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May 26, 2016

The Kindest Thing we can Say After a Loved One Dies.

image by user jarmoluk via Pixabay

When I was 24, my younger brother died suddenly.

Years have trickled by, and I have a good life. But I don’t believe we ever get over losing someone we love. The grief bubbles up from time to time, sometimes gently, sometimes fierce.

Recently, I was reminded of one of the most powerful things we can do for someone who’s suffered a loss, no matter how much time has passed.

A few months ago, I got a message from a friend of my brother’s. I didn’t really know her, but I knew her name and face, the way you do when you come from a small town.

“Your brother meant a great deal to me,” she wrote. She went on to share a handful of memories with me, and for just a moment, my brother was resurrected.

Her message floored me. So many years had passed, so much life sprung up since his death, that I sometimes have to squint to see the empty space he left. It’s easy to believe that he is only on the minds of our family and a few close friends.

A couple of months later, around the anniversary of my brother’s death, a childhood friend wrote that it was a hard time of year for her because she missed my brother.

After each of these messages, I sat down and had a good cry. For thinking my brother had been forgotten, and for these girls who were now women who still thought of him. For the simple yet essential fact that he’d made a mark on other peoples’ hearts. Isn’t that what most of us want, in the end—to have left a trace of ourselves behind? To be remembered? To be missed? To have planted stories that deserve to be told again and again?

These messages reminded me that one of the kindest things we can do after someone dies is to say, I remember to the people closest to them. To write a card or send a message sharing a favorite tale or two, to prove to them that the person who died was seen and won’t be forgotten. It’s easy to shy away from relating stories like this; we might worry it’ll make the other person sad, pushing their grief to the surface.

If the loss is new, their grief is already at the surface.

If it’s an older grief, it might bubble up some sadness, but that’s worth the risk.

Hearing those memories of my brother brought him back to me. They reminded me how deep and woven our connections to each other are. That people we might never expect will hold glimmers of us in their hands like ashes.

That we are tangled together, even long after we are gone.

 

Author: Lynn Shattuck

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Image: Jarmoluk/Pixabay 

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