The most powerful tool to help someone grieve, at least for me, is to just be there. Cry with me. Laugh with me if I have a seemingly inappropriate memory that makes me laugh. Listen to me. If it’s a group loss, hold each other.
For me, grief is a big black ugly dog and I’m sorry but I don’t like dogs. It follows your around. It sneaks up behind you and trips you when you turn around and you didn’t expect it to be there. It widdles on the carpet and you curse as you clean it up. It looks at you as if you have the answer and you don’t and it makes you feel helpless.
When you aren’t looking it bites and it hurts so much and you can try to figure out how to tell it to go away and it won’t. Eventually it may fade away across the moor but you will still hear it howl far away like some hound of the Baskervilles on dark nights when you really don’t want to be alone and it’s frightening.
Grief is cumulative over a life time and every time someone you love dies that damn dog gets bigger. Mine is currently the size of a big dumb Newfoundland and is trying to crawl in my lap again. I don’t want it. It isn’t cute at all. It slobbers.
I know Hecate has hounds but I’m a cat person. Cats are better at knowing when you need solace and when you need to be left alone.
But now the damn dog is back and I hate it.
Adventures and Musings of an Arch Druidess 
This is the best description of grief I’ve ever read. I had never thought of grief this way (though I do imagine OCD as a big black dog for many of the same reasons) but I might from now on…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m a cat and dog person – more dog these days. The best dog I ever had was a black, white and tan dog named Sammy and his death in 2011 nearly killed me. He taught me how to live, how to love and how I want to die. So it’s ironic you would describe grief as a nasty black dog lol.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like cats and dogs, but I’ve always been a dog person…it’s even my birth year.
I like black dogs and black cats equally. Black is a beautiful colour, but people want to equate grief with it…it is how we are conditioned, I suppose.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have a black cat but clouds on really stormy days are really black
LikeLike
I don’t normally equate light or dark to anything but grief and depression are as dark as it gets and very far from the light. As someone who was born blind the dark is not necessarily scary but the darkness of grief is for me
LikeLike
I can understand that…the darkness of grief or depression are very lonely places – which makes them very frightening, indeed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Had to share this. I have friends who need this. Great grief analogy. Dog of grief.
LikeLiked by 1 person