Regarding Denise Schwartz’s touching letter to the editor, “Reach out to friends in their time of grief” (Portland Press Herald, Dec. 27): I became a “griefling” (what a poignant way to describe a person in their first grief) when I lost my younger brother in childhood.
Many years later, a casual date shared he had lost a young sister to drowning. I asked what her name was. When I ran into him a couple of years later, he told me he had been so moved by my question that it became his own first question when someone shared they had lost someone. He told me of the same powerful response it evoked in others.
If you don’t know the name, ask. Again and again, I have seen the light that fills a face when someone speaks the name of someone loved and lost.
Zoe Gaston
South Portland
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