Hope and grief
The following passage was written by Texas Children’s Chaplain Natalie Peters.
I participated in virtual Respite Rounds hosted by our own Palliative Care team this past week. The topic of discussion was about when grief and hope mingle, and I found myself taken back to a time exactly a year ago when I experienced a heap of grief and hope in just one day. On this particular day, I woke up to news that a patient I had become close to and had been following practically from birth had died.
I was expected to give a prayer at an event later that morning, so I had to set aside my sadness and lead the prayer and interact with families afterward. Despite my grief, there was hope in seeing these families and hearing how much of an impact I had on them during their stay at Texas Children’s.
I went home and let out everything I had been holding in. As I write this now, I still have vivid memories of this day. However, I am looking through a different lens now than a year ago. I can imagine that many of us here at Texas Children’s have had to suppress some kind of grief whether it be tangible or intangible, but that somehow we have hope despite the pain and loss associated with those feelings.
Both grief and hope are complex and can mean completely different things to each of us, especially with many of us grieving the normalcy that once was and hoping for so much to change. Hoping for the trip you took months to plan, hoping for more hours in the day to get all of the new tasks you need to do done, and so on. Sometimes what one person grieves, another hopes for and vice versa. When I think back to that day last year, as hard as it was for me emotionally, it was very much necessary to have both grief and hope.
One of the hardest obstacles I have had to overcome after a death of a patient was coming to the hospital. Finding the strength and courage to enter the unit, walk by the bed space that child had occupied and pause for a moment is often extremely difficult. However, I realize in this world there is always going to be hope and grief.
C.S Lewis writes that “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing … There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me …”
Yet despite the fear, there is also hope. With hope there is also fear. I am hopeful for this “new normal” yet fearful of what it means moving forward. Normalcies that I once knew like concerts, social gatherings, and traveling will look dramatically different moving forward. But I also hope for them as well because there was so much joy in those moments and experiences.
With the end of the year closer in reach, there are mixed feelings of both grief and hope. Grief of many things this pandemic has robbed us of as well as hope for the new normal and lessons learned from this year. When the lows we feel are hitting us hard, there is always hope. And when there is hope, there is grief. And sometimes you will feel them separately or in some cases, at the same time. This pandemic has me looking at this world in a new lens. I often feel isolated in my grief and have a different outlook as I deal with grief a lot in my work as a chaplain but this year, I feel so many more of you understand what it is to live in this world of both grief and hope.
“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”-Leo Tolstoy