Grief is like a Feral Cat
“Grief is like a feral cat. She doesn’t come when I call, and she doesn’t stay away if I ask her to leave me alone. She shows up whenever and wherever she chooses. When I see her coming, I never know if it’s going to be a friendly encounter, or if I’m going to spend the rest of the day soothing scratches and bite marks she left behind. Sometimes she stays away so long I think she’s never coming back, but so far I’ve never been right about that.”
I wrote that last September, after going for a hike in the woods with Zelda, our 65 pound stafordshire terrier rescue. My daughter was 11 that fall, and she and I were struggling. And I was thinking about that struggle on my walk, and how inadequate I felt to be all the things I needed to be. It occurred to me that Ginny needed a cool aunt. Let me be clear that Ginny has an awesome aunt who lives in North Alabama. But at that moment I wanted Ginny to have an aunt close by, whose house she could run away to when we weren’t getting along. Someone cooler and funnier than her mom. Someone smart and practical, but not too practical, who might buy her things that I thought she didn’t need. Someone who loved her fiercely and could give her solid advice when she didn’t want to talk to me about something.
My eyes filled with tears as I walked, my pace slowed from a vigorous hike to more of a shuffle, and I wept for the rest of the walk, because Ginny should have had that aunt. It should have been her Aunt Kelly, who died in 2016. I did a lot of crying in the days, weeks, and months after Kelly died, and yet, I had never grieved this particular loss. Ginny was six when Kelly died, and I had no idea at that time that 11-year old Ginny would need her.
I finished my hike, and got in the car to drive home. The tears dried up and I started thinking about the weirdness of grief. How it comes out of nowhere sometimes, and there are occasions where it’s a comfort - I still remember, I still feel love, I’m still human and my loved ones are still with me as long as all of that remains. And other times it wrecks me.
It’s not unlike the wild cats that used to live under my great-grandmother’s porch. Sometimes they would come out and let me pet them and I’d think, “maybe this will be ok now?” And other times I’d end up with scratches all over my arms and legs, and Ma-maw would have to coat me in Campho-Phenique. Does anyone know what that is? It comes in this ancient looking green bottle, and it smells like…it smells like a great-grandmother’s bathroom. So, when the cats got me, Ma-maw would put it all over my scratches and bites, so that not only was I scratched up, but I also looked shiney, and I smelled weird. I had no control over what kind of interaction I would have with those cats, and I could not predict when the interactions would happen or how long they would last.
Yes, grief is like a feral cat.
And because I’m a writer and a theologian, I shared these thoughts on Facebook. It seemed to resonate with folks, and several of my friends commented, liked, and shared the post. I was surprised, however, to receive a couple of private messages asking me who had died. They said, “Did I miss something? Did you lose someone recently?”
I know that came out of concern, and I appreciate them checking on me, but when I read those messages I felt embarrassed that I was still grieving. I responded “No, it’s not new, I’m just not over something that happened years ago.” As if my continued experience of grief and loss was a sign that I had not moved on, that I was somehow stuck.
We want our grief to move along. I sometimes hear people apologize for their continued grief, not only around death, but about all kinds of losses. They will say things like,
It’s not like it was a surprise, she had been sick for so long.
I didn’t even like that job; I don’t know why I’m so upset.
I can’t believe I still get this emotional, He’s been gone so long.
Or people use the word “just” and “only” to minimize their loss -
It was just a house.
It was just a pet.
We were only married a few years.
It was just a sister-in-law.
I was only pregnant a few weeks.
It was just one of those things.
I like when things are linear. When I can know what progress looks like, when I can see improvement, and when I can know that I’m done. There is confidence and reliability in things that work that way. Grief is not one of those things. It changes and transforms, and it changes and transforms us, but it’s not linear, and it’s definitely not reliable.
So, what if we didn’t judge our grief? What if we accept it as a natural part of life? And like every other emotion, it will come and go, sometimes without our permission.
On another walk with Zelda, I was listening to a podcast that I was hoping would help me be more efficient at work, and instead I learned to understand myself and my grief in a really helpful way. This was Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead Podcast, and she was interviewing James Clear, who is the author of the bestselling book, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. So, if it’s not clear from the title, this is not a book about grief. It’s not a book about faith or theology. It’s a book about changing small habits to help you achieve your goals. This book has no place in this sermon, but here we go.
Brene asked James what people do to sabotage themselves as they try to achieve their goals. And this was his response, I’m quoting from the transcript of the podcast -
“We talked a couple of minutes ago about guilt and shame and all these feelings kind of weaving their way in, and this is one of the things that I try to push back on a little bit with all of the goal-related strategies and stuff is, they all kind of encourage you to feel bad if you haven’t achieved the goal yet, it’s this weird thing where you like, you set this goal for yourself and then you’re like, once I get there, then I’ll finally be enough… You come up with all these kind of things like that, and you think, “Okay, once I achieve this milestone off in the distance, then I can be happy.” …
I like to think about the metaphor of like a seed or an acorn, where it’s an acorn and then you plant it and it becomes a sapling and it breaks through the ground, and then it grows a little bit further and it’s like this immature tree, and then eventually, it’s this mighty oak, and at no point along the way do you criticize it for what it is, you don’t look at the acorn and be like, “Man, what an idiot, you’re not a grand oak yet. Oh, how terrible, you’re just a sapling.” We don’t look at it like it’s this unfinished terrible thing, and yet we do that with ourselves all the time, and yet, and this is, I think, the crucial piece, the acorn never stops growing, the tree never stops growing, not because it’s not what it should be, not because it’s unsatisfied with how it is at that time, but just because that’s what a tree does. And I think we can also try to apply that to our own lives. Not having this guilt or shame about not achieving a goal yet or feeling terrible about where you’re at, you can release all of that, and it doesn’t mean that you have to be stagnant. It doesn’t mean that you can’t improve anymore, you can continue to do those things, just because that’s what you do, just because that’s who you are, but not because you’re not enough yet.”
So, grief is a feral cat. You and I are trees, and it’s not helpful to judge a tree. Can you imagine looking at a sapling and thinking, ”If we work really hard we can make you grow tall enough to give us shade next summer.” That’s not how growth works. That’s not how life works. That’s not how grief works.
I’d like to take James’ metaphor a step further and recognize that all trees go through seasons, regardless of its stage of growth. I wouldn’t look at the big elm tree in my yard, having already lost its leaves for the winter, and say, “Why don’t you have leaves? A tree should always have leaves.” Expecting a tree to have leaves in every season shows a fundamental misunderstanding of trees.
There are seasons. Seasons of warmth, seasons that give us chills, seasons of joy, seasons of grief. And because we live in Atlanta, we know better than most that seasons can change in the middle of the day, sometimes twice. Expecting a human to be happy in every season shows a fundamental misunderstanding of humans.
If we look at our grief, as if it is this unfinished thing, that will someday be finished, and at that time we can be happy or ok with ourselves, we’re going to not only continue to grieve, but we’re going to feel worse for thinking that we should be finished by now.
In 2016 I could not imagine the ways in which I would miss Kelly in 2022, but neither could I imagine the ways that joy would become a normal part of our life again. That doesn’t mean I was grieving wrong then, or that I’m finished grieving now. It means there are seasons, and I’m still growing like I’m supposed to.
Trees continue to grow and change, because that’s what trees do. We continue to grow and change, because that’s what we do. Grief will visit us, sometimes it’s like she’s moved in forever. Sometimes she just winks from the sidewalk and moves along.
There’s no such thing as unfinished or finished grief. It’s just grief.
And on this side of heaven, there’s no such thing as unfinished or finished you. It’s just you. It’s just me. And we are enough. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Preached December 21, 2022 at Decatur First United Methodist Church, Decatur, GA.
Based on Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 (NRSVUE)
There’s a season for everything
and a time for every matter under the heavens:
a time for giving birth and a time for dying,
a time for planting and a time for uprooting what was planted,
a time for killing and a time for healing,
a time for tearing down and a time for building up,
a time for crying and a time for laughing,
a time for mourning and a time for dancing,
a time for throwing stones and a time for gathering stones,
a time for embracing and a time for avoiding embraces,
a time for searching and a time for losing,
a time for keeping and a time for throwing away,
a time for tearing and a time for repairing,
a time for keeping silent and a time for speaking,
a time for loving and a time for hating,
a time for war and a time for peace.
What do workers gain from all their hard work? I have observed the task that God has given human beings. 11 God has made everything fitting in its time, but has also placed eternity in their hearts, without enabling them to discover what God has done from beginning to end.
