Once upon a time in my life, “to comfort” in the wake of death meant offering phrases like “God’s ways are not our ways” and “she’s in a better place.” I heard those phrases many times and used them myself.
But after my daughter died by suicide in 1995, words of any kind–especially precise, logical, reasonable ones–did nothing to alleviate anguish and even added to it. The only words that helped, I finally realized, were Psalms that highlighted human pain. Psalm 77 became a favorite:
Aloud to God I cry; aloud to God, to hear me;
on the day of my distress, I seek the Lord.
By night my hands are stretched out without flagging;
my soul refuses comfort.
Recently, I found a definition of “to comfort” that, in considering its Latin components, offers a useful perspective. It allows that com + fortis = “to be strong with.” In my experience, “being strong with” a bereaved person has less to do with offering words than with offering presence. My spiritual director, for example, used to apologize for not having the right words with which to comfort me after Mary died. What she did have, and I knew it even then, was the courage to sit with me for an hour at a time, month after month, year after year, until healing arrived.
Henri Nouwen writes, “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares” (The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey. New York: Doubleday, 1988).
The reality of suicide bereavement is that there are not moments of despair and confusion, but months and years. There is not an hour of grief, but a decade. The kind of friend who could
be silent with me through the long haul of grief was not the usual kind of friend, as it turns out, but a professional trained in the arts of silence and listening.
Mary's Shortcut: About Suicide Bereavement 
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