For those left behind

For the days and weeks after a funeral.

The prayers of a funeral are for the person who died. This one is for the people still here, in the strange flat weeks after everyone has gone home and the casseroles have stopped arriving.

The Prayer

Lord, the funeral is over and the house is quiet.

I keep reaching for the phone to tell them something.
I keep expecting the door.

Be near me in this, and do not hurry me.
Give me people who will let me talk about them,
and patience with the ones who change the subject.

Hold what I cannot hold:
the things left unsaid,
the things I said and wish I had not,
the way it happened.

And give me, in Your own time and not before,
the grace to be grateful that they lived
rather than only broken that they died.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them. Amen.

A Prayer for a Grieving Friend

Lord, I do not know what to say to them,
and I am afraid of saying the wrong thing.
Keep me from filling their silence with explanations.
Let me sit with them, bring food, and come back next month
when everyone else has stopped calling. Amen.

About Grief

Catholic tradition gives grief time and structure: the funeral, the month’s mind, the anniversary Mass, the November remembrance of the dead. These are not empty rituals but appointments with sorrow, which grief needs — otherwise it turns up unannounced. Having a Mass offered for someone you have lost is among the oldest and most consoling things a Catholic can do; ask your parish.