Gifts · Grief

Gifts for someone grieving at Christmas
the first one, and the ones after

The first Christmas after a death is not a season. It is an ambush. Every carol has a verse in it that was theirs, there is a chair, and the whole country is insisting on joy. Most of the gifts people give at this point are memorials — an ornament with the name on it, a wind chime, a framed verse about angels. They are given with love, and they do the giver’s work rather than the griever’s: they say I remembered at the moment of handing over, and then they hang there. What helps is something for the eleventh of January, when the cards have stopped and everyone else has gone back to normal and they have not.

Three rules, before anything you might buy. Say the name. The fear that mentioning the dead will upset the bereaved is exactly backwards; what upsets them is watching everyone step around the name as if the person had been erased. Do not give anything that requires a performance of gratitude — nothing they must display, assemble, or thank you for in front of others. And do not give a book that explains grief to them. They are the expert now. Give them company in it.

The first and fourth items are our own titles, and I say so where they appear. The other two are paid, sponsored links — I earn a commission if you buy through one, at no extra cost to you. No prices on this page; Amazon changes them constantly, so click through and see what it costs today.

One page a morning, written for their loss and not for “loss”

Grief is not one thing, and the generic grief devotional knows it and hedges. Losing your mother at fifty is not losing your husband at seventy, and neither is the pregnancy that ended at eleven weeks that nobody else counted. A book that speaks to the actual loss can say the specific true thing — that the phone still wants to ring her, that the side of the bed is cold in a way no one warned you about — and the specific true thing is the only kind that reaches someone at 3 a.m.

Fifty-two days, not a year, and undated. Long enough to carry them past the point where everyone else stops asking; short enough to finish, which matters more than it sounds, because a grieving person needs to complete something. Undated, because they may not open it until March, and the book should not scold them for that.

Our own titles · choose the one for their loss

The Grief & Comfort devotionals are each fifty-two mornings of Scripture, a short reflection written to one particular loss, and a few lines to write. These are our own titles, so I’ll skip the pitch and tell you how to choose: give the one that names their loss, and put nothing else in the parcel. There is one for the loss of a mother, one for a father, one for a child, one for the widow’s first year, one for miscarriage and early pregnancy loss, and one for the loss of a pet — which people are quietly mocked for grieving, and which is therefore the grief people are least allowed to have.

A mother A father A child A husband A miscarriage A pet

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A believer who was angry at God, in print

The book most likely to be thrown across the room by a grieving Christian is the one that reassures them. What they need is permission — to be furious, to find the comfort hollow, to say so to God and still be His. There is one short book that gives that permission better than any other, because its author was a famous defender of the faith and wrote it in a notebook after his wife died, before he had recovered his composure.

C. S. Lewis, after Joy

A Grief Observed — the journal Lewis kept in the months after his wife’s death, published under a false name because it was too raw to own. It is short, it is honest to the point of blasphemy in places, and it is the book to give someone who is angry and thinks that disqualifies them. It is the book grieving believers most often say was the one that let them stay. Give the plain paperback, not a gift edition. It is not a book to be displayed.

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For a parent, specifically

The death of a child is its own country and the guides to every other grief do not cover it. A parent who has lost a child will be handed a great many books in the first year, and will read almost none of them, and the one they finish will be the one written by another parent who did not pretend to have arrived anywhere.

A father, in fragments

Lament for a Son — written by a philosopher after his twenty-five-year-old died climbing, in short broken pieces rather than chapters, because that is the only length grief can read. It does not resolve. That is the point of it, and the reason it has stayed in print for forty years. I would not give it to anyone but a parent, and to a parent I would give nothing else.

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For the second Christmas

Nobody warns you about the second one. The first is survived on adrenaline and casseroles; the second arrives when the casseroles have stopped and what is left is not the sharp thing anymore but the low, constant one — the fear that this is simply what life is now. That is the year to give something weekly rather than daily, small enough to keep, that works on the fear rather than the loss.

Our own title · one page a week, for the year after the year

Be Still: A 52-Week Christian Journal for Anxiety — a Scripture, a guided prayer and room to write, once a week, on the fear specifically. This is our own title, so take the description rather than the pitch. It is not a grief book, which is why it is the right one for the second year: by then the grief has become worry, and the worry is what needs a name. The prompts for when you are grieving, doubting or angry are on this site for free, if a whole book is too much to hand them yet.

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The gift that costs nothing and is the one they will remember

Put a date in your own calendar. The anniversary of the death, their birthday, the dead person’s birthday, and a random Tuesday in February. On each one, send a message with the name in it. Not “thinking of you” — the name, and one specific memory if you have it. That is the whole gift, and it outperforms everything above, because the thing the bereaved fear most is not the pain. It is that everyone else will forget.

What not to give

A memorial ornament unless they have asked for one; the tree is already the hardest thing in the house. Anything that says heaven gained an angel. A book about the stages of grief, or any book that explains what they are feeling to them. A photo book they have to assemble, because it is a project handed to someone who cannot currently make toast. A dated devotional that starts on the first of January, because they will not be ready on the first of January. And nothing that needs a thank-you note. Give the one book for their loss, put the four dates in your calendar, and say the name.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. Psalm 34:18