How Long the Night

By Anthony McMaryion

It was years later, and they were still grieving, mourning, crying, and weeping over the loss of their loved ones. The hurt, pain, brokenness, sorrow, heartache, and heartbreak they felt in the beginning never subsided; and it never ended. Unknowingly, they had stepped into the process, but never entered into the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781098053406

Book preview

Chapter 1

Letting Go, Saying Goodbye

Yes, it is true, death is just part of life, and it is also true we all are going to die; in fact, it is inevitable. Even though those two statements are true, they cannot, will not, and do not comfort us nor can they take away from the impact that losing a loved one brings. It is not easy for me to write this book, nor was it easy for me to share the things I am sharing with you because they are dear and absolutely close to my heart, yet my life is an open book, and all of my personal, private, and my publicly displayed pain, heartache, and heartbreak belongs to God.

Over and over in my life, I have had to find a way to let go of and say goodbye to a loved one, and that within itself has been a journey that I have had to take alone, and the path has not been smooth but at some times had been rough and tough all because I really and truly loved and cared for and would miss like you wouldn’t believe the person and the people I have had to learn to release, let go of, and say goodbye to.

So, I’m not going to tell you it is and it will be easy, and I’m not going to try and paint a portrait of the perfect way to let go and say goodbye to a loved one. In fact, there is no proper and correct way to cry, weep, grieve, mourn, and let go and say goodbye to someone who has died that was close to you. Each one of us individually must take that journey until we find—or rather until God shows us—the path that is for us individually and separately leading to letting go and saying goodbye.

For some, that journey to finding that path is short; and for some, it is long; and for others, it is longer. But it doesn’t matter how long, what’s more important is that you arrive at that letting go and saying goodbye or so long place and point. I can tell you the key to finding, discovering, and being led to your own personal and private letting go and saying goodbye path is going to require what it will require out of all of us, and that is finally coming to the place and point in your own time where you are yielding, submitting, and surrendering to the journey God wants to lead you on so He can show you the path that you must take.

I can’t tell you what that journey is, where it will take you, what it consists of, what it will contain, what you will experience and encounter, etc., nor can I tell you how, when, and where the starting place and point is that God has purposed by divine design, designated, declared, and decreed is your letting go and saying goodbye journey and path.

I wouldn’t say letting go and saying goodbye to a loved one is exactly a process you have to go through, but it is more like something way down on the inside of you, and your I know knows that you one day will wake up to that becomes a convincing conclusion that only you will know about.

And when that convincing let go and say goodbye to your loved one conclusion shows up, you immediately won’t arrive at doing so, but you will slowly and gradually gravitate toward and move toward it, and you will be attracted to that convincing let go and say goodbye to your loved one conclusion. For myself, I never really had the time to let go and say goodbye to my loved ones like I would have wanted to and like I should have, all because for years I was going on back-to-back funerals. I wasn’t burying distant relatives, I was burying people who were really close to me who made up my support system. It wasn’t until the passing of my grandmother that I realized I had not let go and said goodbye to those I lost.

I want to tell you that letting go and saying goodbye is something you have to learn how to do because there is no right or wrong formula; it is something that God will teach you, lead you into, show you, and tell you how to do, when to do it, and He will lead you into where that starting place and point is. The key is, you have to be in the right state and frame of mind where you can and will be able to not only recognize it but also receive what He is saying and where He is wanting to lead you to.

Please understand, by you yielding, submitting, and surrendering to God leading you to letting go and saying goodbye to your loved ones does not mean He is going to take away what’s in your heart for that person, and He is not going to take away your precious moments and memories you have with that person. I learned that sometimes learning how to yield, submit, and surrender to letting go of and saying goodbye to a loved one is the way you learn how to hold on to them without it hurting and bringing heartache and heartbreak.

What am I saying? I am saying you have to let go of your loved one so you can hold on to what you need to and should hold on to concerning them so it doesn’t hurt, hinder, and handicap you; and you can continue to live your life. Your memory of your loved one must be placed in the right place within you and placed in the right place in your mind, thoughts, thinking, and way of thinking so you can live and move forward.

If that does not happen, you will basically end up living your life with a loss of a loved one—I’m really missing you power surge overload, and that is not good. Which means and will lead to your-already wounded and broken heart, and your mind, thoughts, thinking, and way of thinking being overwhelmingly bombarded with thoughts of your loved one to the place and point where it is unbearable and self-destructive.

I would encourage you to ask God to teach, show, help, and lead you into letting go of and saying goodbye to your loved on so you can still hold on to them the right way. Your thoughts of your passed-on loved one should always be a memory that you will have a moment with and not a constant memorial memory.

Chapter 2

In the 2-I Zone

Anytime a person is faced with the loss of a loved one, that loved one they lost that passed on is important to them, and they are forever impacted by their expected or unexpected passing. Just because the doctor tells you or just because you know your loved one is going to pass on doesn’t take away how impacted you can and will be.

Whenever a person ends up in what I call the 2-I zone after the loss of a loved one—where they have ended up in and at a place and point where the reality of that loved one’s importance in their life hit them really hard, almost like being blindsided or caught off guard, and the reality that their important loved one will not be coming back from the dead and they will not see them again—it will impact them in a way that cannot be put into and expressed in words.

I know personally how it feels to be so impacted because of the loss of a loved one that is important to you; you can feel lifeless, disconnected, empty, all alone, sometimes emotionless. It’s almost like you feel like you are just floating around endlessly without any purpose or direction, and you are so in the disbelief zone that you feel numb, and you are still in denial of that loved one’s passing.

Home Alone

When those that were important to me, and they still are, passed on, I was so impacted mentally and emotionally that I could feel an indescribable void on the inside of me. I was so empty to the place and point where I felt home alone. Being and feeling home alone happens when you look within yourself for that loved one, and you go to that last place and to that last conversation you had with them, looking for them and expecting them to be where you left them, and the reality hit you that they are not there, and they will never be where you left off spending time with them ever again.

When you are home alone with your passed-on loved one, you look within yourself for something they said or did that was a clue or a hint they gave that was to let you know they were and would be physically leaving you and going on to their resting place; but because of the overwhelming I’m missing you heartache, heartbreak, and pain, you can’t and don’t find that clue and hint. And that is when you end up home alone with the hurt, heartache, and heartbreak you feel at their passing.

Being home alone with someone that is so important to you that their passing impacts you in ways that you couldn’t, wouldn’t, and didn’t know existed happens and occurs when you look within yourself for a memory and a moment that can and will help you get past your hurt, heartache, and heartbreak that can heal you, but you can’t find that special, unique, and unforgettable memory and moment.

And you know it is supposed to be there in your mind because you never forget and because you always remember; in fact, you subconsciously vowed to always remember all of your moments and memories of your loved ones, and you promised them even when you never said so and even when they never knew it that you would never let go of or lose or misplace or overlook or take for granted your memory of the moments you had with them.

You didn’t know, and you had no idea that you or your heart or your world would be so impacted by the reality of how important they really were to you; you knew they were, but their passing really validated that. Anything and especially anyone that is important to you and that matters to you that dies has a profound impact on a person, and how they can and will and do react is not something that impacted person has practiced and planned to put in place when the time comes.

How someone that is important to you that dies can and will impact you is something that goes unknown until that time will come. What will help you with that impact is having a good, strong, stable, solid, and sound relationship with God, with truth, and having someone that is as strong as or is stronger than you that you can lean on when you are not strong and you are being overwhelmingly impacted.

A Place Called There

When you are home alone in the 2-I zone, you will find yourself living in and out of a place called there. And what that means is over here in actuality and in reality is the truth concerning what really has happened to your loved one but in a place called there is where you go to escape what has happened in the here and now—in reality; and when you do so, that loved one that has died is still alive, and both of you will go on doing what you have always done and talking the way you always have.

When you go to, get to, and arrive at your place called there, your loved one that died is still there waiting on you where you left them, and they are still there where you know you will always find them. And you and what your impacted mind, thoughts, thinking, and way of thinking and your impacted feelings, emotions, selfish desires, etc. concerning that passed-on loved one go on as if that passed-on loved one is still alive.

No one can tell you your loved one that has died is not alive, and no one can tell you they are not still there in your place called there waiting on you. In your place called there that you end up home alone with after the passing of a loved one, in your mind, everything is the same with your loved one, and nothing has changed.

A person who is deeply scarred and impacted at the loss of someone who was and still is important to them sometimes will still talk to that departed-from-this-life loved one as if they are still alive, and they will continue to go through their daily routine that involves that departed-from-this-life loved one as if that loved one is still there with them.

Escapism

I want to tell you the devil is the master of mind games, and he wants to keep your mind playing tricks on you. He wants to get and keep you isolated from the truth and the reality of the loss of your loved ones, so much so that he will use your impacted mind, thoughts, thinking, way of thinking, heart, feelings, emotions, and selfish desires as a way and as a weapon he can and will form against you to help create the placed called there illusion and fantasy that you want so desperately.

Escapism is dangerous, deadly, damaging, deceptive, deceiving; and it can and will draw, drive, pull, push, persuade, lead, force, seduce, entice, entangle, and entrap your mind into a self-destructive mode.

When your conscious awareness to the loss of your loved one is tricked and trapped in a home-alone place called there, escapism is what your mind is practicing. When a person’s mind is creating a place called there, what is happening is their mind, thoughts, thinking, way of thinking, their heart, and their emotions and feelings have the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in a place called there fantasy.

It is natural and it is normal to feel and be impacted by the loss of someone that is close to you that you love that is important to you and that matters to you, but it is not good to end up feeling isolated and allowing yourself to be isolated in an illusion escapism place called there, seeking and searching for and trying to hold on to someone that is departed and will not be there waiting on you and will not be coming back.

If a person keeps allowing themselves to be a hostage to the hurt, heartache, and heartbreak that the loss of a loved one brings without seeking anointed help, they will be driven, drawn, pulled, pushed, and forced by satanic and demonic forces into a deep dark place of depression, despair, despondency, and into a self-desecration state, condition, mind-set, and frame of mind.

I have been in that 2-I zone, and when I arrived there, I wanted to think, feel, and believe I would wake up from my loss of my loved one dream and everything would be all right. I had times when I was home alone with the hurt, heartache, and heartbreak I was feeling; and there were those times when I would in my mind and thoughts go to a place called there looking for and really expecting to find, see, touch, hold, and hear the voice of my passed-on loved ones. And when that didn’t happen, I was left feeling like I was not important and I didn’t matter anymore.

A Free Agent

The best way to describe how I thought and felt was, for years and all of my life, I had been on the same team playing, practicing, performing, providing, and protecting and giving the best that I had and could give; and one day, I wake up, and I wasn’t needed anymore. I had been released, and I was a free agent, or I was placed on waivers by the family of the loved one that had adopted, accepted, received, loved me, been there for me and with me, etc. and had embraced me and made me a part of their forever family.

Their passing away, their dying, had left me without a home and a family and without an open heart, an open hand, and an open mind to run to. So, I would have to wait until someone—some alive family, friend, some other loved one, even my loved one that died—would come back to life and claim me and take me off of waivers and take me out of free agency.

I never wanted to be a free agent, and I never wanted to be placed on waivers because of and due to the death of my loved ones, but it did happen, and those were the loneliest times in my life. I felt lost and unloved, unwanted and not needed. I at times felt hopeless, rejected, and so far down that I didn’t know which way was up for me.

And when the impact of the loss of my loved one that died that was so very important to me finally hit me to the point and place where I was so overwhelmed, the pain, hurt, heartache, and heartbreak was so overwhelmingly real and surreal and unbearable to the point where I just quit, I gave up, and I wanted to end my life.

All the biblical truths I knew and had been tutored, trained, taught, told, and learned in that free agent released on waivers moment seemingly didn’t help me, heal me, or was able to hold me. What I am saying to you is the devil is waiting on you, and he is wanting to kill, steal, destroy, and sift your life so you cannot and will not recover, be restored, rebuilt, refreshed, renewed, and revived so you can receive and reap the rewards, benefits, and blessings from all that your loved one that has died had labored, prayed, cried, poured, and had imparted into you.

He wants to make sure the death of your important loved one leaves you so impacted that you end up being so weak and vulnerable that he can suggest and influence you into a dry, desolate, destitute, dangerous, self-delusional, self-destructive, and self-demise mind-set, mentality, and mode. The devil will use and utilize the death of your loved one as a way to dominate, manipulate, and control you, your mind, thoughts, thinking, way of thinking, your frame of mind, state of mind, and your state of being.

When you feel like you are being overwhelmingly impacted because of the loss of someone who was, is, and will always be important to you, please seek after and go get some help from and accept the help from someone God can and will lead you to if you ask Him.

You don’t have to be alone, and you don’t have to be strong, and you don’t have to handle what has happened to your loved one that died that can and will affect you. Cry out to God, ask Him for help, and I guarantee He will send someone to you that you can and will be able to lean on when you are not strong and when the storms of the loss of an important loved one impacts you.

Chapter 3

Grieving and Mourning

Anytime you lose someone who is important to you, that added so much that is good, right, and positive to your life, that is irreplaceable, you are going to be impacted. And if that person’s death is something that shocks and stuns you, and it is untimely and unexpected, the impact is even greater and deeper and harder to live with, get past, and get over and get through. There is no way to measure the impact that losing a loved one can and will have upon a person, how it will affect and change their life and how that loss will challenge and change them. It varies from person to person.

And however that person ends up, grieving or mourning have to do with how they are impacted by their loss. I know grieving and mourning sound like they are the same thing, but they are not. When a person grieves, they suffer mental distress, or they feel grief or great sorrow. Grief and grieving are used interchangeably.

Grief is a multifaceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. When someone is grieving or they have grief, the focus is on the emotional response-reaction to the loss. When a person is grieving or they are suffering through grief, there is usually corresponding physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, cultural, spiritual, and philosophical situations and problems that occur or show up.

Grief is the constellation of internal thoughts and feelings you will have when someone you love dies. Think of grief as the container. It holds your thoughts, feelings, and images of your experiences when someone you love dies. In other words, grief is the internal meaning given to the experience of loss.

Bereavement refers to the state or the particular condition that person is in at the time of their loss, and grief is the reaction to that loss. Most people experiencing normal grief and bereavement have a period of sorrow, numbness, and even guilt and anger. Gradually these feelings ease, and it’s possible to accept loss and move forward.

When a person mourns, that person feels extremely sad and expresses sadness for the death or loss of someone. While grief focuses on the emotional reaction/response to loss, mourning is the process one undertakes to deal with the void that is now left. Mourning involves the process of acclimating to living a life without that special someone or something. It is a period of adapting to the changes created by this loss.

Both words grieve and mourn mean to feel deep sorrow for the loss of someone dear, but to mourn is to feel and manifest sadness in public, whereas to grieve is to only feel sadness. Mourning is the outward expression of loss and grief. Mourning includes rituals and other actions that are specific to each person’s culture, personality, and religion. Bereavement and mourning are both part of the grieving process. Mourning is when you take the grief you have on the inside and express it outside of yourself.

Another way of defining mourning is grief gone public or the outward expression of grief. There is no one right or only way to mourn. Talking about the person who died, crying, expressing your thoughts and feelings through art or music, journaling, praying, and celebrating special anniversary dates that held meaning for the person who died are just a few examples of mourning. Mourning is the open expression of your thoughts and feelings regarding the death of the person who has died.

Grieve is the stronger word, implying deep mental suffering often endured alone and in silence but revealed by one’s aspect. To mourn usually refers to manifesting sorrow outwardly either with or without sincerity.

A Hostage

Now that you understand what the difference is between you grieving and you mourning, I want to tell you I wish I had the opportunity to do either one of them, but I didn’t! As I said earlier, I was going to back-to-back funerals, burying family members that were closer than close to me. I just didn’t get or had any grieving and mourning time. And the reason for that was I was married to someone who did not have to do what I was doing.

She was not burying close family members that made up her support system like I was. As a matter of fact, when I had to bury my mama, her mama was still alive, which meant she had no concept of what I was going through, and she could not and did not know how to relate to what I was going through, and she did not know what to say to me. And the things she did say to me were always the wrong things at the wrong place, point, and time.

It was like she was putting her feet in, or she was stepping into and onto my pain. I did not get any real care, concern, and compassion from her when I really and truly needed and wanted it. It was always like she was rushing me to get back to the person I was and back to what I had to do, and she kept telling me what I already knew, and that was my mama was gone and I had to move on.

When she did try to comfort and console me, I would reject, resist, refuse, and refute her attempts, and I would push her away from me and from my pain, and I would disconnect myself from her and distance her from my pain, hurt, heartache, and heartbreak. I didn’t want to do that, but I was hurting in a really deep way like I had never hurt before, and my pain, heartache, and heartbreak never would cease or go away; instead, it kept increasing every day. She could not and did not know how to reach me or how to relate to me and what I was going through.

I knew death was a part of life, and we all are going to die one day, and I already knew death was and is inevitable. The people and that one person who would say these and other cliché things to me didn’t say them out of truly understanding, nor was it out of real, true compassion, but out of being churchy and out of being religious. You know, saying those things because it was the scripted right things to say. I wasn’t trying to practice escapism, and I wasn’t trying to create and run to a place called there. I felt all alone, and the one person that was supposed to be my helpmate, which should have been able to share my heart, heartache, heartbreak, pain, feelings, etc. with, was the one person that I had to shut out and shut down.

It was like I was being forced to protect my pain and hold on to my heartache and heartbreak until I could release it and let it all go. I felt isolated, alone, lonely, and so empty; and I could feel the void that was on the inside of me. I realized I was just home alone with my hurt, heartache, and heartbreak; and no one really and truly understood, especially the woman I was married to.

She even tried to push me into attending a Mother’s Day church service. I had just buried my mama on April 21, and a few weeks later, it was Mother’s Day. I just wasn’t ready to hear all those Mother’s Day tributes at that time. I was hurting really bad, and I just wanted to find a way to end my pain. How could I ease my pain when I knew my mama and my loved ones would not be coming back and I would never see them again?

It felt like I was a hostage to my hurt, heartache, and heartbreak; and at times, it felt like it was so unbearable. The thought of me not seeing my mama again and all of my loved ones that I had to bury, I just wanted to end my life, thinking that would also end my pain, hurt, heartache, and heartbreak. I would get up in the morning and say to myself, Good morning, hurt, heartbreak, and heartbreak. It’s another day, and here we go again. I knew my hurt, heartache, and my heartbreak knew me better than the person I was married to at that time.

I became a hostage to the hurt, heartbreak, and heartache that kept haunting me and holding me down and holding me back from getting back to my old self. At some place, point, and time, I just felt like I might as well get used to the hurt, heartache, and heartbreak I felt hanging around, and that is what I did. I don’t really know, and I don’t really remember when and how it all happened, how I got into that mind-set and way of thinking, but I did. Oh, how I wished the hurt, heartache, and heartbreak when my loved ones died would go away. That was a very sad and lonely day for me.

I made hurt, pain, heartache, heartbreak, loneliness, and emptiness my best friends. I listened to their voice, I could hear it clearly and easily, and I did what they would be telling me to say and how to react. It was a silent pain that had a big, loud booming voice that only I could hear. I met that kind and type of pain, hurt, heartache, and heartbreak the day when my loved ones went away.

I was a hostage to that hurt, heartache, and heartbreak, and I was catching hell living in this life without my loved ones, without the ones I so desperately needed, wanted, and had to have. I never made them my god, and I never looked upon them as my god; they were just a vital part and piece of my support system that I would no longer have supporting me.

At the end of my day, I would hope and even pray the hurt, heartache, and the heartbreak I was being held a hostage would go away, let me go, and leave me alone; but that wouldn’t be the case. They just kept on hanging around waiting on me, punishing me by forcing me to replay, relive, and remember the memories and the moments I had spent and shared with my deceased loved ones—what I needed to learn how to release. At times it felt like I wasn’t holding to the pain, hurt, heartache, and the heartbreak I felt when my loved ones died, but they were holding on to me, and they had a hold on me.

How was I to let go of the very people I truly thought, felt, and believed I needed to hold on to? Nobody could and would answer that question for me. Somedays, most days, and really every day, I had the I’m missing you, loved one blues. I disconnected myself from the person I was married to and from everyone who really didn’t know what I was going through and didn’t know what was really going on deep down on the inside of me, and I hid my feelings from her and them.

Yes, I did the wrong things at that time. I protected my pain, and I built a hedge around my hurt, heartache, and heartbreak. I didn’t, I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t let my then wife at the time and all of those who didn’t know how to comfort and console me know that I didn’t feel real, true love, care, concern, and compassion from them. I didn’t let them see or hear me grieve or mourn or be vulnerable and weak.

I portrayed, I painted the picture of, and I pretended to be strong, but I was falling to pieces because of my missing my loved ones pain. The end results for not being able to grieve the loss of all of those loved ones I had to bury over the years, for all of those back-to-back funerals for loved ones that I had to go to were and would end up being years of locked-up, pent-up pain.

In the end, I bypassed grieving, and I went straight to mourning. When my grieving quickly, suddenly, and immediately turned into mourning because I had no down-and reflect time so I could and would be able to grieve, I ended up with an indescribable, constant, continuous, consistent deep place within me that would be filled with pain, brokenness, hurt, heartache, and heartbreak.

It was pent up on the inside of me, and it held me hostage, and all I could do was hurt me. I didn’t know how to grieve the right way, and I never had the time to grieve, and I bypassed doing that, and I ran straight to mourning. You know, endless talking about my loved ones who died, crying, and expressing my thoughts and feelings and emotions visibly.

I had harbored years of pent-up hurt, pain, brokenness, heartache, heartbreak, grief, and sorrow that I never expressed, which turned into and manifested into mourning. And all I did was hurt me, no one else.

Chapter 4

Crying and Weeping

A Hole and a Void

All I did back then was hurt, and I hurt me. And there was a hole in my soul that could not, would not, and did not heal, and there was a hurt, heartache, heartbreak, and a pain deep down on the inside of me that only I could feel, and all I could do was cry and weep when it showed up, and I felt it. There was a void on the inside of me that I tried to fill but couldn’t, and just like that hole that was in my soul, that void came about all because of the loved ones I had to bury that I never learned how to let go of, that I never got to say goodbye to, that I never got a chance to grieve over, that I just knew how to mourn over.

I had that hole in my soul, and I had that void on the inside of me all because of the people my mama made sure I knew up close and personally and I spent quality time with. She was a very special and a really unique woman. She made sure I knew who my family was, and she made sure I understood the value, meaning, and the purpose of family.

So, as I stated earlier, I wasn’t burying distant relatives or relatives I knew of, had occasionally seen or heard of. I was burying people that I spent a lot of time with that poured into me valuable, priceless, golden nuggets of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

So, when I had to bury each one of them, I was and I would be left with a hole in my soul and left with a void and an emptiness that ran deep like a river way down on the inside of me. I spent a lot of time crying and weeping over every one of my loved ones I had to bury.

Just like there is a difference between grieving and mourning, there is also a difference between crying and weeping, and both are also used interchangeably. When I was and I would be crying, there would be a shedding of tears, sobs, and a loud utterance and exclamation or other inarticulate sounds.

When crying, I would produce tears from my eyes while making loud