I am going to a funeral today.  Sudden death of a young (that words is relative coming from a 65 year old) man who was one of the most well-respected, most loved members of our community here in Ithaca, New York.  He was up cutting a tree and fell.

What does one say to someone who has experienced such a loss?  “I understand.”  “I’m sorry.” “At least he was in our lives for a time” ” He gave so much to so many — you must be so proud and grateful for who he was.”  None of that works, of course.  What do you say to his wife, his two young children, his dozens of brothers and sisters in the extended family?  What do you say to help with the grief of the hundreds or thousands of people who knew him?

I assert that all we can do is listen.  What else is there to do but to understand.  Understanding is the help, not trying to find something to say to make someone feel better.  Being listened to, and being understood is what helps someone in grief.  It sure might not feel that way sometimes, especially if they start to cry even harder.  So sometimes listening becomes a counter-intuitive act of faith — believing that something is right even while it doesn’t fix something up, make things happy.

What has to come out of our mouths, then, to someone who is grieving such a loss has to be something like, “You probably can’t even describe this loss in words” “Must be so hard to even think of going on without him” “All of a sudden, he’s gone” “What a ripping out of such a huge piece of your life” “You don’t care why it happened or how it happened — you just want to take back that it happened.” “It’s all got to feel unreal to you right now, that it didn’t really happen.” “You don’t see how you are going to go on without him.” “You don’t want to go on without him.”  Anything like that which we feel in your heart-of-hearts is what the person might be experiencing.

Fixing up and making happy is to help our own feelings, not the feelings of the person in grief.  It is not so easy to be in the presence of another’s pain.  We want to get rid of it.  But that is not to help them, it is to help us.  Listening is not about us.  Listening is about being in the service of the speaker.  That is the gift.

Ed