Today is August 18.

Today is August 18, and that date begins a time of remembrance in my life.

On August 17, 2007, my grandmother had a massive stroke she never really woke up from. I was in Nashville, driving home from a bridesmaid luncheon when I heard the news. On August 18, I walked down the aisle as a bridesmaid in the wedding of two friends and was happy for them and overjoyed to be a witness to their special day. But inside I was sad. My grandma was dying.

I stayed in Nashville that weekend, a hot, stifling August weekend. A friend sat with me in the dark of two separate coffee houses and didn’t even have to speak. She was just there and I needed that. Someone who would cry with me and love me and sit with me when I really didn’t have words to say. My heart was too full; my heart was too broken.

On Monday, I went to work and cried with my friends there. That afternoon, I ignored my parents’ instructions to wait until they called me to come home and went to Missouri. I needed to be there. I needed to sit in her hospital room. I needed to serve my parents, even if I was just doing their laundry or playing with their dogs or bringing food to the hospital. I needed to be there.

Grandma Polly died on August 23. We buried her on a Sunday afternoon.

In many ways, that hurt is still fresh. In other ways, it feels long ago.

But what I can see now, with 3 years of hindsight, is how God was in it all. How He was there. How He comforted. How the words of life rang true as the pastor proclaimed them at Grandma’s gravesite. How my father reaching out to hold my hand was God’s way of physically comforting me.

I won’t ever be able to say my loss didn’t hurt and that grief isn’t a heavy burden to bear. But I’ll never, ever let anyone try to handle it alone or think that God has abandoned them in their grief.

Sometimes, I think that our grief makes us absolutely honest with God and in that, He may just be closer than we think.

Because if anything, Jesus understands grief.