Be supportive in times of struggle

What do you say?
How does a community articulate its grief after nearly three months of hopes and prayers?
What do you say when the thing you feared, the thing you kept pushing to the back of your mind, comes true?
Do you stay silent and hope the whole thing will go away, that suddenly something that had been shared by an entire community now just becomes a heartache for a handful of family members and close friends?
Or do you reach out, hoping that in some way you can make a difference so that nothing like this happens again?
All of the questions about the final hours of Brianna DiBattiste will never be answered.
But the loss is real, a loved one is gone.
Family and friends will go to the end of their days wondering, wondering if there’s something else they could have said or done, wondering if they should have heard something or seen something that escaped them, wondering how her life story could have been told differently, wondering why it had to end so soon.
It’s not fair that they’ll have to go through that, but it’s human nature. They’ll beat up on themselves and be unfair to themselves and judge themselves far too harshly.
But what about the rest of us?
What should we do and say?
We should tell them we share their sadness. We don’t share it with the immensity of those directly touched by Brianna’s life, but there is an unmistakable pall of sadness hanging over the community. A family has lost a child; it’s as simple and as complicated as that.
We should, by our actions and our deeds and words, refrain from judgment. None of us is in the position to render a verdict in this situation, so we should keep our mouths shut.
And, as we go forward, we should see in every young person struggling with choices, sometimes making bad ones, Brianna.
And when we see Brianna in that young person, we should act upon that moment of insight.
If we do, there’s a chance someone else’s life story will be told differently and will be a much longer tale. —J.R.