Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of my parents’ deaths. As that date approaches (looms?), several things stand out to me about those days of intense grief, specifically how others responded to the news. I was 20 and a junior in college; college is a tough time to lose your parents for many reasons, but one is that your peers, although technically adults, don’t have much life experience and really don’t know how to respond. They say and do, well, clumsy things… One of the most clumsy things said to me was a gal who told me she understood how I felt losing my mother and father because her boyfriend had just broken up with her. I imagine she later thought about that and felt really lame, but plenty of adults said things that were hurtful, too, like, I guess God needed another angel (for the record, when you die, you don’t become an angel—there is no place in the Bible that says that) or They’re in a better place. I couldn’t imagine a better place for a mother to be than with her five children, especially as I comforted my 12- and 14-year-old siblings.
