When grief has a visible presence

I had court this morning with an attorney who recently lost his young adult son in a tragic accident. While we had corresponded by email and text, this was the first time I had seen him in person since the death. Watching him in the courtroom, asking questions about the child that we were there to talk about, almost broke me. He looked so much older than the last time that I saw him, before his son’s death, and he seemed almost frail.

His grief was a palpable presence around him, surrounding him like a shroud or a cloud of mist.

I had difficulty concentrating on the questions that he was asking, because all I could think of was how difficult it must be for him to ask questions about a child whose parents could not care for him, when he would have given anything, I am sure, to have just one more day to care for his.

Grief is an oppressive weight on the heart, and on the soul, and on the mind. It is often accompanied by a host of what if questions and guilt that, while unfounded, is still very present.

We lost a coworker a few weeks ago, and it is only now that the office has begun to go back to some semblance of feeling normal. And yet there is that pang of loss, each time I, or someone else, comes across her name in a court report or an order. There is that sense of disbelief and shock, all over again, that someone so young was taken so suddenly. There is the remembrance that, for her family, nothing will ever feel normal again.

Our conversation in our small group this past Sunday, in wrapping up our study on the Apostles Creed, was on death, and on the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. We often have deep and at times emotional conversations in our class, but never one before where there were so many teary eyes or hurting hearts. 

While there were differences of opinion about our thoughts on death and how we want the actual death experience to occur, the biggest thing we all agreed on was our fear of dying at a time when we are still needed by our families, by our children. 

Having been only 22 when my dad died, I was still at an age where I needed him a great deal. His wisdom, his advice, his direction. And his death left a hole that has never been filled. I fear the same for my coworker’s children who are even younger than I was. 

I fear the same for my attorney friend, in the loss of his son. What I have learned from all the friends and family I have known who have lost a child, is that loss is a wound that never fully heals. The shroud may become lighter, and the mist may become thinner, but they never fully go away.

So today I pray for comfort and peace for my friend in the loss and grief that he experiences. I pray for my coworkers family as they learn to adjust to a new normal and all that entails. I pray for all those that have lost those that they love, long before they were ready to let them go.

And I pray for eyes that see the visible presence of grief in those around me, and a spirit of love  to provide what comfort I can, in whatever way that I can.