The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

Last in a Three-Part Series

First, allow me to share from experience what works and what doesn’t. 

Please don’t tell me

• Everything will be okay
• I have other children
• I need to be strong
• I need to have faith
• God works it out for good
• I’ll get over it
• I have to move on
• God needed another angel
• I’ll see him again in heaven
• It’s God’s will
• You understand (unless you’ve been through something very similar)

Help me. After a devastating death, the bereaved find it difficult or impossible to do the simple tasks of daily life. At the funeral, you told me to let you know if I need anything. Thank you. You meant well, but I will never call you. I need you to take the initiative and bring me meals, babysit my other kids, mow my lawn, shovel the snow off my walk, do my laundry, wash my dishes, clean my house, lube my car.

Please don’t give me well-meaning advice. I can’t hear it right now.

And, please, no religious platitudes or scripture verses. I have a Bible. God will lead me to what will speak to my soul.

Don’t expect me to stop feeling intense suffering this month or this year. This wound is deep. It goes to the bone. It hurts.

Instead, just be with me. Say nothing. Hold me. Hug me. Cry with me. Accept that whatever I am feeling is normal. After Elliott died, the people who helped me the most were the ones with no answers and often no words. They gave me love. They wept with me. They held me. As my friend Nick Wolterstorff says, just sit with me on the mourners’ bench.

Talk about Elliott. I know you don’t want to open new wounds. You won’t. The wound is always open. We who have lost loved ones don’t want them to disappear. We want to remember and express our love.

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I’m deeply indebted to my friend Nicholas Wolterstorff (Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology Emeritus at Yale University) for this series on grief. His books, Lament for a Son (ISBN 080280294X) and Living with Grief (ISBN-13: ‎979-8385201006) have touched my heart like no others.