Death Beyond Belief
Grief feels different now that I’m no longer a Christian
A close friend of my sister’s committed suicide. We hid it from our mother on a zoom call today. My sister smiled and acted cheery until the call ended. And then she worked on coming up with the words she would say at the upcoming funeral.
Our mother is one of the most compassionate people I know. She can empathize with people in pain. She would have empathized with my sister.
But our mother believes in the Christian god — the hellfire and brimstone version. Since my sister and I don’t, she believes that after we die, we will be tortured for eternity. This belief tears her apart. But it’s so much a part of her psyche that she can’t let it go.
Once I overheard our mother crying over us. Our aunt comforted her and promised, “In God’s time.” Our mother most likely believes that eventually, we will find our way back to her god. She’s just waiting and hoping for us to change. She probably believes that there will be moments, opportunities that her god gives her to help us find our way back to him.
Her god works in “mysterious ways.” Those ways can include pain and torment, a refining fire to teach life’s lessons. They can include grief. They can include the loss of a friend.
