Death, what a terrible subject! Naturally I am laughing in an out of context and inappropriate way, so I shall try to explain. Recently we were discussing “boomers,” specifically some of the trauma some of us experienced growing up beneath this generation and culture. The internet can be a terrible venue for such things on account of the fact that stereotypes tend to dominate and people can get emotionally triggered. So in the blink of an eye, the conversation shifted to how people like me just want to round up all the boomers and kill them off. False!

Not true at all, but darkly humorous because my own boomer mother has spent darn near half a century accusing me of trying to kill her off. The other day I tried reminding her that she is pretty darn old now, which is either evidence of my vast incompetence or her incredible survival skills. Either way I guess it’s a win-win for her!

Death can be a painful and emotionally triggering subject and it often creates a lot of spiritual confusion. I’ve had to deal with a lot of death due to overdoses, fentanyl and meth mostly. Some suicides. Some random acts of violence. I am deeply grieved by the loss of so many young people to a pandemic I can’t stop. It’s frustrating. It’s painful.

I also have my faith which helps tremendously. I have a close personal relationship with Jesus and He knows me well, so I can take my hurt and confusion to Him and He will help me sort it out. It’s everything.

When I was a child, my grandmother who I really needed in order to survive in the world was shot in a robbery. She initially survived, but months later had a stroke due to her injuries and died. The thing is, I instinctively knew she had died many hours before we were even notified. As painful and confusing as it was wondering why God would allow her to be taken leaving me completely abandoned, that was not the root of my trauma. My trauma was about knowing she had died and not being able to tell anyone about it. I had to carry this secret alone in order to try and protect my mother. That was a common theme in my life for many years, always trying to protect my mother’s emotional well being.

It’s definitely supernatural, miraculous, or just plain unexplainable how I knew my Grandma had died, but I did. That has happened several times since and I flat out attribute it to the goodness of God. I believe He is protecting me, letting me know He’s got His hand on everything. God doesn’t “take” people from us, but He knows. I got to hug an old friend I hadn’t seen in ages and tell her how much she meant to me, a week before she died. A man I barely knew stopped me in the grocery store and asked for a hug. He died later that night. I didn’t know they were going to die, not with the same clarity I had as a child, but when I heard they had passed, I knew those final hugs had been Divinely arranged.

So I don’t feel like death is random or unexpected. It often is on our end for sure, but I have absolute confidence that God knows, not because of any faith on my part, but because He has made it quite clear to me that He is there.

Our frustrations with God, our anger, our denial, our grief, are kind of individual things and often related to past trauma. Death is an awful thing, separation is painful, we aren’t supposed to “get right with it,” or figure out how to “deal with it.” Death is death. Grief is healthy. However, if hurt and confusion over death is separating one from God, sometimes letting Him help you remember when you first felt that way serves to bring clarity and healing. It can help you draw closer to Him.

I had to go back, take an emotional journey and re-examine everything I felt and remembered from when my Grandma died because that was my first experience with death, that was where the foundation was first laid down. And my trauma wasn’t so much about God abandoning me or “taking” my Grandma, it was about being a child who could not grieve, whose prime directive was to emotionally protect her mother at all costs, a kid who had to carry the weight of death all alone.

And even later when my mother was actually notified, I could not grieve my own losses or feel my own sadness, or be comforted by adults or any of the things one might do to help a kid cope with loss. Instead, the prime directive always, always was to keep my mother emotionally intact and holding it together.

Death is a sad subject matter and trauma can be painful, but look at me today, forgiving my mother, laughing at death, scaring a bunch of boomers on the internet, and loving Jesus.