SEPTEMBER 5
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
—ALFRED TENNYSONIt’s so hard to explain how we feel. When friends ask, and
we sense that it’s more than a routine polite inquiry, we
want to tell them. Yet what to say?
The same anxiety besets those who try to express condol-
ences. How many times have we heard people who’ve come
from visiting a grieving friend lament, “I don’t know
whether I was any help at all. I didn’t know what to say.”
We know, since we’ve been on the receiving end of expres-
sions of sympathy, that what is said is not as important as
that the person has come to be with us, though it is possible
to say “the wrong thing.” We all have our contenders for a
prize “wrong thing.” A couple of mine are, “It’s providen-
tial,” and, “I’m so sorry your daughter has graduated to the
higher consciousness”!
But with few exceptions, the expression of love and caring
is what matters, not the words. In the same way, we who
are groping to express our grief don’t need to worry about
accuracy or whether we’re getting it all just right.
I can trust my feelings to help me speak the truth.