Out and About with my Uncle Tom

Out and About with my Uncle Tom

The day after my Uncle Terry’s Homegoing Service, my Mom asked me to take my Uncle Tom to lunch so they could travel back to Enid for the Internment Service scheduled for early afternoon.  Tom simply was not physically or emotionally up for yet another reminder of the loss of his brother.  So, I was out and about with my Uncle Tom.

I have always known he is a good man. When he was a boy he spent months in Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City with a chronic kidney disease.  He studied watch repair and then moved to carpentry building display cabinets until the orders ran dry.   He never married.  As far as I know, he never dated anyone. He spent his life taking care of my Grandmother until he had a major stroke.  She went to stay with my brother and his family, passing away 18 months later.  Following his stroke, he went to live with my parents and has not been fully able to care for himself for awhile now. I remember how he loved to work on crafts with my grandmother and how they would sell them to make ends meet. He selflessly took care of his mother until he could no longer take care of her himself.

He mentioned something today about not breaking down and crying at his brother’s funeral, how important to him it was that he did not cry even at his own mother’s funeral.

I tried to explain how important it was that he allow himself to cry but he said, “no its better this way”. I love my uncle Tom but he holds back his emotions so no one can see them. Through my experience of loss on a very personal level, I have found that being strong not showing emotions is at best destructive. What happens when you hold back the devastation of grief is simple. It eats you alive, and in most cases where people do this they die inside a little at a time until only hurt remains. When you are all hurt and no relief in sight it eventually kills you.

We have seen it throughout history, when a spouse or a very close relative passes away the one closest to them passes within a year of there death. Is this because they had to be strong, I am not for sure, but I do believe it has something to do with it. Grief will be destructive if you do not deal with it move through each stage eventually if you do nothing it will kill you.

 Grief affects you both mentally and physically, without regard to how strong an individual you are, there is no way to avoid it. My question is why do we as humans hang on to a destructive pattern?

 I am not sure of the answer to this, I am not sure anyone knows who taught us humans to hold back, our emotions. But you hear it in movies all the time, “don’t cry hold on to that, and use it to fight”. But what do you do, when there is no one to fight, when it’s grief that is your enemy! Let that hurt go and let God help you defeat Grief.