The experience of grief can be quite isolating especially when we feel that those we thought were our friends don’t keep up contact and even try to avoid us. The reason for this is not always what we think. It is not that they were never friends in the first place or that the friendship was superficial, but simply that we mirror their own unresolved grief and so they are not comfortable with ours. Even the phrase; ‘there, there don’t cry’ when we need to, points to someone who has a lot of unshed tears themselves. While some friends might desert us as we journey through grief there will likely be others, that we hardly knew before, who will appear out of the woodwork and be really there for us. These are the one who having come to terms with their own losses are best equipped to help us through ours. Only those who have been through and been true to their own desert of grief will be able to accompany others through theirs.
Fr Jim Cogley