I have a friend from my coffee group who recently lost her husband. She had a health issue and needed to be hospitalized a day or two after her husband died so I went and sat with her for a while. I recognized her grief. I knew her brokenness. I remember.

Even though it’s been nearly six years now since Mr. Virgo died, you don’t forget. Even though I have this wonderful man in my life now and we are deliriously happy…you don’t forget. Time knocks the sharp edges of your grief away, making it softer with distance…like looking for the mountains through a misty haze. You know the mountains are there. You remember what they look like. But you can’t quite make out the details.

Everyone deals with grief in their own way. And, the circumstances of death changes from person to person. It’s one thing to lose your grandma when she’s ninety-two. It’s another when your child is murdered and it’s high profile and you keep seeing it in the news and you get the details of exactly what happened. We expect our elders to pass. We’re never ready, really. But it seems like the natural progression of things. We don’t expect the senseless murder of a young man in the prime of his life. There’s broken. Then there’s destroyed.

I pray for my friends who are burying their loves this week. A great-grandma and a husband. And I pray for my friend who lost her son last year. I pray for her because the scab keeps getting ripped off…over and over and over. I pray for her because I have no words. The only thing I could offer her was a quote from Megan Devine. 

“Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.”

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“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”

Isaiah 43:2 NIV