“Two are better than one… for if they fall, one will lift up the other.” —Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
Once Tom was describing one of his friends to me. “After the time of my wife’s death, he’s the one who kept showing up.”
Have you noticed how people tend to disappear when grief lasts longer than they think it should? The casseroles stop coming. The phone gets quieter. The check-ins become less frequent. It’s as if there’s this unspoken timeline for how long we’re “allowed” to grieve before we’re expected to “move on.”
I can’t tell you how many times folks tell me they “know” they should be over their grief but the pain still feels very real.
Megan Devine reminds us that “healing has no timeline.” Yet our culture seems to have this unspoken expectation that grief should follow some sort of schedule – as if we could pencil in “be done grieving” between our dentist appointment and grocery shopping.
The spiritual teacher Ram Dass once said we’re all just “walking each other home.” I love that image. It’s not about fixing or rushing or getting somewhere specific. It’s about companionship. About saying, “I’ll walk with you, however long this takes, wherever this leads.”
It reminds me of Ruth’s words to Naomi: “Where you go, I will go.” Not “where you go, I will go… unless you take too long by my standards to get there.”
Not “where you go, I will go… as long as you’re making progress.”
Just simple, steadfast presence.
The kind that stays.
Devine points out something crucial about this kind of companionship. She writes, “Being helpless to change someone’s pain is not the same thing as being helpless to support them inside their pain.” We have to be willing to stay even when it’s awkward, even when we don’t have answers, even when all we can do offer is our presence.
True companionship isn’t about having the right words or knowing exactly what to do. It’s about showing up consistently, even when – especially when – we feel helpless. It’s about being willing to sit in the discomfort of not being able to fix things. It’s about staying present to someone else’s pain without trying to rush them through it.
Because here’s the truth: We’re not meant to walk alone. Not in joy, not in sorrow, not in grief. We’re meant to walk each other home.
Sometimes that means being the strong one who helps someone up when they fall. Sometimes it means being honest enough to say, “I don’t know what to do, but I’m here.” Always, it means being willing to stay for the long haul.
What if we could simply show up? Again and again and again.
Prayer: God, give us the courage to be companion-travelers on this journey of grief. Help us resist the urge to rush healing or to disappear when things get uncomfortable. Teach us to walk each other home with patience, with presence, with love that endures. And when we don’t know what to do or say, remind us that sometimes the most sacred gift we can offer is simply staying. Amen.
The holiest journey isn’t the one we make alone, but the one we make together, step by step, heart by heart, all the way home.