Really, there's nothing anyone can say. It doesn't matter what you believe, or how hard you believe it. It doesn't matter what has come before, and it almost doesn't matter that the struggle is over. You can be wise, deliberate and circumspect, or you can be crazily emotional and blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. I don't think it's possible to make the pain any worse, even if you are incredibly thoughtless. I don't think it's possible to make the pain any better, even if you are Mother Teresa. It's all been said, for centuries, and everyone seems to agree that losing a child is as bad as pain can get.
What fascinates me is how the rest of us pass off our grief, like falling dominoes. The mother is paralyzed, helpless. The visiting nurse comforts her, returns to her colleagues and falls apart. The colleagues go home and cry to their husbands. All of us indulge in puzzling orgies of grief, reliving the details, spinning backward in time to our own losses. Why are we this way? Do we hope somehow to take away some of Mama's pain? Do we hope somehow that by dwelling on it, it will run its course sooner?
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