Lessons on Loss

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

***Starting this week we are going to offer you to listen to the following article read in the authors own voice. The media player above will play Noah Coley reading Lessons on Loss. Feel free to read along, listen only, or any combination you like. If you follow our podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, this content will also be posted in our Family Table Podcast feed. Thanks***

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This week our hearts have been heavy by the passing of a dear friend.

The spring before Elizabeth and I got married, I took what I thought was sure to be the first job in a lifetime career of youth ministry. Fun fact-this would be my first and last job in youth ministry. It was a really cool concept job between a United Methodist Church and Presbyterian Church in Terre Haute, Indiana. Both churches were too small to justify hiring their own youth leader, but together (they were just one block away from each other on Indiana State University’s campus) they hired me.

Both churches had around 5-10 youth group aged kids and every Sunday evening we would rotate between the two churches where we held youth group. Eventually, after Elizabeth and I got married in July of 2009, we took to adding a Wednesday night Bible Study at our rental house on 19th Street. This is where we really got to know Gail.

Gail and her husband Tim have three wonderful children Their oldest two, Jacob and Samantha, were always faithful to come to both youth group and our house. Their youngest son, Will, was too young for youth group at the time, but was a wonderful kid who has grown into a fine young man. We grew very close during our time together. We watched Jacob play varsity baseball before graduating and heading off to The Ohio State to play for the Buckeyes. We also caught some of his games when he traveled with the Terre Haute Rex. Samantha was a theatrical star! We were always excited to see her act in plays like Grease, Don Quixote, and The Diary of Anne Frank. We became very close. Gail became a wonderful friend and advocate for us.

Gail was a beautiful, creative, hilariously funny, eclectic, advertising director, wife, mother and friend. She lost her battle with brain cancer last week and her loss is hard to swallow.

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You may have joined us on this journey with the homestead thinking that we would just share chicken candling videos, farmhouse renovation updates, and gardening advice. In fact, whether on a homestead or in an apartment, regardless of living in the country or in the city, life has great opportunities for joy and pleasure, but we must all also deal with the reality of loss. We choose to be willing to openly discuss and experience both.

Occasionally as Elizabeth and I were growing up, we would receive comments from people we would meet. They would call us things like, “ Old Souls” or “mature beyond our years”, I don’t share this in a braggadocious way, but rather we both know why people noticed we were different. We both went through experiences as kids that felt like we bypassed adolescent bouts of immaturity and propelled us into leadership roles of responsibilities.

For those of you who don’t know Elizabeth and I, we both share membership in a club that neither of us wanted to join. Both of us lost brothers when we were children.

When Elizabeth was 3, she and her brother Nathan were at an in-home daycare, like every weekday, while her parents both worked. Nathan was put down to take a nap in his crib and simply never woke up. The family would find out that Nathan passed away from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). There was nothing to prepare them for receiving such devastating news.

In February of 2000, I was a 7th grader at Clay City Jr/Sr High School. I remember I was eating a salad at lunch (a rare occurrence to be sure) when the school secretary told me to come to the office when I was finished eating. My mind started racing about what I was in trouble for. “Probably something to do with the bus ride,” I remember thinking, because I was always getting mixed up in bus drama. When I went to the office, my little sister Russa was there. They had brought her over from the elementary school. I remember before they took us back into a conference room, I knew that something bad must have happened. My Grandpa Carl had cancer and I started mentally preparing myself for news about him. When we entered the conference room, we were greeted by our parents, our minister, and some of my parents’ friends from church. I remember taking a deep breath as my parents were starting to convey that they had some news for us. My dad through tears simply said, “Matthew (my 19 year old brother) died last night.” He had epilepsy that was generally under control with medication, but that night he had a seizure and passed away.

Matthew Russell Coley and Nathan Charles Beyers

We both lost the people we were closest to in life.

I wish these were the only times that the sting of loss would reach us, but all know that can’t be. We have both experienced losing great grandparents, grandparents, distant relatives, and Elizabeth’s Uncle Don. Elizabeth and I also experienced the pain of going through a miscarriage. In October of 2018 we were at the end of our first trimester with our fourth pregnancy. I remember watching the Chicago Cubs playing in the Wild Card game for the playoffs when Elizabeth told me something was wrong. We went the next day to the doctor and confirmed we were having a miscarriage.

Miscarriages are not something people usually talk openly about, especially not men. This leads me to my first lesson on loss. People often love to step out of their lanes to ask you inappropriately if you are pregnant as if it is a game. They are shocked and excited when they are correct. They want to be the ones who knew first. But when you have to then come back to that same person or group and make a new announcement that the joy you were looking forward to is no longer viable, it is devastating. Let people share their life news on their own timeline. Don’t try to steal their moment. You don’t know what they are going through.

In our logo we choose to remember our sweet baby in the form of the butterfly between sunflowers 3 and 4. This is the birth order of our children.

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If you ever lose someone close to you, you never forget details of the days leading up to and following the funeral. And this is where we start our actual discussion of lessons learned through loss.

I remember my Dad standing at a graveside a few years later making the comment, “I wish someone would write a book on etiquette for people attending funerals.” He had been through enough by this point to tell about good and bad experiences he had been through while being on both sides of the visitation line. That idea stuck with me. Couple that with our own experiences as a counselor in the mental health field, both being public educators, and Elizabeth’s early career in higher education, we want share some helpful things to do and not to do when dealing with loss.

Do

• Go to the visitation and funeral for as many friends and relatives as possible. The greatest present you can give the family is you physical presence.

• Share gifts of food. Immediately the family will have needs to feed a growing number of relatives who are gathering at their house. A deli meat tray (don’t forget bread, cheese, and disposable condiments), disposable metal container of a casserole (pre-baked is good but so is frozen so they can use it when they need it), or a crock pot meal works wonderful. Make sure to mark your crock pot and and lid so they eventually get back to you. And if you don’t feel comfortable preparing a meal? Send a gift card to a restaurant.

  Another great thing to do is set up meals for the family for a period of time. Meal Train is a wonderful tool for this. One word of advice though is to coordinate this effort with the family and/or the church the family may belong to. If you must speak with a family member, try to make it one that is not the one dealing with all the funeral arrangements. It can be too much burden for one person to make all the decisions.

• Offer to take on responsibilities for co-workers at work and your friends and family at their home. When someone passes, at least in my area of the country, family and friends gather at one location. You can offer to clean up the house before everyone comes over or mow the lawn, or get the mail. Any little thing that can take something of insignificance off of the bereaved party.

• Talk to small children at their level. You don’t have to give any graphic details, but convey the big broad issues that is going on. Talk about why you are sad about the loss of someone. About what that person meant to you, or tell them stories about your relationship. Let them know how much that person meant to you, and convey your sadness.

• Acknowledge to yourself that the person suffering is now at peace. But, don’t say that out loud. That is a realization that is best when it comes from the bereaved family left behind. When you try to say it first, it feels like an overused and sad cliche.

• Tell positive stories about the deceased. Family and friends heal when hearing things that their loved ones did. When someone tells a story about a loved one that passed, especially when this person is a co-worker or friend outside the family, it kind of lets the family in on what their loved one was like when they weren’t looking. It can round out their view of their loved one. I remember hearing stories about my brother from a few girls who really liked him and had hoped maybe they would go out sometime, which for me was great because he was very shy and I don’t remember him going on hardly any dates. It gave me hope that if I followed his example of being myself, girls would like me too.

Don’t

• Don’t say any of the following cliches:

  • “God just needed more angels.”

  • “God needed them more than you did.”

  • “God…” Tell you what. Don’t assign any attributes to God’s actions, inactions, or character. You don’t know the motives of the all mighty and pretending you do only serves to distort, confuse, and anger a grieving person.

• Don’t expect the family to comfort you. Don’t get it twisted! You need to be there for them, not the other way around. Making a casket scene all about you is narcissistic and hurtful to the family.

• Don’t put new expectations on a member of the deceased family. Do not tell the son that he is now “the man of the house” that is a ton of pressure at a very vulnerable time.

• Don’t compare a loss in your life to a the recent deceased’s family. “I know what you are feeling, I lost a distant cousin when I was 12.” Every loss is unique. Also some relationships are closer than others. It is not a game of who lost more, or how well the person is holding up versus how well you held up. Remember this, loved ones of the deceased are not firing mentally on all cylinders. Little comments that are meant to be in jest or empathetic are often not received well and can lead to emotional harm to the recipient. This can lead to anger, resentment, or a quiet hardening of their heart towards the offender.

• Don’t sneak momentos into the casket unless you are explicitly invited to by the family.

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Sadly, losing loved ones is a universal part of life and we all grieve in different ways. Universally in psychology we go through a cycle of grief. As Dr. Caitlin Stanaway from the University of Washington puts it:

Persistent, traumatic grief can cause us to cycle (sometimes quickly) through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. These stages are our attempts to process change and protect ourselves while we adapt to a new reality. While there are consistent elements within each stage, the process of grieving looks different for everyone.

Dr. Caitlin Stanaway

Recently, our society has thrown shade on the ideas of sending thoughts and prayers when something tragic happens, but we strongly disagree. We believe in lifting up each other in prayer, not as some sort of a magical conjurance of miracle wizardry, but the power of prayer can make the weak feel lifted and keeps soft the heart of the one doing the praying. Pray for the family left behind, that they will be strengthened and comforted. Pray for the loved one that died, that they will be received well into eternity. Pray prayers of thanks for time you had with the loved one and appreciate the memories you have of them. Pray for yourself to process your emotions and be restored to joy. Pray elaborately with words when you have them, and silently when you don’t. Pray because it helps.

I leave you this week with three of our favorite portions of scriptures that have helped us in times of loss.

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

A Time for Everything

1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Lamentations 3:22-24

²² Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”

Psalm 94:19

¹⁹ When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.
    great is your faithfulness.