Once a month I run a support group for the bereaved.  It’s one of those things that I love/hate.  It’s after normal business hours, which isn’t my favorite, and it usually involves people crying.  On the other hand, I have come to believe that there is something necessary and lovely about helping people who are grieving.  Most people don’t quite know what to say, and there is a huge vacuum of safe people and safe places in the life of someone who is wrecked by the death of a loved one.  I enjoy being a safe person in a safe place where a man can come to talk about his dead wife without wondering if he’s grieving too long or talking too much about her or visiting her grave too much.  People do what they need to do in order that they cope with the loss.  I didn’t say “get over it” because that never happens.  You learn to live with it.

I didn’t grow up comfortable with other people’s grief; I learned about it in fire.  Many years ago a friend miscarried and I remember sitting with her on her couch as she cried, expressing her sadness and anger, and there was nothing to do but to sit with her and listen.  To walk with her through a dark place.  To be willing to be her companion on that ugly stretch of the journey.

God created us to live with each other in community, to connect with God the Father as well as one another.  We love very deeply.  There’s the love of a parent for a child, the love between husband and wife, the love of friends who’ve been in the trenches together.  I have dear friends from kindergarten, and if my math is right, that’s 30 years of friendship.  I’ve loved my parents for 35 years.  My parents have loved each other for over 45 years.  I had a client who had been married for 70 years.  Why do we think we should be “over” our grief in 12 months?  That’s crazy.

Living in community also means drawing close to someone else’s grief at times.  Being the companion of someone lost in the depths of grief is an intimate and honorable place to be.  Don’t shy away from it.  It’s a holy place.