Waves of Grief

This post comes to you in the middle of my, well, real-life telenovela of a story about finding my biological father living in another country. It was tumultuous, to say the least. I hope to share the full story in artistic form in the future. For now, here is a blog post from that time.

One of my favorite characters in television is Chidi from The Good Place, a nervous philosopher who offers a brilliant Buddhist idea, he says: 

“PICTURE A WAVE. IN THE OCEAN. YOU CAN SEE IT, MEASURE IT, ITS HEIGHT, THE WAY THE SUNLIGHT REFRACTS WHEN IT PASSES THROUGH. AND IT’S THERE. AND YOU CAN SEE IT, YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS. IT’S A WAVE.

AND THEN IT CRASHES ON THE SHORE AND IT’S GONE. BUT THE WATER IS STILL THERE. THE WAVE WAS JUST A DIFFERENT WAY FOR THE WATER TO BE, FOR A LITTLE WHILE. YOU KNOW IT’S ONE CONCEPTION OF DEATH FOR BUDDHISTS: THE WAVE RETURNS TO THE OCEAN, WHERE IT CAME FROM AND WHERE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE.” CHIDI – THE GOOD PLACE

Perhaps we can think of grief this way too. Is there a way to grieve something you didn’t even know you had or needed? When I found my biological father his warmth, affection, and kindness were a balm to my spirit. He spoke of times lost, and of times to come. Families take many different forms, shapes, and sizes. He called my daughter his granddaughter, it was the first time someone biologically related to me gave any attention to my offspring. It was something I didn’t even know fully that I was missing in my life. 

As I came to terms with my abuse as a child, I moved away from my family of origin, it was a choice for my own well-being. Grieving the loss of someone who is still alive is a funny thing. 

Suddenly, I thought I had found a place in the world where I fit, I found similarities between my biological father and myself, like our need to intellectualize things we don’t understand, and our love of zombie lore and dystopian drama. He spoke of nights when he thought of me, and prayed I would find him someday. I finally understood where I got my resiliency, drive, and self-discipline. For one full week, I walked around the world like I had a purpose, a place, and a sense of belonging somewhere.  If you weren’t adopted the sense of wandering aimlessly around in the world won’t make any sense to you. 

This isn’t a happy ending. It’s not the ending I foresaw, and that is what makes it all the more painful. This is a story of grieving the loss of someone I didn’t even know I had. A half-brother I will never meet, a biological grandparent for my daughter, someone who loves and accepts me just as I am. Every night I try to tell my six-year-old daughter, “I love you, just the way you are” because humans need that security and companionship. 

If you aren’t adopted you won’t understand how it can feel like you have betrayed the world by your mere existence. 

I haven’t metabolized this suffering quite yet, it’s still in progress, maybe someday it will help me be a better pastor, a better preacher, and a better person. Someday I’ll be able to make a place of belonging for someone else, something I never had. Someday I’ll be able to understand radical acceptance, maybe someday I’ll even be able to radically accept myself, just the way I am. But this suffering is like the wave, I can see it, feel it, touch it, and it will crash on the shore and return to the ocean doing what it’s supposed to do. 

I don’t understand Singaporean culture, I can’t imagine asking someone to erase their own child from their life history. I can’t understand what is so horribly shameful about me. This too shall pass or so they say, I’m not yet convinced at this moment. The pain is like a heart pain that reaches out to your whole body, and I might just drown in it. A couple of weeks ago we heard a passage from the sermon on the mount: blessed are those who mourn. Suffering must be part of this human condition.

Perhaps Rilke has some good wisdom for me here:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET