F is For Friends

“No road is too long in the company of a good friend.” – Japanese Proverb

Grief is a long, lonely road with an unknown end. Traversing it demands stamina, fortitude and resilience. Surviving it requires support, help and companionship.

Inevitably, there will be times you feel fully and wholly alone. No one person can completely meet the needs of your grief or fill the void of what you have lost.

And yet. You still need friends. You need friends like you need air. Like your life depends on it.

Friends sustain you: they carry you from moment to moment. Friends hope on your behalf when you are too weak for faith. They pray for you when you’re grasping for words. They show up when it’s hard and uncomfortable and inconvenient.

Friends come to the hospital and cry with you when your own eyes are swollen shut with tears. Friends bring dinner when you’re too weak to even answer the door. They send flowers and cards and Edible Arrangements. They plant rosebushes in your front yard in remembrance of your sweet boy. They ask you how you’re doing and wait to hear the answer. They give real hugs, letting you pull away first.

Friends say yes when you ask them to photoshop the coloring on the only picture that was taken of your son. They say yes when you ask them to play music at his funeral. They say yes when you host a last minute dinner on what would’ve been, should’ve been, could’ve been his 5th birthday. They say yes when it would be far easier to say no.

Friends pray for you on the painfully quiet, babyless ride home from the hospital. And when your milk comes in with nowhere to go. They pray for you in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep and in the early mornings when you can’t wake. And in the between times when you are muddling through homeschooling and running a business and writing a blog.

Some friends will be the listeners, some will be the doers, some will be the prayers. Some will be the knowers: the ones intimately acquainted with the road of grief and the desperate need for companionship along its treacherous way.

It’s not easy to be a good friend to another human under normal circumstances. It’s seemingly impossible to be a good friend to a grieving human. But it’s a worthy, necessary, life-giving endeavor.

If we aren’t loving each other through the pain and heartbreak of life, what are we even doing? What could possibly be more important than the work, the privilege, the gift, of loving others well?

Being a good friend is learned. It’s the practice of sitting with someone in their pain without trying to solve it or fix them. It’s the willingness to listen when someone’s response to “how are you?” is more than a disingenuous “I’m fine.” It’s a pen mark on your calendar, documenting the date that changed their life forever. An intentional moment mailing a handwritten note. The choice to forsake what is easy by picking up the phone or knocking on the door or stopping in the middle of the grocery store when you catch someone’s eye.

Being a good friend is not shallow, unsolicited advice or trite platitudes. It’s not minimizing another’s grief or comparing it to something “worse”. Friendship doesn’t create timelines or expectations or judgment. It doesn’t pretend to have life or loss figured out.

Good friends show up when you can’t. Even when they’re giving far more than they’re getting in return. They are one of life’s greatest treasures. Find them and hold them tight. Be them and don’t let go of the ones who need you.

There is nothing quite so humbling or healing as the love of abundant friendship during seasons of grief. In our vulnerability, in our emptiness, it washes over us in protection and preservation. It resuscitates our deflated souls and helps them rise again. It takes a village to raise a soul. Find your village and rise together.