How to stand with grief for another

When a Heart Feels Full and Broken at the Same Time

A dear friend of mines husband has recently passed over.

They have been together all their adult lives.

They have 10 children and even more grandchildren.

I can not even begin to imagine how hard this must be for her.

She is broken, lost, in the darkness of grief.

Its moments like this in life that the heart does something strange.

It opens wide with love, and at the very same time, it aches with a quiet, unbearable pain.

In witnessing her grief, I noticed something moving through me too,

My heart has a feeling of being completely full and and completely broken.

Full of love for her.

Full of memories, of shared moments, of the invisible threads that wove our stories together.

Full of memories and feels for myself and those I have lost before. Resurfacing.

And broken, because there are no words big enough, no actions strong enough, to take away that kind of immense pain.

And maybe, well not maybe, let’s face it, this is the quiet truth us British people, don’t speak of enough of.

We turn away from grief, push it down, carry on. Because, in reality we have to. In this busy world. We need to return to work, continue to care for someone else. Etc.

There is such a helplessness in this space.

Standing at the edge of someone else’s sorrow, wishing we could gather it up, soften it, carry it for them.

But we can’t do that on any level.

All we can do, is be present.

We can sit beside them in the silence.

We can send a message that asks for nothing in return.

We can hold their hand, or hold them in our thoughts, or in our prayers.

We can love them through it.

And in doing so, we may find that our “full and broken” heart is not something to fix.

But something deeply human.

A witnessing of the privilege of love and loss.

The preciousness of life.

When our hearts feel this deeply it is a sign of a heart that remembers. We are one.

One heart, one love, of humanness and spirit. Rolling in Stardust and Earth, swimming in deep waters and Tsunamis . Flying in gentle winds and hurricanes. Singing songs of life.

And in the middle of all this?

A heart that refuses to turn away.

A heart that honours both love and loss as part of the same great mystery and cycle of life.

If you are standing in this place too.

Beside someone you love who is grieving.

Know that your presence matters more than what you can offer .

You don’t need the right words.

You don’t need to make it better.

Just stay.

Just love.

Just be.

And let your heart, however full and broken it feels, be part of the quiet healing.