Grief is not an emotion, it's a state of transformation

My sermon on grief

This is back in the early 90s when my mom was selling pagers for a living(!) and hating it was also just getting started in her Chaplaincy training - the beginning of her life as a formal death and grief worker.

I wanted to share with you all the eulogy I wrote for my mom Lynne and delivered last Saturday at her celebration of life service. In part because this is the art I’ve been working on, in between moon posts; it’s where my heart has been at. And in part because I know a lot of you out there are navigating grief. As those of you who have been following along for awhile know my mom was a death and grief worker, a chaplain who worked in hospital ICUs and hospices. But she was also an ordained minister in her own right, who loved to preach. So I thought the best way to eulogize her and celebrate her would be to deliver a sermon about grief, that transmitted some of my own experiences of grieving her death, but also channeled what I think she would say—or, rather, what I think she is saying to me as I go through this. You can actually see and hear me deliver this live, here—it’s a little more than halfway through the recording of the service. But you can also just read it, while thinking about your own loves and losses.

My mom giving a eulogy at her mom's memorial service, and me giving this eulogy at my mom's service. It wasn't until I put these side by side for this post that I realized we used the same quilt for the altar at both services - my great grandmother's quilt. I had to text my sister to be sure - like, did we plan that? We did not.

Grief is not an emotion.

Grief is a state of transformation. It’s a state of love. Grief is love persevering. It’s love going on, even after the object of love, the beloved, has gone, or has changed its form forever.

Grief does involve a lot of emotions, of course. So many feelings! Painful and destabilizing feelings. Feelings you’re not used to feeling. Feelings you might normally be able to keep at bay. Feelings you can feel changing you.

Acute grief, and the feelings that come with it, is very strong medicine. You shouldn’t operate heavy machinery while under its influence. It’s also a little psychedelic. It can make colors brighter, beauty more vivid and arresting, small acts of kindness incredibly potent. It can make a thing that you once found unbearable, or merely very annoying, suddenly something you cherish intensely, something you need, something you would trade anything to have more of.