Prayer for Grief & Loss

Requests from people who have lost someone. There is no timetable here — grief that is years old belongs as much as grief from this week.

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Grief does not behave the way people expect it to. It does not arrive in stages and leave in order. It goes quiet for a fortnight and then comes back in full at a supermarket, over a brand of biscuit, and you stand there unable to explain yourself to anyone.

Some of the people writing here lost someone last week. Some lost someone eleven years ago and have never said out loud that they still think about it most days. Both are in the right place. Nothing on this page is going to suggest that one of them is behind.

There is no timetable here. A request about a death that happened a long time ago is as welcome as one about a funeral this Friday.

How people pray after a loss

In the first weeks most people cannot pray in sentences at all. What comes out is the person's name, over and over, or nothing. That counts. There is a long tradition of prayer that is mostly silence and presence, and it exists because this is what people are actually able to do when something has just happened.

Later, prayer often becomes a place to say the things that cannot be said elsewhere — that you are angry, that you are relieved, that you did not get to say the thing you meant to say. Grief is full of feelings people are ashamed of, and prayer is one of the few places they can be admitted without someone rushing to correct them.

Many people also pray about the ordinary logistics of it: getting through the first birthday, the first Christmas, the first time someone asks how many children you have. These are not small requests. They are the shape the loss actually takes.

In the first days

God, I cannot pray properly. I do not have anything to say. You know what has happened and you know I am not able to make sense of it yet. Sit with me. That is all I am asking for tonight. Amen.

When the anger comes

Lord, I am angry, and some of it is at you. I do not know whether I am allowed to say that. It should not have happened and it happened anyway. I am not asking you to explain it. I am asking you to stay while I am like this, because I have nowhere else to put it. Amen.

Before a first anniversary or an empty chair

Father, tomorrow is the day, and everyone else has moved on to their own year. Get me through it. Let me remember her without it flattening me. And if I cry in front of people who do not know what to do with it, let that be all right too. Amen.

What helps besides praying

Say the person's name to someone. People avoid it, thinking they are being kind, and the effect is that the dead go quietly missing from every conversation. Most of the bereaved want to hear the name.
Expect the second year to be harder than people warned you. The first is survived on adrenaline and casseroles; the second is when everyone else has gone back to normal and you have not.
Do not make large decisions early if you can avoid it. Selling the house, changing jobs, moving cities — grief is a poor advisor in the first year.
If you cannot function — not sad, but unable to get up, unable to eat, unable to be safe — that is worth taking to a doctor. Grief and depression overlap, and the second one is treatable.

Questions people ask

How long is it normal to grieve?: There is no normal length. The research on this has moved a long way from the idea of tidy stages; most people carry a loss for the rest of their lives and simply build more life around it. If someone has implied you are taking too long, they are wrong.
Is it wrong to be angry at God about this?: No, and the anger is not news to him. There is a great deal of it in the Psalms, said out loud and unedited. A faith that cannot survive you being furious about a death is not one that would have been much use to you.
Can I post a request about someone who died years ago?: Yes. Requests about old losses are among the most-prayed-for on the wall, precisely because so many people recognise them. There is no cut-off.
What should I say to someone who has just lost somebody?: Very little, and nothing that begins with at least. Say you are sorry, say the person's name, and offer something specific — a meal on Thursday rather than let me know if you need anything. Then keep turning up in three months, when everyone else has stopped.