I'm Sorry for Your Loss!

I never understood how it was OK to use the phrase I'm sorry for your loss until I experienced loss last year myself. Before this it seemed so banal and empty as a phrase and just a matter of uttering something on encountering people just bereaved. However, I now really value it as an expression as it doesn't intrude on one's feelings or experience. It's a phrase of acknowledgement. It doesn't jar in the way that I know how your feeling might, as feelings are as unique as the individual and circumstances concerned. Similarly, the question Are you OK? sits comfortably too, as it allows the bereaved person to either stop that particular part of the conversation or to elaborate.

This month of November is a stirring time for anyone who has ever experienced loss of a loved one through death. It is a time to recognise the need to stand on the threshold again glancing both ways towards memories and towards a way of being now. It is a time of communal reflection on life and death for those who are in this space and a time to hold one another with care. It may be a very difficult time for many if the death has left an irreplaceable wrenching gap or an aching pain that is very slow to ebb. It may also be a very challenging time if family dynamics pull people further apart rather than together. No assumptions can be made about the relationship between the departed and the individually bereaved.

The feelings and experiences of grief really are as individual as the person concerned. Kubler Ross and other psychological theorists have defined stages of grief. However, I don't believe that there is anything clinical about grief as, for some, there might be one or two dominating feelings or thoughts while others may have a whole myriad in no recognisable order at all. The circumstances of death play greatly on the experience of grief and the unfolding of feelings.

There may be obstructing factors to permitting feelings to surface, such as rushing into dealing with the needs of other vulnerable people in the family or a denial that one is entitled to claim one's own grief space. Some may have gone through grief long before the loved one died and crossed the threshold to almost never return without anything being right or wrong in this. Grief doesn't have a particular time of beginning or ending as the way of being without one's loved one/s evolves.

Every day we stand beside people who are grieving! In this month of November may we pray for, listen to, be with… those who carry the burden of loss, recent or otherwise. May we hold our departed loved ones fondly in our hearts as each of the departed made an imprint on our lives in some manner. May they rest in Peace!

Cathy Burke
Catechist in the Lucan Partnership of Parishes