There is no recipe for grieving.
In the rectory there is a comprehensive collection of cookbooks, bursting with possibilities, waiting to be transformed into a meal. The words have the potential to make visible something that is just words on a page. To make physical, tasty fare from mere print.
With a recipe, there is a list of ingredients and there is a bit that tells you what to do with them. A nifty procedure to follow and always there is some waiting time. Frequently there is a guesstimate as to how long it will all take. In the end... Voila! There is devouring.
But over the years I have discovered that grieving does not have a recipe. Sure, you know some of the ingredients like tissues and tears and cards and flowers and questions. Sometimes there is writing. Flushing out onto a screen those things that are so difficult to put into words. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t articulate or persuasive; it is in the telling, writing and reworking that resolution slowly begins to work its healing. And with grieving, there is no magic end time. You can’t say that at this certain hour, in 6 months, I will have completed all my grieving and there will never be any more. It simply doesn’t work that way.
Now on the surface, all of this may not be very reassuring for you. But I reason thus; that if you find yourself being gazumped by the odd, unexpected wave of emotion, then you are quite normal, very healthy and the stupefying process is unfolding as it should. Bewildering, unpredictable and embarrassing perhaps but perfectly normal. For it is in these times and tears you are in heartfelt unison with the Master. The One who knew there was no recipe for grieving, as he sobbed over his companion Lazarus.