This past May third was a desperately hard day for members of my extended family and me. On that day we came together to mourn the loss of a beloved nephew who died in an automobile accident at the age of nineteen. As we said good-bye to him at his funeral, all of us – – his parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins – – found it hard to believe that Greg had left us. It seemed like something that was happening in a nightmare world.

Adopted as an infant by my brother and his wife, Greg grew up in Mont Vernon, a small New Hampshire town that nurtured his young life. Early on, he showed himself able to take on responsibility. He learned valuable skills at all sorts of practical tasks such as building, repairing machinery, and, in his last two years, helping run a business. When you wanted to get something done, Greg had already proven himself a valuable fellow to have around.

Though usually fairly quiet in family groups, he had endeared himself to all of us and we looked forward to seeing him on special occasions. As he matured, we family elders looked on Greg as a person of promise who would carve out a solid future.

With the tragic crash, all of those hopes came to a horrible end. If only, we felt, the vehicle had not ended up near the tree that killed Greg, the only passenger in the car to die. We had a hundred other “if onlys” but, to our deep chagrin, no one of them availed to bring him back.

As I, together with his other uncles, carried Greg’s casket into the church where his funeral was celebrated, the weight of our burden brought home the reality of his death. Externally, I felt hard-pressed to carry this physical weight; interiorly, I found it more difficult to bear the weight of our loss.

Looking back over a period of several weeks, I continue to regret that Greg is no longer with us. I especially grieve for his parents who provided him with such love and nurture. And I feel for his sister, two years younger, for whom Greg was an altogether special person.

Though nothing can replace him, Greg’s immediate family has received some consolation. First, signs that he was so beloved of so many people. All of his cousins came to his funeral, some from great distances. Large numbers of people resident in Mont Vernon and surrounding towns also came. Fellow students from the high school from which Greg was about to graduate helped fill the church.

Neighbors reached out to Greg’s parents with food and with expressions of sympathy that were truly touching. What a grace it was to family members to realize that anyone was so loved! It seemed as if people, on this one occasion at least, were acting God-like in directing toward Greg’s family their love and support.

But still, for Greg’s parents, a long period of grieving would be just beginning. Though they carry with them the support shown them by so many others, nothing will ever quite fill up the gap in their lives made by Greg’s sudden death.

Maybe, however, this ongoing gap offers something we should try to understand. Perhaps, paradoxically enough, the continuance of this void, bitter though it may be felt, may keep Greg’s parents close to their son.

That’s what the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests. He died in 1945 at the hands of the Nazis for his refusal to accept their hateful ideology. His words seem to me profound and important for those of us who have suffered loss.

“Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time, it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God doesn’t fill it, but on the contrary, keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.”

Richard Griffin