• Tell the bereaved person you were honoured to know the deceased, and know they must miss him or her terribly. Give them a chance to cry in the company of a friend who knew their loved one.



• Ask the bereaved spouse sometime to tell you how they met each other; or in the case of a parent, child or sibling, invite the mourner to share some favourite memories of their times together. Ask if the lost loved one liked (fishing, bowling, snow-mobiling, hunting, diving, cooking, travelling - whatever seems to fit), and encourage the answer with quiet empathy. (That's 'feeling with' the speaker, not judging or criticizing or rushing or butting in, okay? This isn't about you right now, it's about helping the mourner come to grips with his/her own emotions. If you're like me, sometimes you forget that part in your eagerness to help.)



• Invite him/her over for dinner, if she lives close enough, or invite her to go along on an outing if you have room for one or two more.



• PHONE THEM OFTEN!!! just to touch base. "How'd your day go?" "I was just running out to the store and wondered if you'd like me to pick you up some ...". That kind of thing. The worst(?) part is the loneliness, the feeling of being re-potted into a different container where nothing around you is familiar. Friends distance themselves because they don't know what to say, and you are left with four walls to stare at and God as your main company. That isn't a bad thing, obviously, but you *also* need a chance to talk about your memories, talk about your loss, tell it over and over and over again until you can start to come to grips with it.



• A couple or three months down the road, suggest that the mourner create a montage of memories of the lost loved one: pictures of the family, pictures of him/her relaxing, pictures of clowning around, clippings about any awards he/she may have been recognized with, the funeral notice - sad moments, happy moments, special memories, hobbies, boyhood photos, close friends. It wasn't until November 2005 that a group grief counselling session suggested creating a 16x20 framed montage of "Archie-moments" to me, and it was the best therapy of all. That montage now hangs on the wall across from the back entrance, and every time I come in I see Archie's smiling face, Archie "modelling" a red sweater I'd knit for him, Archie on his tractor cultivating a field on Fullmeasure Farm, Archie with a new piece of farm equipment, Archie with one of his goats. It is a TREASURE, and when I'm outta here, it will be here for our family or friends. :-))



• The group grief counselling session I attended was a seven-week program, and it was excellent. I had had one-on-one counselling early last summer when I THOUGHT I was coping... but it was the group session last November/December that really helped me most. In sharing the grief of others, I found what I was going through was *not* anything unusual; and I learned how horrific the experiences of others had been, which brought my loss of Archie back into perspective a bit.



• Hope this gives you a few thoughts on how to proceed when someone close to you is mourning the loss of a loved one, dear hearts. GOD is definitely, definitely, definitely closer than He has ever felt during the initial grieving process, but as you start to take command and try to pull yourself together, you find you're leaving Him behind. (Of course, you think it's the other way around - but it's not.) There IS life after death, however, for all concerned. It just takes a while before we can settle into the new harness and go back to our walk with Jesus "alone", without the comforting presence of our dearest human friend.



• One of the first things the group counselling facilitators told us was NOT to tell the bereaved, "If I can do anything for you, give me a call." Reason? Because newly-bereaved people find it very difficult/next to impossible to reach out. Personally, I found it very difficult to focus on what I needed. My judgment was totally out of whack because the only-one-who-counted I usually bounced thoughts off, was no longer there. I was utterly lost, and MOST grateful to a friend who insisted on phoning to say, "I'm just going to --- for an hour or so; want to come along and keep me company?" or "Want to come berry-picking with me?" etc., etc., etc. - a concrete suggestion it was easier to say YES to than think up an excuse for not doing.



• NEED, believe it or not, becomes a tremendously nebulous thing in times of major loss. When there are two of you (or however many there "usually" are), you NEED to have a decent supper prepared at the usual hour. You NEED to be ready for (whatever). You NEED to go to (wherever) for (whatever) for (whoever). YOU - that's YOU! - are NEEDED.
  All of a sudden, you're not... and you have to find a whole new identity. What else can compare to that? What formerly-urgent NEED can possibly compete with this new, unexpected, unexplainable need, the need to find who you ARE, or even why you're still here at all? It's a very disconcerting feeling, believe me - and nobody is going to phone you up and say, "Hi, could you please pick me up a cup of identity while you're out?" - chiefly because it takes ***ages*** to figure out that's what's missing.
  
  I hope and pray the above thoughts are helpful to you, either in dealing with your own deep grief or in helping someone near to you deal with theirs. In Jesus' precious Name I pray. Amen.
  
  Doris H.

Hi, Precious -

Dear one, as I read this the STRONG message the Lord was laying on my heart for you is that bottled-up emotions are poison in our system. HE knows what we most need, and that is what He provides us, every time.

Usually we can't see what God has *accomplished* by what He provides until a year or so later - but we can KNOW everything is okay no matter how things look, because we KNOW HIM, and know His character because of our familiarity with His Word and His Son, our Saviour. In oher words, we can trust Him because we know He is good and He wishes only good for us, His creation.

When we lose something - or somebody - we love from the depths of our being, two things happen.

First, our emotional floodgates burst - no, *shatter* - into a thousand little pieces. We cry unrestrainedly, sometimes for days. I for one couldn't stop crying. The least little thing would set me off, even when I "thought" I was happiest. Now, I've said this happens first, but I'm wrong; it *may* not happen for some time - but it WILL happen, because the dam has been weakened. God knows exactly what it will take to dynamite our particular "emotional dam", so He sets the charge to suit our situation. Once that dam breaks and those tears start to flow, we are on our way to recovery. It's like an infected wound: once the wound is lanced, the poison can be drained away and the injury can heal - not overnight, but slowly the healing can come. As He told me earlier, those bottled-up emotions are poisonous; they NEED a release so that we can go forward - so He provides the release, by removing our crutch, our beloved, our solace, and forcing us to turn to Him.

Second, we turn to God. We may turn to Him in rage, in fury, in anger, in bitterness, in resentment, in bewilderment - but we turn to Him. We may turn so FAR towards Him that we *think* we are turning away from Him...

but we are actually turning our thoughts towards Him nonetheless. As our lives spiral out of control and we seek to find ourselves once again in a world without our loved one, our MINDS are in a turmoil and we can't stop thinking. And as we think - the same thoughts over and over and over again - we are actually allowing that poison of pent-up emotion to be "centrifuged" out of us, until finally we are empty.

And once we are empty, He fills us again with a new joy, a new peace, a new reliance that is on HIM.

It may take a long while, it may take repeated losses - but it is a sure thing, that eventually we *will* find our rest in Him.

Be not afraid; only believe.

God is good, ALL the time.

HALLELUJAH!!!

Love you muchly, Sis..

(((HUGS))) and blessings,

Doris