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Be Not Afraid Griefyet, she notes, we’re still at a loss: “How does paindepart? How do people heal? It feels disrespectful,insulting even, to frame an answer.”It is also risky. For one thing, the most compassionateadvice may be misinterpreted as belittling; for another,it may cramp the person it was intended to console.How is a mother supposed to respond when, afterhaving lost a baby, someone helpfully assures herthat God “must have needed another angel”? The firstthing most grieving people need is an arm around theirshoulders, and permission to cry.An acquaintance recently told me that after hermother died, she went to my parents, sobbing, andpoured out her need. They listened, and listened more.Finally my father said quietly, “I understand.” Thatwas all. But it meant more to her than all the words ofwisdom other people had given her.When Linda’s son, Matt, lay dying of cancer, shecame across a book in which Henri Nouwen writes that“a caring silence can enter deeper into our memorythan many caring words” – and found that it struck achord. Just the previous summer, she and her husbandhad spent several days with Brad and Misty Bernall,whose daughter Cassie was killed in the infamousColumbine High School massacre of April 1999.Speaking of the time she spent visiting Misty, Lindaremembers the frustration of trying to comfort her10