Rupture (Special Edition)

We understand how difficult it is to travel this path of grief and how important and monumental the loss of a loved one can be . So we created this podcast to help you walk with God as you grieve your losses , understand what's happening in your heart and soul as you grieve , to be available in the best way we can to accompany you on this journey .

You're always welcome in this circle of healing , love and support .

You've all heard me say before that I've spent 15 years in a grief ministry , helping others through the process , reminding them of God's presence in the process , hopefully giving comfort along the way , pointing out pitfalls and asking people to be gentle with themselves as they went through this journey . Now I find myself face-to-face with my own advice .

My father recently died and I try to take care to avoid the pitfalls I've talked about , to experience the grief I was feeling in the moment and not put it away for future processing . My sons were with me at my father's funeral , as well as my two oldest grandchildren , who supplied amazing support . Support .

As with most funerals , disparate family members came together who hadn't been together or seen each other for an extended amount of time , for sometimes many years . So , like most funerals , it has that quality of a family reunion running underneath the grief . My father's death was not unexpected .

He'd been in hospice for several months and ill for probably the last two years , so his death was neither a shock or unexpected . But , as is always the case , the shock waves afterward are not always expected . My father's last few years were complicated by a second marriage after my mother died nearly 30 years ago .

But that always brings divided loyalties , divided interests and in the end , the only thing we did all of us , the sisters , the widow agree is that we should care for him the best we could . So in the last year I spent four separate monthly visits with my dad at the end and I was with him when he took his final breath .

This was important to me , as I had experienced so many people's dying breath and wanted to be there for his final moment to be special in the cosmos , and I was begrudgingly given the opportunity to do that .

I am sorry to use the word begrudgingly , but , as has become clear since his death , that the underlying emotions between his daughters and his second wife , the widow , were not always expressed clearly , understood clearly or processed clearly . Frankly , an earthquake occurred two days after his funeral .

My younger sister wrote to me in an email how she had thought the funeral was so disrespectful to the widow . Her words were very hurtful , broke my heart in many ways . But I've realized several things in the days that have passed since that email , the earthquake email .

Somehow sometimes the life events and the death events in our lives cause doors to be opened , windows to be closed , people to move on , memories to be left in the basement . I knew and loved my father for 75 years . We had a complete life together before he ever met the widow .

I know you can hear the resentment in my voice and hopefully by the time this gets edited it will be more useful . But right now I thought it was important to get all my feelings recorded so I can make the best sense of it .

The grief part starts after the funeral , when the family gets together and wants to both celebrate and support each other , express their love for one another and mourn the passing of someone who was adored .

Ours took the form of a traditional Irish wake --although he's not Irish , he's Danish-- in a local Irish tavern where we all sat around a giant table and ate and drank and toasted him , sang songs and remembered . It felt perfect to me . The service had gone beautifully , all of us were able to retain our wits about us and the burial would be the next day .

The younger relatives stayed long after the rest of us left and celebrated into the night . But I thought of it as a true Irish wake and my sons , being Irish , set the right tone . T he morning of his burial . I had been given permission by his widow to do that portion of the service . I had prepared it many years ago .

As my father was not is not a religious man , I wanted to put together meaningful words about him that would not be overly religious .

So I took a quote from Thomas Merton , who I'm certain no one really knew was a Trappist monk , and I took other words from Karl Rahner , who I'm sure they don't know was a Jesuit priest , and I took words from Khalil Gibran , who they may have heard of , and when the Marines did their slow salute and the folding of the flag , I knew how pleased he would be

. It was a sunny day , as he was laid to rest next to my mom . And it wasn't until the next day when I went back to visit the cemetery , with the newly filled in grave topped with all the flowers left from the service .

It looked so beautiful and as we sat there , the wind blowing the flowers , I played 'a parting glass' , a version of which my son had recorded . It was a beautiful day and a beautiful moment , and I came away from Iowa with that memory that we'd said a perfect goodbye . And it was the next day when the earthquake came .

Relationships between sisters are always complicated , especially if there's only three of you , as the power dynamic goes back and forth and forth and back two getting along against the other , one time other two getting along against the othe r . You're always in or out of one of those circles , but this was the sister I thought I was closest to and she let go .

Paragraph after paragraph of vitriol and hate that I had never seen her capable of . It was directed to both of us other sisters , the 'out' sisters-- how she had been disappointed and we had been so disrespectful to his widow by having a wake , by celebrating together at his house after the burial and at my sister's house the Saturday night before the funeral .

Her disappointment was palpable and the wounds were deep and the Rubicon was crossed . But it's now starting to look like , although his widow took good care of him , she resented the fact of three grown women also mourning his passing , mourning his death . Our ideas about how his last days should be , our ideas about the funeral .

Every reference to my mom was minimized , minimized as if she never existed , as if she hadn't spent 50 years of her life with him before she died , as if she didn't exist . So hard we were trying not to offend .

And so I fell into the trap and I put some of my mourning aside out of respect for her , but was criticized harshly in the earthquake letter for not deferring to her enough .

all seems so very important now , and I'm sure it won't in time , but the earthquake letter stands as a signpost , as a comma , as a semicolon , as a period , as the Rubicon and in a way it makes perfect sense . This is a new page .

this is a new time , when my ties to that place , my ties to the prairie , are gone , like when you hear the wind through the corn and suddenly it goes quiet and there's no more sound . That doesn't mean the corn is gone , it only means you've ceased to hear it . That concludes another episode . A new one drops every Friday .

Please join us on Spotify , amazon Music or Apple . Thank you for joining us . Spiritual direction is always available . See my contact email in the show notes . This is Candy Candee Lucas , your host , chaplain and spiritual director . Go with God . Namaste , vaya con Dios . You .