Seven Statements from the Cross • Week 5 • Wednesday

Statement V • John 19:28 • Ray, early 60s, widower

The Setup

Ray is in his early 60s. His wife of 34 years died fourteen months ago after a brief illness. The first few months were loud grief, visible grief, the kind that comes with casseroles and phone calls and people checking in. Then the casseroles stopped and the calls thinned out and the grief did not go anywhere, it just went quiet. Ray kept showing up. He went back to church. He answered his phone. When people asked how he was doing, he said he was doing well. He watched the relief on their faces when he said it and decided that was the most loving thing he could give them.

The Crossroads Moment

Fourteen months in, Ray is performing wellness so consistently that the people closest to him have actually been taken in by it. His adult kids call regularly and leave the calls relieved. His friends at church clap him on the shoulder and say he is an inspiration. He sits in the armchair in the evenings in a house that was built for two people and he is completely hollowed out in a way that the performance has no access to. The grief has not lessened. It has simply gone underground, where it runs without any of the support that surface grief would have generated. He is only as sick as his secret, and the secret is that he is not doing well at all.

What Jesus Did

Jesus said “I thirst” in front of everyone. He did not spare the people near him from his need. He did not protect his image at the cost of his humanity. He let the people around him be present with what was actually true. Galatians 6:2 says we are to bear one another’s burdens, and the burden of grief is one of the heaviest things any person carries. But it can only be borne together if the person carrying it lets someone close enough to get underneath it. Ray had been deciding on behalf of his family that they did not need to know. What they actually needed was to grieve with their father. He had been keeping them from something that was theirs to share.

The Choice and Outcome

His daughter calls on a Sunday evening. Something in Ray’s voice is different, a hairline crack in the performance that she catches without being able to name it. She asks if she can come over. He almost says he is fine. He does not. She drives over and sits with him in the living room and they talk about her mother for the first time in months without the performance in the way. Ray cries for the first time since the funeral. His daughter cries too. They sit in it together for three hours. She comes back the following weekend. So does her brother. The grief that had been going underground finds its way back to the surface where it was always meant to be shared. Ray does not stop missing his wife. But he stops missing her alone.

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