Brenda and Denise: Grieving Together

I first understood that everyone is attending a different funeral on the day I laid my own mother to rest.

She was a complicated woman with a tangled history, and our relationship had been equally complex. My grief, unsurprisingly, was not simple. As I listened to the reverend describe one version of the mother I had known, I thought of her brother—my uncle—sitting behind me. How was he hearing these same words? What memories were they stirring of the sister he had struggled to love? I thought of my father, long remarried after a difficult divorce from her, and of my sister, whose relationship with my mother bore little resemblance to mine.

We were gathered for the same ritual, yet each of us was grieving a different woman, a different story, a different loss. No two people are ever at the same funeral. That understanding has guided me ever since, especially as I accompany families through their own grief.

This past year, I had the honor of serving the Kowalski family. Denise reached out when her father was declining after a significant stroke. I could almost hear her heart cracking as she spoke about him with such devotion. When I visited, I saw how naturally she cared for him—lying beside him, whispering her love, gently stroking his skin. Her presence needed no guidance. It was tender, instinctive, and true.

Brenda, Mr. Kowalski’s wife, moved through the room differently. She bustled from task to task—folding and refolding laundry, checking supplies, making small talk to fill the quiet. She would sit, then rise again almost immediately- consulting a nurse, adjusting blankets, tending the edges of a moment without ever settling into its center.

Her restlessness was deeply familiar. I had lived inside that same pattern while caring for my own dying mother—unable to be still with all that remained unresolved in my heart.

After weeks of quiet presence and gentle curiosity, Brenda began to trust me. One afternoon, she allowed herself to speak openly about her marriage and its difficulties. We sat together for hours as she unburdened what she had carried alone for so long. When we finished, she was softened, and she moved with a new lightness—almost giddy, freed for a moment from the weight of her silence.

That afternoon, when she said goodbye to her husband, I saw her lean in and whisper something tenderly in his ear. I was not privy to her words, but her face was serene. Love lit her eyes, and she was at peace. None of us knew those would be her final words to him.

Brenda’s goodbye had a different shape than Denise’s, because Brenda was saying goodbye to a different man. Denise knew him as a steadfast father; Brenda knew him as a husband shaped by the complexities of marriage. Their funerals—like my family’s, like all families’—will not be the same. Their grief will not look the same either.