What thirty years of sitting with people taught me

I used to arrive with something to say. A verse, a framing, a comfort.

Somewhere around year eight I stopped, because a woman whose son had died looked at me and said "please do not explain this to me."

Now I mostly ask two questions and then I am quiet. What is the hardest part today? And who else knows?

The second question matters more than people expect. Most of the suffering I have seen was made heavier by being carried alone.