She lay on the couch, drowning in blankets and quilts. She looked so much older than her short 51 years – so shrunken and withdrawn. Her husband hovered. It was evident that he was the hopeful one, and she the one wrestling with a reality that was soon going to extinguish her.

A gaggle of words babbled from my mouth: what hospice does, who a chaplain is – but really, what words are there to offer in this place? Only the comfort of knowing others have gone before you, questionable comfort.

It’s so easy to hide behind the badge. Who am I? Look – it says right here, I’m the chaplain. I’m in seminary – a senior. I studied for this. I’m prepared for this. I can barely begin to fathom this.

He wanted to know how you get over something like this. She said he didn’t think anyone ever got over it – you simply found a way to live with it.

They say grief never goes away. Not fully. You live through it. Rage at it. Blubber around it. Deny it. See if you can’t just sleep through it. And you survive. Not easily. Not the same. Not without your scars. But it passes just the same: bad gas you’ve been suffering under for far too long.

But they say it never leaves you, grief. It comes back – heavy thunderstorms that take you by surprise. A light rain shower that cools the joy. A cloud hovering on the horizon. It stays with you: creeping up behind you for a surprise party that leaves you insisting it’s your party so you can cry if you want to . . . It drops by for a visit, pushing at the boundaries of the life you have so carefully crafted around it: an unwanted visitor you come to expect more than you’d like.

They say she might not make it through the weekend, but the husband asks me to call back next week, check in then. I call the answering service each morning, dreading the news that she has died, wondering if the husband’s optimism has paled in the face of reality, wondering what his grief will look like and when it will surprise him in the years to come.