This is my story of grief. And hope. Not quite hope. If you count waking up to face another day of grief as my hope.

My wife of 34 years died one year and two months ago. Her obituary was in this magazine. She grew up in Lancaster, Pa., and studied nursing at Eastern Mennonite University. Her life revolved around helping others, caring for babies after birth and helping moms nurse. She loved singing, baking, setting the table and welcoming friends and strangers. All she did was help others. Her name is Kim.

We worked at the same hospital, she as a nurse, I as the chaplain.

In early 2022, Kim was diagnosed with an inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor. This type of tumor is rare. ­Cases of tumor metastasis and recurrence are exceedingly rare.

Surgeries, medications and radiation did little to inhibit the tumor’s growth. The doctors did all they could, but the cancer spread throughout her body, including her brain.

Kim refused to say she was “fighting” cancer. She called it her “cancer journey.”

Kim persevered through pain and focused on healing. She didn’t want to waste any precious energy planning her memorial service or “getting her affairs in order.” She had faith in God and in medicine. Dying was unacceptable in her eyes. There was always hope.

Everyone who knew Kim prayed for her healing. Mennonites prayed. Catholics prayed. Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Latter-day Saints and the monks at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass all prayed. My co-workers, even the atheists and agnostics, prayed for her.

We held out hope.

After two years of unsuccessful treatment, Kim’s cancer doctor recommended hospice. She died a week later. She was 62.

A fog of grief overwhelmed me. I cried. I cussed. Prayers sounded more like cries. I took time off and I rode my bicycle down the Washington and Oregon coastline. I attended a community support group called GriefShare. I’m under the care of a spiritual director.

Grief sucks almost all my energy. I still work at the hospital, but I’m no longer doing palliative care. Too raw. My daily work is not as meaningful as it once was. I basically stopped attending church. I find it way too hopeful and optimistic. I don’t want happy songs of praise and gratitude. Not yet, anyway.

I still cry daily. I am surviving until grief has done its work inside me. It must be like going to Alcoholics Anonymous: Show up, do the work, be as honest as you can. It’s worse to hide. Or pretend.

I have a tremendous support system in my family and work. But I still lost the love of my life and my best friend.

If this article isn’t published, I’ll understand. Religious organizations seem to prefer sanitized grief. We can talk about grief only if hope comes alongside it.

But what if there is just grief?

While church is difficult, I have found some comfort reading Job, Lamentations and Ecclesiastes. Proverbs seems unrealistic, with its promises of enduring goodness if you believe in God.

Even the Psalms don’t seem to know what to do with grief. Psalm 23 describes comfort and food, goodness and mercy in the shadow of death. Then there is Psalm 88, which paints a picture of feeling like being buried in a grave, among the dead. Verse 18 says, “You have taken from me friend and neighbor. Darkness is my closest friend” (NIV). There is no promised hope at the end of Psalm 88.

My grief includes anxiety, anger, sadness, disorientation and forgetting where I was going. I suppose anyone who has lost a spouse will understand this.

I believe God could have healed Kim — by prayer, medicine or some combination of both. We could have shared more years on this Earth. She could have helped thousands more newborns. Instead, we had a memorial service and talked about how she practiced her faith in God by setting the table and welcoming all to come and eat.

Now I have this new life I didn’t ask for. Life and disease made a decision for us that no one would ever make for themselves. My definition of hope is that I get to wake up and face another day of processing my anger and sadness about not getting to retire with her and adventure together.

A Jewish friend told me about an early Jewish pilgrimage ritual where the faithful journeyed to the temple. Once in the temple, they would turn en masse to the right and walk counterclockwise around the courtyard. The faithful whose lives were troubled and broken by tragedy would turn to the left and walk in the opposite direction, against the current of those who felt blessed and grateful.

When two people met, walking opposite directions, the one who felt blessed would stop and ask the mourner, “What troubles you today? Why do you walk this way instead of the other direction?”

In this way, the community welcomed the mourners, listening and noticing, seeing those who grieved.

Maybe sometime I’ll find joy again. Until then, I walk upstream.

Lauren Martin is spiritual care coordinator-chaplain at Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, Colo. An ordained Mennonite minister, he makes tree-branch-shaped candles, gardens and loves bicycling cross-country.