Working Through Loss
Guest Writer: Larry Burton
It is probably my age because I often find myself reminiscing about the past. Growing up in a preacher’s family meant moving every few years. At one level, I became quite good at it.
Larry growing up on the farm
All those losses were stuffed in a mental drawer, and we started over in a new city, house, school, and church. That drawer of memories was pretty full, and now it opens quite often, whether by intention or not. I feel pangs of empathy with those in Southern California suffering from the devastation of the fires, which have angrily burned homes and neighborhoods to the ground.
We have all suffered loss and will continue to until we die.
I recall a day years ago when my father and I drove to all the places where he had lived as a kid and as a young adult. We visited cemeteries—mostly forgotten and overgrown—schools now closed, a house or two still standing, and then to Knox County, where he met my mother. My grandfather had been the pastor of Asbury Chapel, and it is there that my mother and most of her relatives are buried. It is also where my parents met.
Growing up, my brother and I spent many summers on the family farm in Knox County. We helped with the chores. I learned how to milk a cow; my brother was driving a truck when he was 13. A white barn (cows and two horses) and a red barn (hay storage and tractor) were favorite places. There was a smokehouse and a chicken yard, and standing grandly in front of it was a large house built in 1812.
I loved that house. But when we pulled up in front that particular day, a link fence surrounded it, and the house had collapsed into the cellar. I burst into tears.
Those memories came back as I read about the California fires, and I felt my stomach begin to churn as I imagined all the things and places that had been familiar to those folks in LA but destroyed beyond recognition in just moments. The library, the school, the church. The place where someone had their first date, the field where they played, the movie theater, the drug store…all gone. Loss after loss after loss.
When we go to sleep, we put another day to rest and expect to greet a new day in the morning. And that is what will happen…eventually. Humans cannot live long in the midst of loss, or we would go mad. I have friends who are still processing the November election and are still angry at the loss of their presidential candidate. They fear the end of democracy. But the sun sets, and the sun rises. The days get longer. Spring will surprise us, but it will arrive soon.
And there is one other thing. The most important thing. St. Paul, writing to the community in Rome, said, “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?... I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[b] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” And that, in one way or another, is what sustains us in the midst of loss, even devastating loss.
Our parents are dead, even a grandchild. We have left places and people we loved. Right now, I look up and see a painting of the best house of all, the one on the river in Winamac, IN. A condo is not the same as that house or the farm of long ago. But God is with us, just as God is with all those who have fled from the fire, perhaps never to return. And still, God is with us.
So, in these days of terrible loss, there is a sustaining power beyond memory and fear. That is where we can live and even thrive in these troubling times.
Larry+ Burton
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com