October 6, 2024
“Any woman who’d ever lost a child knew of the hollowness that remained within the soul.”
― Brittainy C. Cherry
Marianne hobbled into church. She didn’t have her cane. She was crying inconsolably, and several women rushed to help her to the pew, where she told them in an anguished cry, which seemed to echo throughout the small church, that her son had been killed in a car accident in Georgia.
They hugged her, they held her, they sat down with her. There were no words that could alleviate an agony like that. The loss of a child is life’s most unbearable pain, a pain that endures forever, and some people never can find acceptance. And if the pain is unbearable, how does someone who is 84 years old even begin to navigate the torturous grief that comes with it?
The priest sat with her for a long time after Mass and listened to her tragic account of what happened … and why it was so unfair of God to allow it. Father knew it wasn’t the time for theological discussion about the problem of evil and suffering in the world. Leave that to the theologians. It was a time for compassion, silence, listening, comfort.
She would carry her pain for a long time, but how long would she herself have left? Grief shocks us in ways we never imagined possible, grief takes away your breath, grief can bring you to your knees, grief can lead you to despair. Grief does all these things and more, and the only hope is for someone to come and sit beside you and listen in silence, and share your tears and share the wound in your heart that you’re convinced will never heal.
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