It is unclear to me whether or not my subconscious preparation for the pending 21st anniversary of my brother’s death is impacting on my vision. I seem unable to avoid what feels like an increase in the number of missing-person posters on the streets of Dublin. I stop to peruse each one. I read every line and study in detail the photo of the missing loved one. Don’t you?
Or is that too just another of the incalculable, intricate ways in which my life changed the day John’s body was pulled from the Liffey.
Those of you familiar with this unwelcome intruder know well the non-linear stages one visits when a loved (or not so loved) one dies. First set out in On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, these documented stages of grief go some way towards facilitating a language for this most dreadful of human experiences.
If only manoeuvering the corridors of grief and its public expression, mourning, were as painless as reading or studying about them.
The end of the search for my brother was also somewhat public. He was officially missing 48 hours when divers began the task of dragging the part of the Liffey parallel to where his belongings had been found. As the 15th person to have gone missing that month, the search was considered worthy of coverage on RTÉ radio's News at One .
Only those who know the hell of a “missing” person know too the absolute joy, albeit short-lived,when at long last a body is recovered.
Impenetrable sorrow
Prayers offered during those intense hours of wait, trapped in an impenetrable seal of sorrow, leave you feeling like you have lost your mind. Every hint of news brings with it a new torrent of emotion followed quickly by a renewed ask of God. "Please let them find him. Please don't let them find him."
Exhausted after two days of anguish, I was unsure whether the outcome mattered to me as much as the overwhelming longing for the emotional pain to just stop.
As people we shy away from these dark aspects of our human reality and wish them God speed in some direction other than our own. But I am grateful the Bible does not do so. Scripture does nothing to deny the struggle to understand the goodness of God in light of the horrific losses we sometimes experience.
It has much to say about times and seasons of mourning. In fact Jesus himself was characterised as a man of sorrow and familiar with suffering. He responded with tears when he met the crowd mourning Lazarus. Regardless of knowing what he was about to do, he neither denied nor minimised their grief.
He simply cried with them.
I still remember waking very early on the morning of John's funeral to a faint tapping. Our next-door neighbour, pre-empting an invasion of well-wishers, decided to polish the knocker on our front door. And, reminiscent of a scene from Father Ted or D'Unbelievables , a mountain of ham sandwiches was lovingly made and offered for the hungry mourners.
Practical help
Unable to cry any longer, Alva, like so many others surrounding us at that time of heartache, rallied with practical help. This dawn visitor, armed with Brasso and a duster, also volunteered to remain behind to house-sit for us at the time of the burial. As incredible as it seems, a spate of robberies was being committed on the back of funeral notices in the newspapers at the time.
Grief comes in numerous shapes and sizes. Ultimately it is carried alone by the individual but the burden of its load can be made so much lighter when shared and supported by loving friends and a church community.
Like the man we follow, in order for us to be an effective voice in the darkness, we too must know its ways and have walked its corridors.
The good news is not that bad things will never happen, but that He overcomes them.
Sometimes it is with His tears. Occasionally it is with a couple of sliced pans, Irish ham and a duster.
Christine Mulligan’s brother John died in April 1992. He was 20.