Solitary Grief

 As May 2022 moves on, the pain and darkness of May 2021 grips us. So many lost parts of their souls. Many survive with a hole in the heart. And live emptiness that is deep and cannot ever be filled.

One of my second grader's mother tells me, "I get a panic attack every time I hear an ambulance. I was so strong when he was in the ICU, and when he died, I was too tired to cry. I miss him so much, I never said goodbye and never gave him a send-off worthy of the life that we lived together." I held the phone silently, as she cried and wailed. I could not cry, nor could I say anything to comfort. I just stayed on the phone line.

It was then I realised that grief is a solitary journey. We think we can support the other, but the truth is that no one can bear the burden of another's grief. They may cry with you but they walk alone. Their longings are hidden, everything around them makes them sigh with a painful memory of the past. We cannot feel that pain no matter how empathetic we may try to be.

Praying that those of us experience God's comfort in the deepest places of loss and grief.