Anna Resurget

This anniversary of Anna’s death has been stranger than others. It is reminiscent of our time ten years ago, when my mother passed away on May 2, almost exactly one year after Anna.

This year, we received word Sunday morning that the son of a dear friend of ours had been killed in an accident the day before. We gathered with friends from our church and our friends’ neighbors and sat with the grieving couple. We listened to stories. We cried with them. We sat quietly for long times. We laughed hysterically at times.

For Timberley and me the afternoon was a bit surreal. Our own memories of a house full of friends and neighbors 11 years ago filled our thoughts. Memories that are so, so bittersweet. The bitterness is still tangible–the steely taste that overpowers all other tastes. Yet the sweetness of the kindness of our friends is just as palpable today as it was those years ago.

When we entered our friends’ home early Sunday morning, we embraced and sobbed long, heaving cries together. They cried because they had lost their only son. We cried because we understood. Then my friend looked at me and said, “I never knew before what you had been through. I am so very, very sorry that you went through this.” I tried to deflect his attention to our grief. But I understood all too well what he was feeling.

After Anna died and following the memorial service we held in California, I left the sanctuary of the church and was met by a solemn man standing with hands in his pockets. Sunglasses hid his tears. This was a friend I had known since childhood. Years earlier I had given his son drum lessons. That son was killed tragically in a home accident. I have always remembered, in the aftermath of that accident, sitting with my friend and hearing him say, “It seems like every one has abandoned us. No one will talk to us about our son. No one brings him up anymore and they stay away from us now.” When he told me that, I remember thinking to myself, “We just don’t understand. Everyone is afraid.” So, years later, when I was leaving the sanctuary and saw my friend in deep anguish, I gave him a hug and we cried together. I understood now and I knew that he understood. If I had been wise enough I would have said what my new friend said to me, “Now I know what you went through. I am so sorry.”

It is important to feel sympathy at the right time. We need to be able to recognize that another is experiencing grief and to act accordingly. Empathy is a deeper feeling in which we not only recognize the emotion in the other, but we take part in it ourselves. Empathy, I imagine, that wells up out of the same spring that feeds the sorrow in the other is the strongest form of empathy. That is when the tears and sobs, but also the laughter, become the strongest.