Healing After Loss

OCTOBER 3

As the months pass and the seasons change, something of

tranquillity descends, and although the well-remembered

footstep will not sound again, nor the voice call from the

room beyond, there seems to be about one in the air an at-

mosphere of love, a living presence...It is as though one

shared, in some indefinable manner, the freedom and the

peace, even at times the joy, of another world where there

is no more pain...The feeling is simply there, pervading all

thought, all action. When Christ the healer said, “Blessed

are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,” he must

have meant just this.

—DAPHNE DU MAURIER

There are stages and stages of grieving and they come and
go, inconstant. But after a while, even though the dips and
swells continue to appear, there seems to seep into the life
of the griever a confidence, hard-won, that underlies all the
swirls and tides of life’s ongoing struggles and joys. A sense
that we have hit rock bottom and come slowly back, and
that, though we will have further trials and doubts (and we
will!), there is a level of stability and confidence which, even
in dark hours, we will know is there and will not let us drop
through the bottom of the sea.

The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting
arms.—Deuteronomy 33:27