The gatherers fell away with brief nods. Kathryn came up to me, hugged me, kissed my blotched cheek. She gave her condolences like a mockingbird, saying what she’d seen on television maybe or read in a book. “I wish I’d known her,” she added. What I would have given to punch her in the mouth right then, to make her hurt because I was hurt. I saw through her act. People like the Rooks didn’t know grief. Watching Burt Rook take my grandfather’s hand, give a proper nod to my grandmother, seeing two perfectly matched pathetic mother-daughter smiles, the falseness of it all, made it seem like I was the butt of a long, cruel con. The fresh soil said otherwise.

—Susan Bernhard; Winter Loon

Holly Margl is the award-winning author of Witnessing Grief; Inviting Trauma and Loss to Our Coaching Conversations, An Enneagram Perspective, coach, coach mentor, and trainer specializing in grief, trauma, and the Enneagram.