May 31, 2026
So I delivered Hands this week to a wonderful person for him to read and to offer words of support for the book if appropriate. Hadn’t seen him in years, like many of the folks I’m connecting with and he immediately reached out and gave me a big hug!
He is the religious leader who I wrote about and who asked me what a person like him might say when he meets a bereaved parent. As I wrote, I found the fact that he asked me that question, rather than made up something which suggested that he might understand what it was like to lose a child, incredibly supportive.
Questions can be really therapeutic and helpful in helping to frame or reframe how one thinks. (In fact, there was an Italian school of Family Therapy famous for working intensively with families and then leaving the family with a carefully thought out question for them to ponder)
I told him that one of the most supportive things said to me was by a mother of one of my daughter’s friends who whispered in my ear that there was a full moon out that night and that I shouldn’t miss it. It felt so comforting, like she was acknowledging my distress and suggesting what I might do to find some solace.
When I mentioned this to my friend, he immediately stopped, looked up in the air (we weren’t outside and it wasn’t night time) and started to wonder why I would find that helpful. A question from a person who genuinely wants to know. I found this very interesting and, at first blush, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with an answer.
So I’ve been thinking about it for days. The best I can come up with is that when one looks up into the beauty of the night sky, one is in awe of the intensity and emptiness of it all. But one is also struck by how big it is out there and how small, how miniscule you are. It underlines how much we don’t know about this thing called existence and how we go on day to day not even being aware of this context.
It is hugely perplexing and sometimes overwhelming when I try to understand what I can’t possibly conceptualize. While it can also make me sort of anxious at some level, looking up at the moon and the abyss of endless space also helped calm, if only for a short time, my tortured mind in those days - and, if I were to be totally transparent, even now. When you become aware of the mystery of it all and start to wonder how we fit in, you become - at least I do - sort of crazy thinking that you can make any sense of it all.
How is this connected with the loss of your child? Is the loss just another mystery embedded in the larger mysteries of what this is all about and does it help to calm you by putting your personal angst into the larger context? Or is it just a distraction in the sense that it’s something else, a guilt free, easier distraction, to feel crazy about and this is really unlike the craziness you feel about the loss of your daughter?
Hmmmm….not sure.
There’s got to be more
Will keep on processing.
Any ideas????
The night sky is its own form of spirituality, I think. I've always sought comfort in the moon. One night a couple of years ago, standing in an LCBO parking lot, I looked up and was convinced I saw my friend's son, who had drowned the year before, sitting in the curve of the new moon. He was calm and happy, swinging his feet, enjoying the view. When I told my bereaved friend about this 'vision,' she was elated. There were some deep and relevant connections in this for her, and she was soothed. Maybe that's another reason we look to the sky.