It is difficult at such times to find words. In the midst of our joy at the Baptism and the birth, there was a deep sadness at the loss of the twins and a concern for their parents. Sixteen months earlier they had lost triplets in a similar premature birth.

Their parents and friends had journeyed with them in their grief. People who are grieving may look okay, but when you get underneath the surface with them, you find out they’re not sleeping or they’re angry at co-workers or they’re fighting with family. Some get very active and help those around them, while others withdraw into seclusion. Some want to talk about it a great deal and others don’t even want you to bring it up. It can be confusing, even frustrating, for friends and family.

At the same time, there are styles of grief — like getting overly busy or rationalizing away the sense of loss and the need to grieve — that, while numbing the pain, do not favour the healing within.

Grief is a loss of connection, a connection that gave meaning to our lives. Now I have to decide: What am I living for? What gives me a reason to get up in the morning? Where’s the meaning in my life? Experts say the best way to help the grieving is to spend time being with and listening to them rather than talking to them.

Grief is best healed in community. When we are supported by a circle of love it is easier to let go of what is over, to harvest the experience for its wisdom, to tell the story until we do not have to tell it any more. Grieving is more a matter of the heart than of the head.

There is no set pattern of “normal” grief responses. Some people eat a lot; others eat very little; some sleep a lot; others do not. Some people look mad. Some look sad. Some look distant. Whatever form it takes is “normal” for that person. Grief is a roller-coaster; there’s nothing sane or predictable about it.

The average time frame given to people who grieve is several months in the case of an expected death and a year when it was unexpected, but grieving, in actuality, can take years. And there’s no pushing the river. It will take the time it takes.

Grief is a process and it is hard work, but worth the effort because we and our lives are worth the effort. How we recover from grief depends upon our inner resources and on the support we receive from others. Grief is the price we pay for love, and it can be the source of much growth and gain. Some widows and widowers, once greatly dependent on their spouses, find themselves growing as they are forced to discover inner strength, acquire new skills and play unfamiliar roles. The person who is lost can never be replaced, but that doesn’t mean we can never love again.

The Easter Triduum sends us an important message. Jesus’ death on the cross lets us know that God does not preserve us from pain and suffering. But the witness of the Resurrection is that God is present with us in it to sustain us and is at work to bring us through it into a new and richer experience of life. The consolation of Easter is that it is life, not death, that has the final word.

(Fr. Thomas Ryan, CSP, is director of the North American Paulist Centre in Washington, D.C.)

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