It has been fifteen years since I was part of that community. I had left the city and left behind most of the people that attended that church. That is what happens. More often than not, church community is only for the people still going, not for those who left. I don't want to blame churches for what happens across the spectrum of gathering places of any kind. It is much harder to keep connecting when you don't have that gathering place as a meeting ground, whether that is church, work or a club of any identity.
Every so often, I find myself perusing the internet and seeing if anything brings me back to those communities. I was on Facebook looking at the page of a former church I attended, and I scrolled down to find a funeral service, from almost a year ago, of someone I knew when I attended there. I did what I always do now when watching online funerals. I bypass the introductory music and religious rituals and go right for the tributes. I listened to four people that shared their stories - a friend, a wife, a daughter and a son. Only one of those four drew a response of tears and pain out of me and it wasn't the family.
The friend shared first and it was his presence there that opened up a painful memory for me. I hadn't seen him in over a decade. I hadn't heard him speak publicly for fifteen years. I remembered the smile and his mannerisms. He didn't identify himself, but I knew who he was. He was someone I once respected, someone I trusted to give me wisdom for my life's journey, someone I would come every Sunday to listen to because it was his job to do all that. He was my pastor.
Today, I still can't quantify what happened to me back then. Why his "indiscretion" had so much affect on me. What if I saw her face again? She was just as much to blame for my pain as he was. But it was him I saw standing at the church he led all those years ago. He was the one I had trusted. He was the one who broke that trust, not only for his wife, his family, his church... but somehow for a single thirty something year old woman who found her way to his community.
He was terminated as pastor when the affair became known. It was painful and ugly for everyone who was involved. But somehow that community was able to forgive him. Fifteen years later, he is back in the same church at the funeral of a man who he said never abandoned him during that time. The man they were honouring that day was more than a friend to him, he was a "brother".
Even now, fifteen years later, it's hard to understand his role in my deconstruction. When I stopped going to church, my mother told me, "I don't blame you." She somehow tied this event to my journey away from church and the importance that it held for me. Maybe she understood more than I could at the time.
My emotions betrayed me yesterday. I had assumed the pain had passed and forgiveness had healed all the wounds. But what if not all the pain has passed. What if I still feel damaged by what happened fifteen years ago.
Maybe one might ask what this story has to do with grieving creatively? I thought that when I watched the funeral service for this man I knew, that I would cry for him. That would be normal, that would be expected, that would be understood. But my tears were not for him. My tears tell me that I still had some grieving to do for something that was lost fifteen years ago. There is no common place to go when a mind choose to bury pain. This is the uniqueness of that moment. That is when grief is allowed to be expressed. Being creative in grief isn't a choice, it's a response in the moment by rebellious emotions.
"Grief changes shape, but it never ends." — Keanu Reeves
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