The Grammar of Grief

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Saturday, June 20, marks three years since the death of our youngest son, Chris.

In some ways, these past three years have flown by. In other ways, the moments have crawled by at a snail’s pace. But in those three years of slow-fast days of grief, I made some interesting observations about myself and others.

Maybe I was just naïve or unprepared, but most of my observations were totally unexpected. For example, it continues to amaze me that lots of people, Christians included, tend to deal best with the grief of others by total avoidance of the topic. I get it; I really do, and I am certain I was guilty of that same approach to my grieving friends before Chris died.

It’s not that people are callous (for the most part). It’s more a matter of not knowing what to say or how to react. Even my closest friends often choose to remain silent on the subject. To be honest, I appreciate that tactic far more than offering obligatory words and clichéd phrases.

So, along the way, I really have learned to accept both silence and platitudes with His grace, because I was once in the same predicament, choosing whether to say nothing to a grieving friend or risk saying the wrong thing altogether.

But there is one attitude about grief that really does bug me badly. So much so that I still am a little shocked and insulted when I hear or even sense the sentiment from others, suggesting that my family and I should already be “over” our grief by now.

It is such a ridiculous sentiment that I almost want to laugh aloud. How do parents “get over” the fact that their child is not here and never will be?

Now, don’t get me wrong. We have total peace about the loss of our son. We know where Chris is, who made a way for him to be there, and how important it is that the rest of us also make our way homeward to Chris and his Savior.

Consequently, we probably live more purposefully and more intently than we ever have. In fact, our lives have never been more focused on sharing the gospel than now. We live, give, and pray with more compassion, direction, and humility than we did before Chris died. Our lives are also much more one-directional now, since we know firsthand about the frailty and temporal nature of this life.

Yes, our blood-bought peace is ever-present, but it is not passive. We want every other mother and father to have this same peace we have in knowing that we will see our son again because of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of God’s only begotten Son.

But no, we will not “get over” the loss of Chris. He is and always will be (throughout all eternity) an integral part of our lives.

That is exactly why we consistently integrate our love of Chris (and our continual ache to be with him again) into every aspect of our daily walk.

According to numerous articles and research on grief, our approach to grief is one of the healthiest ways to live with the loss of a loved one. As a matter of fact, the clinical term for this approach to life after loss is integrated grief.

Please be aware, though, that when exploring the topic of grief online, it can quickly become confusing. Not only are there medically defined stages of grief, but some clinical sources discuss as many as 11 or 12 types of grief.

Thankfully, the counselors at Australia’s Griefline concisely explained that grief can occur after any type of loss, but grief over a death is termed bereavement. This type of grief often manifests in four ways:

Acute grief involves the intense emotions experienced right after a death.
Integrated grief occurs when emotions are integrated into normal life functions.
Prolonged grief is persistent, preventing normal integration of emotions.
Disenfranchised grief describes emotions that cannot be acknowledged.

Obviously, we are no longer experiencing acute grief, and we definitely do not suffer from disenfranchised grief. So, the question becomes whether we are “normally” integrating our loss into our regular life functions.

I believe we are physically, emotionally, and spiritually integrating our grief over the death of Chris quite well into our daily lives, even now, three years since he went home to heaven. That does not mean that we will ever “get over” his absence. Nor will we get through it, get around it, or even get beyond it.

Grief is not simply a matter of prepositions. Even as a retired English teacher, it seems trite, or even somewhat sacrilegious, for me to use grammatical terms of any type to explain away our deep sense of loss over the death of our son.

Even today, it became almost impossible to resolve those contradictions as I tried to finish writing this blog. I sensed God’s leading to write about this topic, but it was also hard to construct an appropriate ending to this article on the grammar of grief.

Then, during some additional research, God graciously led me to an amazing article on this topic by Randy Alcorn, one of my all-time favorite Christian writers. Ironically, Alcorn expressed similar feelings to mine over the grammatical perplexities of grief. In this timely article, penned on the second anniversary of his wife Nanci’s death, Alcorn even stated: “There is something in me that does not want to ever ‘get over’ my loss of Nanci.”

Alcorn’s words had me hooked, but what I read after those words held my attention and my heart: “Yet I also recognize that God has been doing a work of grace in my life over the last two years, and bringing me comfort that allows me to go forward without her. Greatly helped by the anticipation of being with her again in the presence of Jesus!”

Exactly!

So, even though our ongoing grief for Chris cannot be explained away with simple prepositions, it does come down to the basic grammatical bedrock of subject-verb agreement: Hope reigns because Jesus lives.

Editor’s note: For another glimpse into the wisdom of Randy Alcorn and his work with Eternal Perspective Ministries, check out this March 2025 article from The Stand.

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