What can I do to help?  I hear this question all the time.  When you experience a death in your family, people want to help, to ease your pain, to be there for you in some small way.  Henry’s death has shown me the goodness of people in a way I have never seen before.  It seems like everywhere I turn; someone is reaching out.

I have always felt uncomfortable being around people who have lost a loved one.  I never know what to say or do, and often that has meant that I have shied away from situations where I should have offered help.  A few years ago, our neighbors lost their adult son.  I didn’t go over to visit with them.  I didn’t bring cookies or flowers.  Since my neighbor had always told me how much my young children reminded her of her children when they were young, I didn’t bring the kids outside to play in the neighborhood park because I didn’t want to be insensitive.  My motives were good, but my actions were not kind.  I missed an opportunity to minister to the needs of someone who was hurting.

If you know someone who has lost a child or loved one here are three simple things you can do to help.

1. Be Present

I learned about Henry’s death late in the evening, as I was about to go to bed.  He was with my wife and our two other children in the US for a visit with the grandparents while I was back “home” overseas.  By the time I had made the necessary calls to people in the US and booked a flight for the next day to join Sarah and the kids, it was around 3:00 in the morning.  I took an Ambien and went to sleep.  At 6:30 in the morning I woke up with someone standing beside my bed.  It was a friend from work, standing there with tears in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Josh.  I’m just so sorry” he said.  I got up, wearing only my boxers, complete with bed head, a puffy face, runny nose, and terrible morning breath.  He threw his arms around me and just held me.  We cried together in a shared embrace.  He stayed only for a moment and then left.  A minute later, another friend walked in and did the same.  Two minutes later, two more friends walked in and repeated the scene.  At lunch that day, I was in my house when the doorbell rang.  When I came to the door, a friend was standing there.

“I can leave if you don’t want to see anyone!” she blurted out.

“It’s okay.” I said.  She came in and just sat with me at the kitchen table while I ate my lunch.  Later that day I went into work and a parade of people came by my office to hug me and cry with me.  When the amount of people became too great for my office, we went to a large conference room.  They kept coming – people of all backgrounds, colors, creeds, religions, ages, and life stories – to share in my grief and to let me know they loved me.  They loved me in action without being asked.  We all sat together at the conference table and cried.  Sometimes we spoke sometimes we were silent.  It was a scene of shared humanity like I have never experienced before.  It was so beautiful.

It’s strange, but even in silence, having them just sit with me was comforting.  When you have a baby, you want to share your joy with others.  When your baby dies, it’s the same.  You want to share your grief, to know that you are not alone, and that people share in your loss.  This need to be with others is something that transcends time and culture.  Sitting in the conference room, I thought of Job, who after being struck by tragedy, was visited by his friends.  In the story of Job, his friends sit with him in silence for seven days, just being there with him.

If you know someone who is in grief, go be with that person.  Send a note.  Send a card.  Drop off cookies or food.  Put pinwheels in the yard.  Go to the house and put up encouraging notes or scripture.  Take on errands and every day details to lighten the load of the grieving person.  Give a hug or encouraging word.  Do something so that the grieving person knows he or she is loved and not forgotten.

2. Be Human

Grief is messy and unrefined.  The night that I left to return to the US to join Sarah and the kids, I was lost in a blur.  My suitcase was still packed from a business trip I had returned from two nights earlier.  Some friends stopped by to help me as I packed.  As I dug through my suitcase taking out my dirty clothes from the business trip and packing clean socks and underwear, they sat with me in the mess.  I was at the lowest point in my life, broken and afraid.  They joined me in that place and made sure I was okay.

“Do you need to bring an outfit with you to bury Henry?”

“Do you need to bring his social security card?

“Do you have your passport, wallet, and phone?  Let’s make sure they are in your carry-on.”

I would normally never let people see me in such an undignified state, watching me as I paw through my suitcase.  Grief breaks through the well-constructed images we create.  It removes the mask and people see us as we really are – with blemishes, bad haircuts, and missing teeth.  But the truth is that each of us is carrying the same thing in our suitcase.  We all have pain and brokenness, secrets and shame.  Grief only brings those things to the surface.  Imagine what the world would look like if we allowed people to see our frail humanity.  Imagine the richness and depth of relationship we would enjoy if we ministered to one another as we are rather than as we think we should be.

Since I have returned to work, people continue to come to my office and talk.  They ask how I am and they cry with me.  I have been surprised at the people who have come to see me.  I have also been surprised by the people who have not.

There are those who go out of their way to avoid contact.  If they must make contact they give a quick nod and carry on.  Some pretend like it never happened.  They pick up where we last left off as if my son had not died.  We are excluded from events in which we previously would have been included.  It’s as if we are contagious and grief might spread.

C.S. Lewis recounts this in his book A Grief Observed, the book he wrote following the death of his wife.

I cannot talk to the children about her.  The moment I try, there appears on their faces neither grief, nor love, nor fear, nor pity, but the most fatal of all non-conductors, embarrassment.  They look as if I were committing an indecency.  They are longing for me to stop.  I felt the same after my own mother’s death when my father mentioned her.  I can’t blame them.  It’s the way boys are.

It isn’t only the boys either.  An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet.  At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not.  I hate it if they do, and if they don’t.  Some funk it altogether.  R. has been avoiding me for a week.  I like best the well-brought up young men, almost boys, who walk up to me as if I were a dentist, turn very red, get it over, and then edge away to the bar as quickly as they decently can.  Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers.

The grieving person you greet knows she is grieving.  It is the thing she thinks about during the day, when she goes to sleep, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night.  She knows she may cry without warning or reason.  She knows she is not always thinking clearly.  Be willing to be human.  It’s okay if you cry.  It’s okay if you don’t know what to say.  It’s okay that you still have a family and children and a life that continues.  The pain in the grieving person’s life is from the loss, not from something you did.  So don’t be afraid to be vulnerable.  Don’t be afraid to let your humanity show.

3. Err on the Side of Thoughtfulness

It doesn’t take much to minister to someone who is grieving.  It doesn’t have to cost anything.  A text with a simple message tells the grieving person you are thinking of him.  A call or visit just to say hi and check in tells someone in a very real way that he has not been forgotten.  A meal, coffee, or an invitation to a party lets people know that they are still part of the community.  All too often I have erred on the side of avoiding people for fear of causing offense.  I would tell myself that I wasn’t close enough to visit or to call or to attend a funeral.  Really, I was only making excuses not to get involved because death made me uncomfortable.  I wish I would have erred on the side of thoughtfulness.  After the overwhelming kindness shown to me, I will be different the next time I have an opportunity to meet someone in his or her grief.  We live in a culture that pretends that death isn’t real, like “He who must not be named,” like if we mention it, it will find us.

For the grieving family, death is all too real.  It has come into their life and changed it forever.  They are broken and in pain.  They need you to reach out.  Do it today.