Death can prompt a slamming of the interior door. We don’t want to open it because doing so means living without the ones we love. Prayer helps loosen the lock. It allows oxygen to flow back into our spirits after being depleted by grief. We take that first deep breath when we accept what has happened. In doing so, we are no longer suffocated by our yearning for the past. Grateful for all that has been, for the beauty and love we have known, we can begin to live again.

The theologian Karl Barth said, “Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” If we can access our gratitude for having known and loved those we have lost, perhaps we can begin again to experience joy.

The flame of love can never dwindle unless we insist on confining it to the past.

Maybe the best way to reach for God is to reach for one another.

Death doesn’t feel like a wound; it feels more like an amputation. We cannot grow back the part of ourselves that we have lost. We cannot simply stitch together the hole left by our loved ones’ absence. We need to learn how to walk again. This takes time, yes, but time will not fix it. What it may do is allow scar tissue to form so that walking is not so painful.

Comfort is found not in what people say to each other but in how they listen to one another. That is the miracle. That is also the lesson. Unless one is truly willing to be with other people in their pain, to listen with love and empathy without trying to fix them, the mouth is better off closed.

Our loved ones, however they might have died, are not constrained to their last moments on earth. They simply aren’t. So we should not keep them there either.

It’s important to remember that what has already been can never be taken from us. The past is, perhaps, the only sure thing we have. It is inked on the pages of our lives, not penciled in. And there is some comfort in that.

It’s difficult to move forward when we dwell on that which cannot be changed. If we remain too long in the shadow of what has happened, we can become shadows ourselves. Sometimes we are searching for our loved ones, sometimes for a part of ourselves, for the people we were before this loss. But our loved ones cannot be found in the darkness of never because they exist now in the light of eternity.

By living, however, we have the opportunity to affirm that life is meaningful, that our lives are meaningful, and that the end of one life—even one we hold dear—does not necessitate the permanent cessation of happiness.