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Three grief moments and how I responded

Lynne Baab • Friday October 23 2026

Three grief moments and how I responded

Between October 5 and 19, I tried on a new garment: “solo traveler on a road trip.” I drove down to California in a rented car and flew home. I felt intense grief three times on the trip.

1. Sadness. I visited the Hilbert Museum of California Art in Orange, California, because it is frequently mentioned in American Art Review, a magazine my late husband Dave subscribed to. In the pages of that magazine, I’ve seen many beautiful paintings by California artists. The museum is wonderful, with lots of gorgeous paintings in its permanent collection. A surprising number of them are watercolors, and when I looked at the third or fourth watercolor, I was slammed with a sense of how much Dave would have loved seeing them.

Over my lifespan, I’ve been to many art museums without Dave. In fact, early in our marriage, I introduced him to the joy of seeing original art. So, when I pulled up at the Hilbert Museum, I didn’t expect to feel such intense sadness as I looked at watercolors.

As I stood there in the gallery, my immediate reaction was, Wow, I need to talk about this with my grief counselor from hospice. Maybe I should sit down and send a text to my prayer group and ask them to pray for me. This is so unexpected and strange. Maybe I should . . .

Then I noticed what I was doing: analysis and planning. The moment I felt the wave of sadness, I wanted to leap into some kind of action with the hope that I wouldn’t feel the sadness so intensely. Just feel it, I told myself. I wandered around the museum feeling sad that Dave would never see those paintings and that I would not be able to hear his opinion about them. Yet, I also knew that he is experiencing even greater beauty in Jesus’s presence right now.

The challenge with grief is to let ourselves feel it, whatever form it takes. Maybe I left the museum a little earlier than I would have otherwise, hoping that getting back in the car and driving would mute the sadness. And it did. But I’m grateful that the Holy Spirit, the comforter, nudged me to stop the analysis and planning and let myself feel for a while.

2. Longing. The second episode happened at one of Southern California’s gorgeous beaches. It reminded me of my favorite beach in Dunedin, New Zealand, where we lived for 11 years. I visited St. Clair Beach dozens of times, letting the gorgeous colors of the water and the waves with their spindrift speak to me of God’s eternity and power. This episode of grief on a California beach was a mix of feelings, mostly a longing for the early years in New Zealand when Dave was healthy and vibrant, and he and I could walk on the beach together or sit on a bench, watching birds and waves and people. 

I’ve been thinking about New Zealand a lot. When we arrived there in 2007, Dave was recently retired. He became a model for healthy retirement. In our first eight years there, he got lots of exercise: biking, playing tennis, working out at the gym with me, and going on the famous Great Walks in the mountains of New Zealand. He created watercolors, many of which he sold in the local Art Society gallery. He mentored Christian international students.

In 2015, he got a chronic lung disease, and his decline started.

This kind of life review is important in grief, as well as in aging. Looking back at patterns, thanking God for the great moments, and grieving with God for the sad moments. The longing evoked by the ocean waves was a gift, even though it hurt in the moment. I felt I handled it well, allowing memories to come and then bringing them into God’s presence.

3. Feral grief. In contrast, the third episode of grief slammed into me and I almost drove off the road. The feelings and their intensity were entirely unexpected. Such an unlikely location — San Diego’s Gaslamp District. I drove through several blocks with Victorian buildings, some of them remarkably similar to buildings in Dunedin. Here’s your trivia for the day: Dunedin has the best Victorian architecture in the Southern Hemisphere. On a cognitive level, I found it remarkable that two cities 7,000 miles apart could have similar architecture from a specific historical period. On an emotional level, I was slammed with something. Was it longing, like I experienced at the beach? Was it sadness related to all the Victorian buildings in Dunedin that Dave painted? I still don’t know exactly what the emotions were, just that they were powerful and hard to cope with while driving on unfamiliar city streets.

Francis Weller, in his excellent book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, writes that grief can sometimes be feral, “alive, wild, untamed; it cannot be domesticated. . . . We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul.” [1] That’s what I felt in San Diego.

My three examples of grief illustrate some common grief patterns:

  • the utter unexpectedness of some grief moments
  • a common tendency to leap into analysis or action rather than feel the feelings
  • a deep longing for a happier period of life
  • intense, even savage, emotions that are hard to name

Jesus, companion, walk with us as we try to let ourselves feel our emotions. Holy Spirit, comforter, give us confidence that you will indeed comfort us, so we don’t need to fear the intensity of our emotions. Creator God, give us joy in the beauty of your world so that we can experience comfort alongside sad moments.

Next week: A beautiful prayer. Illustration by Dave Baab: A building on George Street, Dunedin, New Zealand, that has a strong resemblance to a building in San Diego’s Gaslamp District.

This is the last post in a series about grief. Here are the previous posts in case you missed one:

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[1] Weller, Francis. The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. North Atlantic Books, 2025, 9, 10.



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