How to Comfort Those Who Grieve, Part I: Some Things I Have Learned

[Brucefong.files.wordpress.com]

Since my blog of July 27 last year, “Being Held by God,” I have been writing primarily about my experiences of grief, and the love and support I experienced from family, friends, and community as I grieved.  These reflections have focused on these experiences as they happened.  They are “my story” of loss and grief.  I have long believed and experienced as I have preached sermons that the most personal is the most universal, and as we share our stories it helps other’s reflect on their own stories.

Now I want to take a step back, which is actually a step forward. From the perspective of all these years later, I will reflect in the next few posts on what I have learned about grief and loss.  I hope you will also share what you have experienced and learned in your own grief journey.

Two of the gifts God gives us in grief are shock (we become pretty much numb) to what is going on around us, and adrenaline, helping us function when we are not sleeping or eating well.  What the church gives us is a memorial or funeral service, hopefully not more than three to five days into the future. (To me, the growing practice of setting funerals weeks or even months into the future is a denial of grieving, and often delays the process of healing and renewal.)

One of the gifts of the shock is that we hopefully don’t really hear a lot of things being said to us.  People are so well meaning and don’t know what to say, which means, usually, that it is best to say nothing.  As I have mentioned before, the most important gift a person can give to a grieving person is their presence and love.  However, saying nothing is uncomfortable, and so we often blurt something out, which is usually a cliché, and often might be a theological perspective the grieving person doesn’t agree with.  I cringe when I hear people say that the one who has died is better off now, or God needed them more, or God has another angel, or this must all be “God’s will.”

Be especially careful about what you say on Facebook.  Unlike one’s mumbling words in the presence of the grieving person, it can’t just drift off into nowhere.

This is not meant to scare folks off.  Many people avoid visiting the bereaved because they don’t know what to say.  I find it best to simply talk about the one who has died: what that person meant to you, how glad you are that you had a chance to know her, how you will miss him also, and how his absence will be a real loss to you and the community.

I don’t know if I remember a single thing said to me in my experiences of grief.  What I do remember is presence, love and tears.  As I have mentioned before, what I remember so clearly after my Father’s death is his best friend, Ansel, coming to the door, standing there with tears in his eyes, saying nothing, and extending his hand (Norwegians don’t hug much) to my Mother.

When I was a pastor in California there was a fascinating, homebound couple I used to visit, and take Holy Communion.  He had been a producer of movies in Hollywood, and going into their house was like touring a motion picture museum.  He had great difficulty walking and was not able to make it into worship on Sunday mornings.

One day, as I was planning the funeral service for my first wife, Pauline, the doorbell rang.  I opened my door and to my unbelievable surprise, there stood this couple at my door, with tears in their eyes.  They handed me an envelope with a check, and all they said was:  “This is to help with the funeral expenses.”

“When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled;  ‘Where have you laid him?’  They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’  Jesus wept.  So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’”  [John 11:33-36; RSV]