JANUARY 17
We are real friends now because we have been able to share
some painful experiences in our private lives.
—MAY SARTONHow quickly friendships are formed when grief is shared.
Visiting my mother in the hospital soon after my daughter’s
death, I fell into conversation with one of the nurses on the
floor. I don’t know which of us got to it first, she or I. But
we were both mothers grieving for an adolescent child who
had recently died. The usual slow, guarded, back-and-forth
dance of getting to know someone went out the window.
We knew each other. We knew the pain, the questions, in
each other’s hearts.
I left the city—and my new friend. We exchanged
Christmas messages for a number of years. And though we
live a thousand miles apart, were we to see each other tomor-
row, we would rise to that friendship as though we had
been together just yesterday.
Sometimes it is hard for people we know who haven’t
had an experience like ours to know how to relate to us. We
can help them by talking about who we are now, in this new
aspect of our lives. But how blessed we are to find friends
who know, right away, what we are feeling.
With you, dear companion in sorrow, I can find comfort, and rest.