On Wednesday we commemorated the veterans who had fought and the many who had fallen in wars. Wars are so horrific and so many people have been effected by them in modern history that we take one day in the year just to get quiet, thoughtful and emotional about those wars, even 81 years after the Second World War ended, and 108 years after the First World War.

It reminds us of the tragedy war causes to so many, even up to today, and we might need this pain today even more than ever, when world leaders publicly ramble about the gains of their wars, or try to justify them.

The pain of loss is not restricted to wars, though, and almost all of us have had significant loss at one time or another in our lives. It hurts to lose a loved one, even when death came as a relief of pain and suffering, and it hurts to realise the finality of death.

We will never hear that voice again, touch that hand, feel their life. It also may scare us to realise that we, too, will have to leave this world one day.

Genesis 2:17 (NIV) says: “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Sometimes it appears to me it would be better translated “ … for when you eat from it you will be certain that you will die”.

We are conscious about our mortality, even in our best days, and every loss, every death of a loved one, reminds us, and scares us as well so that C.S. Lewis said: “I never knew grief would feel so much like fear.”

November has been in Church history a month to remember those who have died, especially our loved ones and to acknowledge our own mortality. It marks the end of the Church Year, starting traditionally with All Saints, followed by All Souls and then the last two Sundays before Advent, when readings and sermons often focus on death, the resurrection of believers and the Eternal Kingdom of Christ our Lord.

Rituals, like the seasons in the liturgical calendar, are supposed to make life easier and help us understand its deeper meaning. One may ask how focusing on death could be helpful as our postmodern culture tries to make us ignore and forget about our death, especially its painful individual side. Dying and death hurts, not just the person who passed on, but surely those who are left behind.

We call that hurt grief. Grief is an internal pain. It is closely linked to mourning. We mourn to let the world know about our grief, just as we may cry out when we hurt our body. It is normal to cry when in pain, to withdraw, to lose hope.

Grief is natural, and it actually tells us about how much we love. One of the leading experts on grief, Dr Alan Wolfelt, said: “Grief is love’s conjoined twin. Without love there would be no grief. And if love is not a disorder, illness or diagnosis, neither is grief.”

He even says: “To be rid of grief would be to extinguish the love that lives within us — and that, as it should be, is not possible.” Grief and mourning has its place, and we should not rush it or deny it, as it is an expression of our love.

There are many forms of grief, and grief can be as individual as our lives are and as individual as we love. We basically can grieve any real loss, not only a loved person, but anything we really were committed to, invested in, and loved. It could be a pet, a career, a life dream, or even the loss of a physical capacity like our sense of sight, hearing, taste, a limb, or our strength.

Jesus was very sensitive and empathetic to grief and the related pain of others. According to the four Gospels Christ raised the daughter of Jairus, a synagogue leader, the son of the widow of Nain, and his friend Lazarus of Bethany, the brother of Mary and Martha. He also healed people with all kind of ailments like paralysis, blindness, mental illness, deafness, leprosy, and fever. He fed the hungry and encouraged the hopeless.

But all of that was as well temporary. All of those people still had to die later on. Physical death is part of life. All living things, all living cells will eventually die. Indeed, we will certainly die, and we are also certain about it.

At the same time we have a deep hope, a promise, that we will not be separated from God’s love by death. Romans 8: 38-39 (NIV) says:  ” For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Eternal life in the presence of God’s love is our hope for those we have lost, and for us when we will have to leave this world. As Christians our grief thus is not about the one we lost, as we know that person in God’s good keeping, but it is the awareness that we will have to continue on this world without this person who meant so much to us.

In a way it is beautiful to know that we are able to cry and mourn because we miss a loved one so much. It does tell about love. It also teaches us to value and treasure the moments we have together, to be mindful of each other, and to learn to overcome our shortcomings and disagreements. Life is precious, and life is vulnerable. No one knows how much time we still have with each other.

We can treasure every moment together, try to make time for each other in our busy schedules, even if it is just a phone call. While we may statistically live to be 78 or 80, we are quite aware that this is just an average, and while some may live to be a hundred, we lose people of young age quite too often.

The pain of loss is real, and it may take a long, a very long time to find back to “normal”. Part of loving our neighbour then is to allow others to grieve and mourn at their own pace. There is also professional help for those who feel stuck in their grief. Nobody should be left alone in their grief.

It can be very helpful for those grieving to have others around, just to be there and lend a shoulder to cry on and share the pain. Our funerals are an expression of such compassion (literally “suffering together”). We don’t leave the bereaved alone, we bury our dead together (symbolised by a hand of sand or a flower dropped in the grave) and express our condolences.

We don’t just forget those who we loved. Even years later we may find a moment to remember, remember the pain of the loss, but also the love we experienced with them, the hopes we had, the good memories, the times of joy and fun.

So grief is not just pain, but it is also a witness that there has been love, something beautiful and worth missing and mourning about. That does not make it necessarily easier, but it reframes it to know that we had something worth living.

• Karsten Decker is an ordained Lutheran pastor and novelist from Germany who has lived and worked in Bermuda since 2001. At the moment he helps the Centenary Methodist Church at Collectors Hill as pulpit supply.