Grief does not keep a schedule. It does not check the calendar or wait for a decent interval. It shows up in the grocery store because of a certain brand of oatmeal. It arrives in the second verse of a hymn you did not even think you liked. It taps you on the shoulder at a stoplight, eleven months later, on an ordinary Tuesday, and suddenly you are wiping your eyes and waving the other cars past.
I say this as a pastor, but honestly I learned it as a gardener. Plants refuse to be hurried, and so does sorrow. This spring we dedicated a memorial garden here at St. Dunstan’s, a quiet corner between the church and the lake, with two good benches, a low stone wall, and beds planted with things that come back every year. Some mornings I find someone sitting there before I have finished my coffee. We nod. Nobody explains anything. The garden does not ask why you have come, and neither do I.
That is really what I want you to know. The gate is open, dawn to dusk, whether we have ever met or not. Sit as long as you like. Watch the water. The peonies are doing their extravagant thing right now, and the lake keeps its own counsel. You do not have to be a member, or a believer, or okay.
You may cry during the hymn
A pew is just a long wooden bench, worn smooth by generations of people who came in carrying things. Here is one of our unwritten rules: you may cry during the hymn, and nobody minds. It happens most weeks, somewhere in the room. Someone slides a tissue down the row and keeps singing, holding the melody for you until you can pick it up again. Some weeks that is most of what church is.
What we will not do is try to fix you. You will not hear a timeline, or a bright side, or anyone telling you it was all part of a plan. Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is one of the shapes love takes when the one we love is out of reach, and love is not something we are in the business of hurrying along.
During Easter season, my colleague Dr. Webb and I kept circling back to the story of two grieving friends walking home, when the risen Jesus fell into step beside them. They did not recognize him. He did not correct them or hurry them. He walked with them. And when evening came, they said what I think is the truest prayer in the whole story.
“Stay with us, for it is almost evening, and the day is now nearly spent.”
Luke 24:29
Stay. That is the whole ministry, most days. Not answers. Company.
So here is what keeping company can look like, if you want it. The garden, any day. Sunday mornings at 10:00 we celebrate Holy Eucharist, the simple meal of bread and wine at the center of our worship, where the invitation is for everyone, and I mean everyone. On the first Sunday of each month there is a free community supper from 5:00 to 6:30, no sign-up, no questions asked, because sometimes grief needs a table more than it needs a program. And if you would rather talk with a human being, the parish office can always find me, and I will bring nothing but time.
If it is late and you are reading this on your phone, tired in the particular way grief makes a person tired, hear this. The bell in our tower will ring on Sunday morning the way it always does, and the red doors will be open the way they always are. There is a pew here with room on it. Your grief is welcome to sit down. So are you.
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