No tolerance for B-----
I found this poem. Since it's freely on the web, I put it here, with my reaction.
Death Is Nothing At All
Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.
All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
This is nonsense. Death is not nothing. Everything does not remain exactly as it was. Yes, we can heal, and we can live unafraid of superstitious fears of saying the deceased’s name, etc. But something is lost. We are hurt. All is not well. Death is not a negligible accident. All will not be as if was before. It will be better, but the Bible is not so cavalier and dismissive of grief. The Bible is as real as any book about the human condition. None of this pious inhuman abstract Platonic dualistic bologna (baloney)! People die, and it hurts, and we should be able to hurt and not be made ashamed by foolish poems written in Victorian times.
If we deal with grief in ways that do anything to diminish the reality of it, we sin. We grieve not as others who have no hope, but we still grieve.
When Jesus was getting ready to raise Lazarus, he was snorting in anger like an animal. At their grief! No, at death. I suggest reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. It's from a secular perspective, but if an agnostic can help me understand grief, think what a true Biblical view can do.
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