When We Sit Beside the Fog …

Recently, someone reminded me not to underestimate what a loved one may need when they return home following the loss of someone close to them. It was a simple reminder, but it stayed with me.

Earlier this year, I wrote about grief arriving like fog — changing our sense of time, slowing our thoughts and making a once-familiar world feel strangely different.

Recently, it has felt as though that fog has been moving through the wider world. Across countries and communities, people have been saying goodbye to family members, friends and familiar figures whose voices, stories or presence became woven into their lives.

Some losses arrive within our own circles and immediately alter the shape of everyday life. Others involve people we may never have known personally, yet their voice, work or presence accompanied us through different chapters of our lives. The connection may be different, but their passing can still stir memories, emotion and the feeling that something familiar has gone.

It is not necessarily that loss belongs only to this moment. Perhaps there are simply times when we become more conscious of how much of it people are carrying.

That gentle reminder brought these thoughts forward for me again. But this time, I have found myself thinking not only about those experiencing grief, but also about those standing nearby — and why so many of us feel uncomfortable in its presence.

Grief makes many people uncomfortable.

Not because they do not care, but because they do not know what to say. They worry about saying the wrong thing, making someone cry or intruding upon something deeply personal. Sometimes another person’s loss brings us uncomfortably close to our own memories, our own unfinished grief or the reality that every life eventually changes form.

So, we step back when perhaps what is needed is for someone to remain.

Today’s date carries a 22/4 vibration:

3 + 9 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 6 = 22 → 4

The 22 is known as the Master Builder, while the 4 represents foundations, steadiness and practical support. Within grief, this does not need to mean building something grand. It may simply mean helping to create a safe place where another person does not have to pretend they are all right.

A phone call.

A meal left at the door.

A quiet cup of tea.

The willingness to listen to the same memory more than once.

Perhaps even the courage to ask, “How are you really coping?”

We are also living in the days following a Pisces Lunar Eclipse. Pisces and Virgo sit opposite each other in the zodiac, creating an axis between spiritual surrender and practical care. Within grief, this symbolism feels particularly relevant: what we believe about the soul, and how we support those who remain.

The patterns within the planets and numbers can offer another perspective, helping us reflect on the deeper themes surrounding the experiences we are living through.

I believe that death forms part of the soul’s journey, although none of us can know with certainty what that journey looks like beyond this life. But seeing death spiritually does not remove the pain of human loss. It does not mean that grief should be hurried, explained away or wrapped in comforting words before someone is ready to hear them.

Perhaps grief is part of the soul journey too — not as a punishment or a lesson that must be mastered, but as the heart’s gradual adjustment to loving someone who is no longer present in the same way.

And perhaps those who stand beside the grieving have their own part in that journey.

We are not required to provide answers. We do not need to make the pain disappear. Sometimes our role is simply to become an Anam Cara — a soul friend — willing to enter the fog and sit beside someone until they feel a little less alone.

Spirituality does not always arrive as revelation or certainty.

Sometimes it arrives as presence.

As compassion.

As one soul quietly making space for another 🩶

Rosanna 🦋

Anam Cara - Soulfriends