REVIEW: GRIEF SET FREE
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Grief Set Free: A Memoir. Alvin Johnson, with foreword by Robert K. Myers. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022. 134 pp. $18.00 (paperback)
Grief Set Free is a slim but powerful book. In it, the Rev. Alvin Johnson tells the story of his family’s loss of their oldest child, Nicholas. Nicholas was not yet five when diagnosed with leukemia; he experienced a brief remission thanks to grueling treatments, but died aged only seven.
The first chapter is a synopsis of the book told through a dreamlike metaphor of being trapped on the wrong side of a door and forced to walk away from the life now locked in the past, meeting fellow grievers along the way, learning from them and helping them learn to walk with grief and loss. Chapters two through four tell the story from Nicholas’ birth through his death as experienced by the whole family –Nicholas’ parents, Al and Vickie; grandparents; and his younger sister, Hannah. The rest of the work is less linear. Its brief chapters move through decades of “aftershocks” without strict concern for chronology. What initially feels disorienting turns out to be the most appropriate organizing principle for this book: moving back and forward in time, memories erupting where they will, eventually coalescing around themes as greater distance allows reflection. The writing models the author’s cultivated generosity toward his own grief and that of others in his family and various communities. He explores the difficulty and blessing of walking with grief alongside family and friends who are also living with their own deep pain.
In Grief Set Free, we read a memoir of a parent losing his child and continuing to live into that loss as a father, a spouse, a friend, and a priest. Johnson does not leverage his role as a priest to lend any special authority to his theologically reflecting on that experience. The fact that he is a priest may make the descriptions of his struggles with faith more poignant, but he does not give the impression that it makes him any different from anyone else in terms of dealing with grief and faith. However, it does put him in the position of having to minister to others despite and through his own brokenness.
Toward the end of the book, he frames his vocational journey into the Church and eventually the priesthood in terms of ego psychology, which identifies
three levels of meaning to any aspect of life. The first level is the manifest level; this is the level we can see, hear, taste, and touch. The second level is the symbolic level; this is the level where the experience begins to take on meaning unique to the individual. The third, and deepest level, is the analeptic level; this is the level where the experience connects with our deepest selves to form identity. (1)
He maps onto these three levels stages in his faith life: first, the embedded religious habits such as “believing that I’d be protected if I said my prayers.” Second, sensing a need for “forgiveness, love, and community,” he moved toward a more intentional relationship with God and began attending church. Third, after discerning a call to ordained ministry, he began seminary studies. Feeling unqualified and unworthy of his calling (as many seminarians do), he writes, “I learned that believing in God wasn’t necessarily important….” Rather, “God took a place in my heart and I took a place in God’s heart.” This sense of friendship with God that goes beyond mere profession of faith is an end toward which many Christians strive. However,
When Nicholas died all three levels were shattered and there was nothing with which to replace them. … The challenge focused on trying to project a life of faith to those I served while unable to piece together the fragments of my own soul. … I continued preaching and teaching and leading worship, trusting that God could and would use me in spite of my personal agnosticism, anger, and despair. (2)
This glimpse into the faith crisis of a minister comes into particular relief when Johnson describes the time his AA sponsor came to his office in the church to press him to take the third step – to decisively commit one’s life and will to God’s care. “I couldn’t face this step. … I replied, ‘You know, Joe, I got issues. I got issues with God. I mean one of my kids died and all. I don’t know.’” (3) To hear a priest confess, on the job, that he isn’t sure he can place himself in God’s hands is jarring. But it is with this raw honesty that Johnson walks the reader through his and his family’s experience, at times in intimate detail.
This is not a self-help book, or a guide through the grieving process in so many steps. Johnson opens his own story to us without pretending he can prescribe a path for anyone else. Yet this book will be insightful for readers needing to navigate a difficult and unexpected change in their world or in a loved one’s world. “Grief set free” is not an end goal, but rather an affirmation of life alongside loss – much like Jacob, who wrestled God and left with a hard-won blessing and an equally hard-won limp. “Unbeknownst to Jacob, his vulnerability was readily available to God and so God touched him there, and he was painfully reminded daily that he was human.” (4) This way of living daily with pain, of relinquishing the idea that healing (in this life) can be a return to “normal,” will be familiar to readers who suffer from chronic illness or permanent injury as well. “Grief set free” moves past the expectations of society, of church – even one’s own formerly-held expectations – and resolves to live realistically yet hopefully, and joyfully, in whatever form life takes.
The brilliant cover design by Shannon Carter evokes the Japanese art of kintsugi: mending a broken object – such as an ordinary plate or cup – with gold. By decorating the fault lines rather than (merely) obscuring them – after all, broken pottery cannot be restored to its original state anyway – the object in its brokenness is rendered more beautiful. Human beings decorate those objects in our lives whose meaning surpasses use value. Kintsugi implies that wounds may be things of great value, precious and meaning-filled. It is a choice not to hide the damage or pretend the piece is un-broken. Johnson’s unwillingness to settle for cultural expectations around recovery from grief evokes this art form. Just as the golden repair is not gaudy, but intentional and respectful of what was broken, Grief Set Free deftly avoids sentimentalizing or fetishizing pain and grief while also refusing to discard the broken and treasured ordinariness of life.
This book may serve as a companion to those living with various kinds of grief, loss, or pain. I recommend it also to pastors and other church leaders, as well as anyone willing to be shown another’s visceral pain and learn from Fr. Johnson’s insights in order to walk as companions with others who suffer loss.
Johnson, Alvin. Grief Set Free: A Memoir. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022, 93.
Ibid.
Ibid., 90.
Ibid., 94-95.
