Grief’s Hidden Door to Peace

You never know how grief will appear. My first taste of it was when my grandfather died. He was in Oregon and I was in seminary in Tennessee, which spared me the agony of watching his prolonged suffering. He was eighty-four years old and had lived a long and good life.

I grieved for him when he died and regretted that I had not been there to say my goodbyes. I dreamed about him for several nights, but felt a certain peace, a strange confidence that he was, in whatever way that matters, with God. My grandfather had loved me, possibly more than anyone, and I knew he would never hold it against me that I wasn’t there at the end. He had only ever wanted what was best for me—not even death could change that.

When Milo died, it was different. I didn’t really know him that well, if I’m being honest. He was a fifteen-year-old boy and a student in my class. What I did know about him, I loved.

He was bright and enjoyed reading in class, although he vehemently denied it. He asked deeper questions about the content, which led me on wild deviations from the lesson plan, which was of course his intent from the start. He was good-natured, kind, and there wasn’t a student in the class that didn’t love him. He lived for baseball season, was popular, and an overall strong student.

Then, he died suddenly.

I heard the news at church. I had gone to drop off my son at a youth group activity. A former student met me in the lobby and as I picked up some sheet music to take home, he said, “You know, Milo died.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Milo died.”

I stared at him, unable to process.

“A bunch of kids went to the quarry to go swimming and he disappeared. They spent hours searching, but couldn’t find him.”

I pictured his round, blue eyes, his inquisitive face, and suddenly it was like the wind had been knocked out of me. I grabbed the back of a pew. The teenager suddenly covered his mouth, realizing he had said something wrong. He didn’t know Milo well; he was reporting an interesting fact. But I was reacting like the world was spinning out of control.

It was.

My mind was racing. The finality of it made it impossible to breathe. I would never see him again. He was gone. I couldn’t accept it; I refused to believe it. I imagined his mother and father, his brother—the magnitude of their loss. I cried for my own sons, imagining now with a strange painful clarity what losing them would look and feel like.

I had never known grief like this. It was a shock that ran through me, separating my mind from my body. I tossed and turned the entire night, praying this was a nightmare—that it wasn’t really true.

I went to school the next day. I don’t remember it well. There was a teachers’ meeting where the news was given to everyone by our principal. Milo had been swimming with friends and then just went under and never came back up. No one really knew why. Did he have a leg cramp? An aneurysm?

We would never know.

The other boys had spent hours diving under the water, but the quarry was too deep. Professional divers were called. His body was recovered hours later.

As the details surfaced, I replayed the scene over and over again, imagining the horror of those other boys diving in desperation to find Milo in the black water. I refused to accept that any of it was real.

I will wake up and this will just be a dream, I thought.

My face was so puffy I hardly recognized myself when I looked in the mirror. I splashed cold water on my face, but the tears seeped out of me. I didn’t feel them. My colleagues looked at me with concern. They took turns stepping into my classroom throughout the day to check on me and offer to cover my classes.

I didn’t feel sad, just disconnected. My body seemed to be doing the grieving while my mind remained permanently frozen. I had learned this before: our bodies grieve before the mind catches up.

As much as I cried over Milo, I was confused. I was grieving Milo as if he had been my own son. I grieved over him more than my own grandfather, who had been like a second father to me. Why?

I knew why, but I didn’t want to admit it.