When We Lose Someone

We lost someone.

I’m not going to try to make this make sense right now, because it doesn’t. What happened is real and it’s devastating and the right response to it is not to rush past the grief or find the silver lining or talk about what this means for the team.

The right response is to be in this room together and let what is true be true.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible and possibly the most important for this moment. Standing at the tomb of his friend Lazarus — knowing, as God, that he was about to raise him — Jesus wept. The grief was appropriate even in the presence of the one who could end it. The tears were not a failure of faith or a deficiency of understanding. They were the right response to loss.

Your grief right now is the right response to loss. The person who is gone mattered. The fact of their absence is devastating. And nothing you can do today is more important than being present to that, honestly, together.

There will be a time for the other conversations. How the team moves forward. What the program does next. How to honor what they meant. Those conversations are appropriate and they will come.

Not yet. Right now, this room needs to grieve together. Let the grief be what it is. The love that produced it is real. Let it be real.

Let people speak if they want to. Do not require it. Silence is also appropriate. The presence is the whole point.