I want to preface this by saying I was given permission to share these reflections. I do not share them lightly, but with deep love, compassion, and respect for a family walking through unimaginable grief. My prayer is that these words remind us all to hold grieving families a little closer, stay a little longer, and love people well in their hardest moments.

Words feel painfully small standing beside the depths of ache I witnessed yesterday.

I stood in the back of a funeral service and watched a young wife named Kalli say goodbye to her beloved husband.

People filled the chairs, shared memories, hugged necks, cried tears, and spoke of a life well lived. A Celebration of Life. Stories were told. Some laughter mixed with dripping tears. People made promises to help carry this family forward. Friends and community members surrounded them with love and compassion. The room was full until one by one loved ones, friends, and community members made their way to the exit. The chairs were empty but the grief still filled the room like love with nowhere else to go.

The chairs were now empty. The flowers sat quietly and displayed beautiful colors as if to help produce brightness in their darkest moments. My heart felt heavy with the reality that a very young mother and her babies were about to leave without him holding their hands. How?

I watched while this sweet tender-hearted widow held her little boy while he cried. This tiny little boy released a cry I don’t think I could ever forget. It was not loud or performative. It was the desperate cry of a child whose heart could not fully prepare or understand why his daddy would not open his eyes. I was pretty far back and am not sure I heard him fully, but it sounded like he said, “I love you daddy.” This sweet baby boy was holding his momma and crying tears that are birthed from agony, disbelief, pain, and unbearable love colliding at once.

Motherhood is so hard and is filled with moments of finding balance. Not only was she holding her own grief as a wife, but somehow she was trying to steady the grief of her children while her own world was collapsing beneath her feet.

I watched siblings shattered. A father grieving his son. And children grieving their daddy.

Just before the room emptied, I heard Brett’s mother release a cry from somewhere deep in the pit of a mother’s soul. A cry only a mother can understand. The thought of ever crying that way brings me to my knees. It was the kind of grief that sounds ancient. Primal. Helpless, even if we carry hope for heaven.

I cannot stop replaying one of the most memorable moments in my mind. The moment that stopped me from walking away happened after almost everyone had left our sacred sanctuary.

Kalli began to walk away from the casket. It was time. Time to leave the once-filled room. Time to lay him to rest beneath the earth. Time to face what seems impossible.

As she walked away, I could visibly see the grief was so heavy she paused, turned around, and ran back for one more moment.

One more touch. One more look. One more second beside the man she loved. As if her heart was screaming, “Please…just one more minute.”

I think every grieving person understands that feeling. Because this kind of loss is immensely confusing. Part of you knows they are gone. Another part of you cannot comprehend how the world could possibly continue turning without them in it.

In the last year, I have now witnessed several fathers pass away, leaving their wives to somehow navigate life without the father of their children. These beautiful families trying to figure out how to breathe again after the storm unexpectedly ripped through their lives.

We often do not know what to do with grief. We want to fix it. Rush it. Silence it. Explain it. Wrap it in neat spiritual phrases because sitting in brokenness feels uncomfortable for most.

But standing in that moment, I realized something important. Love looks like staying in the emptiness. Ministry looks like silence in the sanctuary as the sounds of sobs are released from the deepest kind of love known to mankind. Compassion is simply allowing someone one more moment to run back and take in the finality of this last goodbye.

One more moment to process. One more moment to touch the hand they are not ready to let go of. One more moment to sit in disbelief before the world expects them to rise from the ground and stand back up again.

Families in grief are walking through storms most of us cannot imagine unless we have lived it ourselves. These devastating storms do not end with the closing of the casket.

Eventually the casseroles stop coming. The phone gets quieter. Life moves on for everyone else while those closest experience shock, causing life to stand painfully still, frozen in time. Widows will be adapting to the tension of waking up alone. Children still ask questions at bedtime that are impossible to explain. Mothers still cry behind closed doors. Families still carry the trauma of death long after the flowers have wilted and faded.

Maybe the greatest gift we as a community and church can give grieving families is not perfect words. Maybe it is presence. Maybe it is remembering them three months later. Maybe it is sitting quietly when there is nothing left to say. Maybe it is helping carry groceries, children, paperwork, meals, memories, or simply helping hold the unbearable weight of surviving each day without the future hoped for when they met one another at the altar.

Maybe it is choosing not to look away from sorrow because of discomfort.

I believe loving someone who is weighed down by the burden of grief means staying. Pausing. Love understands a grieving heart may simply need just one more minute.

If you know someone carrying grief right now, this is your reminder not to disappear after the funeral. Send the text. Sit in the silence. Drop off the meal. Remember the birthday. Speak their loved one’s name. Stay longer than what feels comfortable.

Love does not always heal grief, but it helps people survive it.

In memory of the Underwood & Patterson Family.

❤️Stephanie Ellison