Silent comfort.

When was the first time you heard the expression "Good Grief"? The young in heart will recognize it as one of Charlie Brown's favorite utterances in the comic strip Peanuts. However, the true experience of grief is not for the comics. And though it's a common and even necessary part of life, it can hardly be thought of as good.

Grief is a deep-down emotion that's triggered when we experience loss. It's the sadness that results from separation from someone or something that's very important to us. The loss may be the death of a loved one, a divorce, the termination of a job, or even when a favorite object gets broken or destroyed.

One day I came home from work and noticed my wife sitting on the sofa in the family room. I said my usual hello and walked past her on the way to my home office. A few seconds later it struck me. She'd been crying.

"What's the matter?" I asked as I quickly returned to the family room.

"Baby Cakes died," she replied quietly, without looking up.

Baby Cakes was our parakeet. He was light yellow with gray markings. We bought him when our granddaughter was a little girl and was living with us, so the bird had great sentimental value. He could say, "My name is Baby Cakes," and "I'm a silly bird." He was definitely part of the family.

The parakeet hadn't been himself for the past month or so. He'd even tried to bite us when we put our hand in his cage, and he'd stopped talking.

On hearing the sad news, I immediately went to my computer and logged on to the Internet. I navigated to my favorite search engine and typed in the words "parakeet life span." At the speed of light the search engine examined all the accumulated knowledge in the world on the subject of the life span of parakeets. In no time at all, I had the answer for which I'd been searching. "How old was Baby Cakes?" I called out to my wife.

"Nine years," I heard her say.

Then, with confidence born of fresh knowledge, I called back, "Says here that a parakeet's life expectancy is eight and a half years."

How was that for a sensitive, comforting reply?

Did I really think I was helping my wife feel better? The message she received amounted to nothing more than, "Wipe those tears and be thankful that the bird lived six months longer than he was supposed to." Looking back now I can see what I should have done. I should have hurried over to the sofa, sat down beside her, put my arm around her, and comforted her. I should have remembered the words of our Great Physician, who said in the greatest of all sermons, "Blessed are the ones who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

A few years back the organization where I was employed decided to reduce its workforce. The departments I directed were eliminated. I was advised that the thirty-first of that same month would be my last day on the job.

My friends tried to cheer me up. They assured me that now I would have an opportunity to do some of the things I really wanted to do, and that this change would definitely be a step up to greater challenges. Somehow this did not make me feel any better. Looking back on it now, I understand what they were trying to do. Like my wife and her grief over losing our little parakeet, I didn't need encouragement or statistics. I needed comforting.

We probably find it easier to encourage than to comfort. Sometimes we don't know what to say. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. When you're aware that someone is grieving, one of the best ways of comforting them is simply to be there and listen.

Our Great Physician was Himself a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). Yet, of His own ministry, an Old Testament writer prophesied that the coming Messiah would comfort all who mourned (Isaiah 61:2).

I want to be a person who not only solves problems and encourages the discouraged, but also is sensitive to those who mourn.

A wise man once wrote that for everything under the sun there is a season--even a time to mourn. Because of this, our Great Physician is also called the Great Comforter. Perhaps we should do our best to earn that reputation as well.

Richard O'Ffill writes from Longwood, Florida.