Ordinary Grief, Extraordinary Love

The bells are quiet, the colors turn to green, and the calendar says ordinary time—yet your heart still feels anything but ordinary. We lean into that tension and talk honestly about the everyday weight of grief: the way a scent can stop you in a doorway, how an empty chair can crowd a room, and why the ache itself can be a sign that love is alive and doing its work. With clear, gentle language, we name what so many feel but hesitate to say out loud.

We explore how culture often rushes mourning, leaving people embarrassed by tears or unsure how to show up for each other. We reflect on Anderson Cooper’s evolving voice on loss and what changes when we finally give sorrow time and space. From there, we turn to faith and continuity—how Christians and people of other traditions find hope in the idea that love outlasts a heartbeat, and how that promise can steady us when anniversaries and sudden memories arrive uninvited. Along the way, we ask questions: How much does love weigh? What color is it? We can’t measure it, but we can feel how it binds us to the people we miss.

This conversation offers small, practical ways to make grief part of life without letting it swallow the day. Think simple rituals, quiet prayers, and intentional moments that honor memory while making room for new breath. The goal isn’t to move on, but to move with—allowing sorrow to soften, love to broaden, and hope to return in everyday places like kitchens, pews, and sidewalks under bright blue skies. 

If you’re carrying a loss that feels heavy and unspoken, consider this a welcoming chair at a table set for honesty and care.

We reflect on how grief becomes part of daily life, how faith and memory hold us, and why acknowledging sorrow is a sign of love, not weakness. From  hard-won wisdom to simple rituals that help us carry on, we make space for healing with honesty and hope.

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION WHILE GRIEVING IS AVAILABLE

Art:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
and  https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6

Music and sound effects today by:   via Pixabay

Chapters

• 0:51 Welcome And Purpose
• 1:32 Ordinary Time And Spring Imagery
• 3:13 The Tattoo Of Everyday Grief
• 5:05 Culture, Loss, And What Feels Normal
• 6:30 Anderson Cooper And Learning To Grieve
• 7:39 Faith, Continuity, And Eternal Presence
• 8:25 What Love Weighs And How It Binds
• 9:03 Making Grief Part Of Life
• 9:36 Closing And Weekly Blessing

Transcript

Candee: 0:51

Welcome to Solace, Soul + Grief. I'm CandEE Lucas, your host. I'm a trained chaplain, spiritual director, and teacher. We are in our fifth season, and I'm really glad you've decided to join with us.

Candee: 1:12

We know the loss of a loved one or loved ones is a remarkable event, a marker in our lives. The end of something and the beginning of grief. We hope this podcast will help support you in that grieving process. Through the use of scriptures, poetry, and other sources, we visit that place where God is joining us, where God meets us to accompany us on our journeys. You're always welcome in this circle of healing, love, and support.

Candee: 1:55

We're back in ordinary times. All the decorations and the churches, statues, the extra candles, the poinsettas, the cherubs, the angels, the bells have been removed, and our worship places are back to their normal state. I pondered this in mass this week as my mind wandered at the meaning of the green vestments in ordinary times. It almost makes me think about spring. And if you live in other places, other than Northern California, spring's probably a bit away. But here we've had a very spring-like winter. The hills are green, the fields are blooming, flowers are blooming. And the days are crystal blue, both the ocean and the sky.

Candee: 3:13

It made me think of everyday grief and how we respond in our lives to that ongoing presence that we wear kind of like a tattoo on our hearts. Because there's no end to it. These people lived in our lives. They interacted with us. We loved them, we held them, we fed them. They fed us. They laughed with us, they cried with us. We fought with them, they fought with us. They were simply living human lives. Ordinary lives, if you will. Until the time came when they didn't. When that temporal life ceased. Now we all know that that's going to happen to all of us one day. But Western culture has denied us a full place in our society for grief and mourning. Some people seem mostly embarrassed by it. Some people are just overwhelmed and don't know what to say or do in the grieving process. But I think we want to take this time and take today to remember how ordinary grief is.

Candee: 4:53

Of course we miss someone we lost. How could we not? And maybe we were raised as some of those resilient people who, for instance, on a farm, got used to losing the animals that they were attached to. Or people who work in the health industry or hospice industry, who are present at death more often than the rest of us are. Whatever the case may be, the ordinariness of missing someone, missing their presence, their smell, their taste, their very being in your life can seem like a great agony. And if it seems like a great agony, that's normal. That agony, that missing, that loss, that breach of our very being, catches us in the sky, catches our breath, pains us, wounds us to our very heart and soul. And so we are at a loss at how to just survive.

Candee: 6:28

If you have ever listened to Anderson Cooper, and I urge you to, because he's very good at expressing grief now. However, he wasn't so good at expressing it in the beginning. He'd had a lot of losses in his life. His father, his brother, when he was a very young man. And he'll be the first one to tell you that not taking time to grieve that loss, those losses was very hurtful to him. It wasn't until he had his own children that he realized the importance of this ongoing circle, how radiant it can be with new life and midlife, and old life and loss of life.

Candee: 7:33

And so we all begin again. If we are Christians, we believe there will be a time and place when we are rejoined, when we re-experience God's presence and the presence of those we've lost. Other religions have something similar, but the important part of it is the ongoingness, the eternal of it, the sustenance of it, the fact that it will remain, that we will remain in some form or another. We all know how deeply we love those we've lost, but you cannot measure it in a cup, you cannot weigh it on a scale. How much does love weigh? What color is it? What does it smell like? What does it sound like? We can't answer any of these questions, but we know it's as real as real can be. It is the thing that binds us together in the end. So take your grief today and look at it. Look at it until it seems ordinary in part of you. Part of your life as if it was a scar from a long-ago injury. It will always be there. It will change with time, but it will always be there.

Candee: 9:35

That concludes another episode. Thanks for joining us. My name is Candee Lucas. A new episode drops every Friday morning, and you can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Amazon Music. Remember, be very good to yourself and to others this week. Travel always with God at your side. Vaya con Dios.