Ministerial training has taught me there’s such a thing as inconsolable grief: grief so heavy and so deep that there’s really not much anyone can do to lessen its impact or assuage its affect. It’s the kind of grief that can only hang around, like luggage, until time or circumstance robs it of its power. Losing a loved one causes inconsolable grief. It is the kind of sorrow that cannot be measured, that cannot be managed. The best help I or anyone can hope to be is to provide sympathy and support. Most of all, to provide patience and, most of all, hope to those who are grieving. It is, after all, grief they have earned, mourning their loved ones deserve, and a process God has, for whatever reason, ordained for us.

One of my neighbors lost her husband recently. I don’t know exactly when because no one told me he’d died. I knew he was sick, he’d been sick a long time. But I didn’t know he was gone. I knew his family were gathering and that surely things were coming to a resolution, but I didn’t feel it my place to present myself, in the midst of that personal time, and instead would pray for him—every day—and ask about him when I could.

I had the honor, and yes, I‘ll call it an honor, of spending a bit of one on one time with him when he was in the hospital. One of the few perks of being a minister is the access it grants you to hospitals—visiting hours mean nothing to a guy with a pastor’s I.D. I got to walk with him around the ward, and to listen to wonderful stories of a life well-lived. He talked endlessly about his wife, about his love for her. He spoke with clarity, with wisdom and with great warmth and humor. I kept trying to judge whether or not I was being a pest—it’s an acquired skill, to know the difference between providing comfort and being in the way. But he seemed to enjoy the company. I most certainly enjoyed his.

I won’t tell anyone what he told me but he spent time giving me good insight about people and about why they do the things they do. In the aggregate, I believe he was convinced that nobody has dark motives all the time. That thinking the worst of people all the time was innately immature.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call him my friend. I think we might have become friends, but the politics of the block have made me even more stand-offish than I tend to be. I regret not having spent more time with him, not having truly become his friend.

Was he a Christian? Yes, I believe he was. I won’t go into his specific belief system because I don’t want this post to become about that. But he was an unfathomably kind person. Someone desiring, first and foremost, to see the best in everyone. I am in the constant company of so many people who only desire to see the worst in me, who are quick to always think the very worst of me and who rush to judgment based on incomplete information and childish assumptions. Having a guy in my circle who was willing to take a chance on my actually being a good person was a priceless asset, one I squandered by not investing myself nearly as much as I should have.

And now he’s gone. And nobody told me. And now people are actually blaming me for not having known. I don’t claim to know this dear man nearly as well as others here do. But I can’t help but wonder what he might have thought about that, and how being hostile to me in any way honors his memory.

I figure the best way I can honor it is to not show hostility in return.
So long, my friend. Thanks for the lessons.