A Lesson on The Right Way to Grieve
When you lose someone you love, good people do what good people do: they try and help.
They see you in the deepest despair and they want desperately to pull you out, to rescue you, to numb the pain, to stop the bleeding.
There's a helplessness that comes from watching someone they care for suffer and in their urgency to alleviate that suffering, they will do something that is rarely helpful in such moments: they will use words.
With the most noble of intentions they will speak the simple platitudes they have heard others speak to those who grieve.
They will attempt to neatly wrap up the existential questions that death brings so that it all makes sense.
They will try and comfort you with religious phrases about better places and gained angels and God’s plan.
They will offer you advice on how to grieve and well-meaning suggestions when they feel you're doing it wrong or not snapping out of it soon enough.
Having walked the valley of grief after my father's sudden passing ten years ago, I learned how little value words actually held, how little they helped, how hopelessly brittle and fragile they were beneath the crushing weight of a sorrow that language cannot adequately support.
And so the irony of me offering you any words right now at all is not lost on me, but here they are anyway:
You're grieving the right way.
Wherever you are in your journey, however horribly you believe you're handling it, how scattered and untethered you feel, how impatient with the process you might be—you're doing exactly what you should be doing, so go easy on yourself.
The second greatest tragedy right now would be for you to try and carry everything you're carrying and to pile upon it all any guilt for the way you're mourning or the time it's taking or the progress you think you aren't making. It's enough of a burden to bear your loss without judging your performance. Pain is not a competition and comparison to another human being is wasted energy.
There are millions of people far wiser and far more educated in these matters than I am. They will give you strategies, plans, and schedules to navigate life after death. describing in detail the process of grieving—and though you may find some solace or encouragement or understanding in these things, at times they too will all fall short.
Because only you are you, and only you have lost the one you've lost. The singularity of that relationship means that your specific grief is unprecedented. It has never existed in the history of the planet. It will not look or feel like any grief before it and it will not behave according to plan or on any schedule. You are the world’s leading expert on your grief experience:
You will have it all together and then it will all hit the fan.
You will think that you're well healed, and without warning the wounds will violently reopen.
You'll feel as though you've reached a stable clearing, and just as quickly the ground will give way.
You'll feel quite able and strong, and then you'll get sucker punched and collapse in a heap.
And this is all okay. It is normal. It really is. You're not losing your mind, you're just feeling the depth of the subtraction that grief brings with it.
Yes, there are responses to losing people we love that are not particularly healthy that we try to avoid. There are coping mechanisms that we can utilize that can help, and leaning on others can surely lighten the load to a point.
But the bottom line, is that grief just sucks.
There are no magic words to fix this.
There is no shelf life to loss.
There is no predictable timetable.
Grieving is less like a slow car ride on a smooth, level road and more like a rickety roller coaster in the dark.
There are some questions that will remain unanswered in this life.
There is occasional Hell you're just going to have to walk through and this is all okay.
You're going to break down and freak out and fall apart, and it's going to happen over and over and over. So break down and freak out and fall apart and when you can, get up and keep going.
But friend, refuse to carry any guilt right now. Carrying the pain is more than enough to shoulder.
However you are grieving in this moment, it is the right way—because it is the only way that you can grieve.
Be greatly encouraged.
What advice have you received regarding grief that has been particularly helpful for you? Share in the comments.
John, your post touched my heart. In in my 80s now, I've had a taste of grief: my parents, many treasured friends, a beloved niece. As a pastor for half my life, I often tried to "use words" - it took years for me to realize that the most important gifts were not words, but *presence* - accompaniment, attentiveness, compassion.
I was in prison when my wife of 50 years wrote me to say she wanted a divorce. Having ministered among folks impacted by divorce, I came to see that divorce is like death, like bereavement, only without the dignity. I felt like I'd been hit by a locomotive. I went to the prison psychologist, a freshly-minted Ph.D. who looked at me from behind his massive desk and delivered his platitudes. I returned to my cell, dejected.
When it was permitted, I went to a neighboring cell to see Melody, whose incarceration was especially complicated. Transgender, coping with all the terrors of being in a men's prison. An MS patient who was walking when I first met her, but who was now barely able to sit in a wheelchair. An atheist. And a Trump supporter. (Go figure on that one!) We'd had, um, many "frank exchanges of views." When she came out to me before her transition (remarkably, the Federal Bureau of Prisons offered gender-affirming care, including hormone treatment), she said I was the first person she told; I was honored that she trusted me.
Now, I needed somebody. The visit with the psychologist had been disappointing, and I didn't even try to confide in the prison chaplain, whose version of Christianity seemed to embody nothing that I see in Jesus. I had other friends among the inmates, but I went to Melody. I sat on her bed, weeping. She sat in her wheelchair.
I don't remember anything she said. I'm not sure she spoke at all. She didn't try to fix me. She reached over and touched me on the knee. And in that simple, gentle, touch, I felt a current of kindness, a reassuring human connection, a comfort that was deeper than any words could convey.
Today, my heart bleeds. It bleeds for all those who suffer under the weight of hate: Conservative, Republican, MAGA, Nationalist, the Haters, the Cheap, the Stingy, the Fearful, the Warmongers, the Rebellious, the deniers, and all those who do not want to leash their large angry dogs. For souls who inflict pain and for souls who bear the infliction, my heart bleeds.
And simultaneously I grieve for TRUTH, watching the arrogance, the utter disrespect, the disregard, the insults, and attempted assassinations soulless, loveless ideology inflicts. Using words, both spoken and projected to gaslight, to spin, having one and only one intent, to ultimately dismantle authentic REALITY. To trample, shun, and shame its very existence. To crush. To kill. To crucify the sanctity of all that IS, desperate to replace IT with all that is not.
Yes, today, hate, masquerading as love, flying flags and waving banners, “Make America Great Again,” brings tears to my soul. How could humans be so ignorant, so blind, so determined to deliver hate to themselves and others?