What my grandfather’s funeral taught me, lessons on mourning with God
What is grief, if not love persevering?
Summer is waving her golden tendrils outside our windows, with promises of lazy pool days and late-night barbecues giving us an extra spring in our steps. This year, I had the blessing of kicking off the sunny season with a month in my hometown, the picturesque Cauayan of Isabela, Philippines. Home of more lomi houses than you could shake an egg noodle at, plus so much nature you could cry from all the beauty then swear with all the mosquito bites. Cauayan is also home to some of my favourite people on earth, my family.
My summer in the Philippines this year was filled with aches, both good and bad. It was a month stained with sorrow and saturated in joy. My bittersweet trip began with four precious days with my dying grandfather before God called him home. It was a merciful hand dealt by the Lord that I was able to hug him again, tell him how much I love him and say goodbye before he passed away in the middle of the night.
I was told that he looked at my grandma, smiled, then lifted his hand and called out to Jesus before taking his last breath. When morning came, I watched numbly as the mortuary truck took my grandpa’s body away for embalming and my relatives quickly got to work on preparing the house. In the days and weeks that followed, God revealed to me surprising blessings that are more apparent during hard times, and an unexpected sweet tinge to grief when we have a relationship with Him.
Mourning with community
You see, Jesus understands grief. The death of one of Jesus’ closest friends, Lazarus, actually produced the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” And He, more than anyone, knows that even though death is conquered, it still leaves widows, orphans and bereaved loved ones behind. This was why at the cross, there is a remarkable exchange where Jesus says to Mary, “Behold, your son!” and to John, “Behold, your mother!” He knew the pain death leaves behind and the importance of having close, trustworthy people around you while you mourn. And there’s no place that does community better than the Philippines, where the notion is already deeply ingrained in almost every aspect of its culture.
Here in the Philippines, a life isn’t truly over until everyone the deceased has ever known comes to pay their respects over a week-long wake. A body might be in the coffin, but the dearly departed are not released to the Pearly Gates until the living have partaken in some hot dish that includes rice, played cards and swapped stories about the one they loved and lost. Or at least, that’s how they do it here in Cauayan.
In the days that followed my grandpa’s death, relatives and friends from all over the Philippines arrived in Cauayan to see him one last time. I met uncles and aunts I never knew I had, and cousins I had been talking to for years but never met. Spending time with my family was a beautiful reminder that while none of us can dodge the bullet of sorrow and hardship forever, Jesus moves toward us in our brokenness and offers hope even in the midst of our mourning.
Being able to take my time to process the loss of my grandfather here in the Philippines with my family has been the sweetest blessing. I was able to trade tales of my mischievous grandpa with cousins, hear stories of his selfless giving and how he was so many’s closest confidante. On the day of his burial, I was suddenly distraught with grief and couldn’t stop crying. My niece stood by my side to offer me support while a grandaunt I just met made sure I ate food, even though I said I had no appetite.
Times like these show me one of the many beauties in God’s design for community: when we share our sadness, fears and joy together, we’re able to give and receive more support and comfort than if we were to grieve alone.
Take your time, wrestle with God
In Filipino tradition, the wakes are days, sometimes even weeks long. In keeping with the culture’s slow pace of life, there’s no pressure to arrive on an exact date or time, giving people more opportunities to come. Immediate family members spend every day at the house, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner to our guests as well as spending unhurried time with each other. There were many moments when we just sat in comfortable silence around the coffin, lost in our thoughts.
Every night of the wake, my grandma’s church would hold services in the house. We would worship and pray, then the pastor would share messages about death and a life well-lived for the Lord. This peace of slowing down forced me to lay down my desire to slap a Bible verse bandage on my gaping wound, and fully dive into my emotions with God. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the Bible is the word of God and in it, we can find words that soothe our heartbreaks. Yet although remembering the promise of Revelations 21:4 when my grandpa died brought me great comfort, my heart was still broken, he was still gone and I still had to continue learning how to move forward with life. I still needed to continue processing with God.
If you look at people in Scripture, our greatest heroes of faith went through difficult seasons in life and were honest with God about how they felt. Weary of his sufferings, Paul wrote in Philippians 1:23–24 about his struggle between wanting to “depart and be with Christ, which is far better” and “ to remain in the flesh” while under house arrest in Rome. And many of the Psalms are about David wrestling through his emotions with the Lord.
God wants us to come to him in prayer and worship without denying our emotions. We cheapen our faith by not inviting God into the hard parts as we do with the good. Like any kind of relationship, when we go through hard times with God, it creates a deeper intimacy with Him than any easy season could.
Joy is a gift for every season, even in our mourning
My best friend and I have a theory that if people are made in the image of God, then every country’s best trait must also reflect a different side of God. If that’s true, I reckon the Philippines was designed to reflect God’s joy. Filipinos are known for their cheerful approach to life and its ups and downs. They know, more than most, the healing effects of humour and choosing to rejoice in the midst of suffering. Contrary to what we see in films, grief doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens alongside and mixed in with so many other emotions. I saw this when my grandpa was still trying to make jokes with the little energy he had left in his last days, then again with my family during the wake.
I remember a moment when my nephew was joking around and taking selfies in front of my grandpa’s coffin. The words, “Pssst, be serious!” were on the tip of my tongue before I felt a gentle rebuke from the Lord. “Why?”, I felt the Lord asking me. And I realised being ‘serious’ was the last thing my humour-filled grandpa would have wanted. If he could see that moment, I imagine he would have been laughing right beside my nephew, turning to us to say, “I look handsome even in death, don’t I?”
Being in the Philippines makes it easy to remember God gives us joy in every season, even in our mourning.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, we’re told that believers in Jesus will grieve differently than those who don’t have hope. The verse doesn’t tell us to be strong and not grieve. Paul tells us to grieve, but grieve with hope in mind. We can grieve deeply and simultaneously experience the joy of Christ fully, knowing that we’ll be reunited with our fellow believers in Christ one day.
God promises He will turn our “mourning into joy” (Jeremiah 31:13) and one of my favourite passages in the Bible comes from Psalm 30:11, where David writes, “You turned my wailing into dancing; You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”
He makes all things new
God is so merciful, personal and tender. As I mourn the death of my grandfather, new life sprung all around me. The night after my grandfather’s death, a cat climbed onto my bed and gave birth to four kittens right next to me in the middle of the night. A week later, the farm pig gave birth to a litter of piglets. Then when I came home one day after finding out about the death of my aunt in Hong Kong, a four-year-old little boy stole my heart with his dimpled smile and claimed me as his mama (he doesn’t have a mum), bringing me comfort and joy in my sad times.
All these special moments felt like such a God wink, He loves us personally and longs to console us in our grief. It was a reminder that God makes all things new, and one day, God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelations 21:4).
I still have moments where I’m sad, but I have no doubt that the Father grieves much deeper than I do and I’ve seen beauty in situations where I didn’t think beauty was possible. This earth will always have the tension of “not yet” but I’m thankful that I know the hope of “one day”.
If you’re grieving a loss right now, I hope this prayer can bring you some comfort:
Dear God.
I trust you are working on my behalf. Help me learn to lament my losses, as I simultaneously rejoice in the hope of their coming restoration.
Let me learn now, Oh Lord, to turn to you with the fullness of my emotions. Walk with me hand in hand as I slowly breathe out sorrow, and breathe in more joy. Breathe out lament, breathe in more hope. Breathe out pain, breathe in comfort.
Amen
