When Someone You Didn't Get Along With Dies
Key Takeaways
- Experiencing complicated grief at a funeral is entirely normal when you lose someone you had a difficult or strained relationship with.
- Relief and regret often arrive together, and you do not need to sort out your conflicting emotions before bringing them honestly to God.
- When King Saul died, David composed a lament that carefully selected what to honor without erasing Saul's harsh history or pretending he was a saint.
- Choosing to highlight a genuine good thing about a difficult person is entirely different from lying about who they were or rewriting their past.
- You do not have to pick between telling a lie at a graveside and reopening an old wound; instead, you can hold both truths at once.
Relief and regret arrive together, and you don't know what you're feeling. Learn what David left out of his lament for Saul, and why what he put in matters at a complicated graveside.
There's a grief nobody warns you about. Somebody you had a difficult history with dies, and you have no idea what you're feeling. Relief shows up, and it brings regret along with it. Sadness arrives right alongside anger. You want to grieve him, and you don't want to turn a man you clashed with into a saint. And the people around you complicate it without meaning to. They tell you he's in a better place, or they say they're sorry for your loss, and you stand there nodding, because the truth about this one is a lot longer than the line they handed you.
This episode opens with Lucy Ann Moll, who had to stand up and say something about a complicated man when her father died. He had lived with manic-depression for most of his life, and that illness threw shadows across their family for years. There was distance between them and plenty of memories that were not easy. Now she had to write a eulogy, and she faced what everyone with a complicated parent faces at a funeral. She could pretend he had been a saint, or she could air every grievance she had. Both felt wrong.
David faced the same problem. Saul had thrown a spear at him and hunted him through the wilderness with a standing army for years, and when word came that Saul was dead, 2 Samuel 1:17 says David composed a funeral song for him. Read the lament and notice what is missing. David never brings up the spear or the years in the caves. He is selecting. Then look at what he selected, in verse 24: "O women of Israel, weep for Saul, for he dressed you in luxurious scarlet clothing." That's a concrete thing Saul had done. His campaigns brought back spoil, and the women of Israel had the clothes to show for it.
Choosing what goes in the song is a different act from lying about the man. The record of Saul hunting David is still back in the earlier chapters, unedited, where anybody can read it. Nobody comes away from the books of Samuel thinking Saul was a good king, and David never pretended otherwise in his life. He just declined to say it over the body.
So you can hold both at once. You can tell the truth about what that person was and still find the thing that deserved honoring. And you don't have to get the feelings sorted out before you bring them to God. Relief and regret can go in the same sentence. Bart shares his own version of this, a funeral he preached for a difficult man with the family in the front row. Lucy found the same road. She told the truth, all of it, without erasing the good to make a point.
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:
What David left out of his lament for Saul, and what he put in Why selecting what to honor is different from rewriting a person What to say to God today about someone you never got right with
You don't have to pick between a lie and a wound. Go find one thing about that person that was true and good, and say it out loud to God. If the list is short, a short list is still a list.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is complicated grief at a funeral?
Complicated grief at a funeral occurs when you experience conflicting emotions—such as relief, regret, sadness, and anger all at once—after the death of someone you had a difficult history with.
How did David handle the death of Saul?
David composed a funeral song for Saul that selectively honored the genuine good Saul had done, such as bringing back spoil for Israel, without erasing the years of hunting David through the wilderness.
How can you honor someone you didn't get along with?
You can honor a difficult person by finding one true and good thing about them to acknowledge out loud to God, without pretending they were a saint or airing every past grievance.
