On Islands: Grieving and Moving Forward

As our campus grieves the loss of Daniel Kim, a fellow student at the University of Notre Dame who passed away this weekend, I am left reflecting on grief. It’s such a universal human emotion – we have all grieved at some point over some one or some place or some thing – and yet it can be such a personally isolating, desolate place to settle. You can “share your grief” with others and yet feel utterly alone.

Grieving is not just sadness. It can be. But it can also contain anger, frustration, joy, laughter, confusion, denial. It may involve a revival of faith or a wavering of faith. It can make the griever feel big and significant or small and inconsequential. Grieving is an acute sense of loss which can be accompanied by the entire spectrum of possible human emotions.

And sometimes, especially if we haven’t grieved in a while, we forget that all of this is wrapped up in the process.

January 21 was the one-year anniversary of the death of a high school friend and classmate of mine. One of my friends on the ND campus, who also lost a high school classmate during her freshman year of college, recently shared an important perspective with me. When we grieve for some one, we don’t have to try to move on. That’s impossible, and it simply doesn’t do justice to the life lived. Instead, the process we must embark upon is the process of first beginning to heal, and then moving forward – remembering, keeping in mind, and carrying with.

It took the event of my friend’s death and the subsequent intense despair and isolation that plagued me for a while to recognize what a communal experience grief can be. I felt like an island after receiving the news of my friend, separated by miles upon miles and states upon states from the others who knew and loved him. But once I turned to my family of friends on campus, I tapped into a community of support and love that I didn’t realize was necessarily so real and present before. I found a safe place to heal in the people right around me.

The dichotomy between needing to be alone and yearning for community during a time of grief can be exemplified through David Weale’s Introduction to his book Chasing the Shore:

“What I call my ‘self’ appears most days to be a very small island in an immense ocean, but I have discovered that what seems to be separate is not separate at all, but is connected beneath the surface of consciousness to all that is…we are all the tips of a concealed greatness that is, most of the time, beyond our abilities to discern…for those with eyes to see it turns out to be a place of infinite extension, and a portal to the eternal…”

I have discovered that the “concealed greatness” which Weale speaks of is God’s deep, unwavering love for humanity. It is this love that connects us all, from creation through life and death and into eternity. It is this love that grounds us, even amidst intense grief. It is this love that offers us a point of orientation to stand on as we start the process of healing, as islands connected within a community. Together, we begin the process of moving forward.