re-filling the bird feeder; the daily ritual of talking with a particular friend; the daily ritual of exercise or embroidering or reading or praying; the daily ritual of enjoying the sunny smiles and bubbling laughs of a child. These daily rituals remind us of the warm solidity of who we are. To enjoy these daily rituals should not make us feel guilty - these daily habits and rituals are life itself! Life tasted, smelled, seen, heard, embraced, known to be good and filling and wonderful! The terrible darkness of death which has engulfed us throws into sharp relief the blinding splendor of even the simplest shortest moments of life.
Our other guide through the dark woods of grief is our Good Shepherd, Who is leading us through this fearful unknown landscape gently, surely, with great fidelity. It is He Who points out each turning; He Who is present to us in every warm hug, every kind word or tangible gift; He gives us new insights into who we are, what we're capable of, what our lives can grow into now. Because there is a final clearing, a new space in which we can turn around, spread out our arms and see the curling smoke of welcoming houses and even a peaceful lake in the distance.
Perhaps, once out of the woods, we face a new landscape for us to inhabit. Perhaps it is our old familiar landscape which now we are really seeing for the first time.
What deep gratitude we can feel for God Who has led us this far and simultaneously shown us what strength and resourcefulness we have within us. With perhaps more understanding than we've ever had before, we can say to Him:
"You, God, are my shepherd; I shall want nothing.
You make me lie down in green pastures,
and lead me beside waters of peace;
You renew life within me,
and for your name's sake guide me in the right paths.
Even though I walk through a valley dark as death
I fear no evil, for you are with me,
Your rod and your staff are my comfort." (Psalm 23: 1-4.)
Death cruelly deprives us of those we love. But death can also be a gift, a gift which gives us an understanding and appreciation of our lives in new and unexpected ways. Joan Chittister says
"Death seems so cruel, so purposeless at times. But it's not. Death is what alerts the rest of us to life - just when we have grown tired of it ourselves, perhaps, or worse yet, simply unaware of it at all.
Perhaps before our loved one's death, we'd been wandering in a dark wood. A dark wood of complacency. A dark wood of selfishness and self-absorption. A dark wood of pride and unbridled ambition. A dark wood of despair. And suddenly death thrust us into a new wood, new sights, sounds, unknown pathways - and we came out on the other side of those woods into a new brightness, a deeper understanding of love and compassion. We met someone in those woods. Maybe God. Maybe, for the first time, we met ourselves.
One of my favorite books since adolescence is Elizabeth Goudge's "Pilgrim's Inn," in which there is a wondrous wood. One scene goes like this:
"It was meeting in the wood," explained Sally. "I believe that wood is a very direct route to wherever it is one is going. Some places are like that; they seem to hurry you on."
The dark wood of death and grief is one of those places that can be a very direct route to where God is leading us. Dark, twisting, tormenting, unknowable, it still seems that this pervasive suffering can lead us quite surely to an internal transformation, a new consciousness of who we are, a new understanding that we are alive for a purpose. Experiencing grief hurries us on, kicking and screaming, into a new life in spite of our wants or fears. As Sally says, some places, whether we want them in our lives or not, are like that. It's true that once you stumble through those dark woods of grieving, life will never be as it was again. But have faith that there are golden clearings and waters of peace and new walks in green and radiant woods waiting for you on the other side.