The mother who went looking for help for her grief

When grief makes you feel like the only person on earth carrying this, an old Buddhist story sends a mother door to door to find out otherwise.

The casseroles stopped coming weeks ago. At work, people have gone back to asking about your weekend. Then one afternoon you are standing in the cereal aisle, and it seems impossible that everyone around you is just shopping. After someone dies, part of the pain is the feeling that you have been moved to a different planet, and that no one else lives there.

An old Buddhist story begins on that planet. A woman named Kisa Gotami, living in the city of Shravasti, lost her only son. She could not accept it. She lifted his body onto her hip and carried him from house to house, begging for medicine. Neighbors decided her mind had gone. Finally someone sent her to the Buddha, who said he knew the cure. All he needed was a pinch of white mustard seed, from a house where no one had ever died.

So she went door to door again. Mustard seed was easy to find. The house was not. At every door she asked her question, and at every door she heard some version of the same answer. We lost a father here. A daughter. A husband. The living are few, people told her, and the dead are many. Somewhere along that road she understood that she was not the only mother who had lost a child. She carried her son to the forest, laid him down and went back to the Buddha.

Notice what the Buddha did not do. He did not tell her to be strong, or that time would help. He sent her out to knock on doors. Grief tends to shrink the world down to one room with you alone inside it. Her walk made the world wide again. It did not bring her son back. It gave her company.

You can still knock on those doors. The coworker who lost her husband five years ago. The cousin who makes his mother’s recipes every Christmas. The neighbor you have never thought to ask. Behind a great many ordinary front doors, someone knows that planet.

The story never says Kisa Gotami stopped loving her son. It says she stopped believing she was alone with what had happened. There is no deadline for getting there and no right way to walk it. But it often starts with one door.

Your step: Knock on one door

Think of one person who has lost someone and might understand, even a little. Take 15 minutes to write them a short message: “I’ve been missing [name] a lot lately, and I remembered you’ve been through this too. Could we talk for a few minutes this week?” Send it today. If you aren’t ready to ask, write down one story about the person you miss, just a few sentences, and share it with someone who knew them.

Read the original legend: Kisa Gotami and the Mustard Seed

Photo: Vitaly Gariev / Unsplash License