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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 41. A True Human Instinct
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A True Human Instinct
It is perfectly natural to want to talk with our loved ones who have died. It adds to our grief that we cannot.
It's a true human instinct to miss them, and long intensely for them, and to feel lonely in their absence. All this may be kept out of sight, pretty much, under a strong good self-control. But anything else is not natural.
Death is always a shock, even when expected. It makes a bad break in one's life. I know a young man who wrote to his mother every day, even if only a few lines, when his work took him quite away from her. And when she slipped from his grasp it took the longest time and some strange feelings to break that daily writing habit.
He had prayed daily for her. And it seemed so queer not to. It seemed like not being true to her, as though it were disloyal not to be naming her in the daily prayer.. Then he learned to put praise in the place of the old-time prayer, that, she was safe past troublous things, up in the Master's own presence. But what a wrench that change of habit did make !
I have a dear friend whose husband suddenly snapped the life-cord, and was gone. They had lived an ideal life together for long years. She always leaned upon his counsel and fellowship in family matters. And it seemed as if she could not get used to doing without him. A bit of her very self had gone.
Grief, tense, deep, overwhelming, is the natural thing. Its emotional sweep and suction is tremendous, quite beyond words. It takes a fine strong self-control to hold steady and keep the true poise. Many don't. They fail. They are swamped. The vision blurs. The judgment wavers. Action comes under the sway of blurred vision, and twisted judgment.
Emotion should never be allowed to take the reins and drive. When it is so, whatever the emotion be, grief or joy, love or hate, there's a runaway, a break-down and smash-up ahead. The will must always hold the lines hard and steady. It should be influenced, fully by natural emotion, by knowledge, and by disciplined judgment. But the will must keep control.
Death, never lazy, has been running riot of late, with a ghoulish uncanny glee. The world's worst war has counted the dead into millions, Actual violence has been joined by strain, disease, and sheer want, in claiming occupants for the grave. The natural strain which death always puts on the living has been intensified terrifically.