Michelangelo's famous sculpture “The Pieta” has special meaning to Sally Westfall.

A holy card depicting the masterpiece, which shows a mournful Blessed Mother holding her deceased son across her lap, still hangs on the bulletin board in her son's room, two-and-a-half years after his death.

Nathan Westfall had just been confirmed and, at 16, was looking forward to a drivers license and a first job. He was starting to think about choosing a college. About a month after his confirmation, Nathan died in his sleep of an epileptic seizure, an affliction he had borne for several years. In the weeks before his death, he had been studying “The Pieta” at school. One morning just before he died, he told his mother he had fallen asleep looking at the holy card she had given him.

“I knew he wanted me to know that it was important to him,” Sally says. “In fact, it had been significant and he had obviously been thinking about it.”

A year after Nathan's death, Father Mark Innocenti, the pastor of her parish, Our Lady of Lourdes in Little Falls, Minn., told her it was striking for a teenager to be drawn to that picture, but it was an image meant for her.

“He said to me, 'Mary is inviting you to approach her because she went through the same thing, and you can seek her comfort because she is your Mother,’” Sally recalls. “It was the beginning of my devotion to Mary. I had never learned to say the rosary, because I didn't grow up Catholic. Now it's an important part of my life.”

In the time since Nathan passed away, both Sally and her husband, Don, have grown deeper in their faith and more appreciative of the little things in life. They give more than they used to and are more involved in the life of their church. Don has even applied for the diaconate program through the diocese of St. Cloud, Minn. Both have also observed that they more readily face things that used to frighten them, such as flying, terminal illness and even death.

“I don't feel like the other side is that far away anymore,” Sally says. “It feels like we're all part of God's Kingdom and some of us are here and some of us are there. I feel differently about heaven and earth — they're not that far apart.”

Don says he has grown stronger in the faith and less concerned about things in life.

“You reassess all of that, of course,” he says. “We're on a journey to God, and this life is very temporary. But the communion of the Church is so much more real.”

Close at Heart

The Westfalls have both had a strong sense of Nathan's presence at times, but Sally feels closest to Nathan at Mass, because he is with God, and God is in the Eucharist, she says.

“What a beautiful way to remember him,” says Ann Peters Miller, a Catholic therapist who works with Catholic Social Services in Lincoln, Neb. “When we take the Eucharist, we are in union with Christ, in communion with all the saints.”

Miller describes how the sacraments and other elements of the Catholic faith can help people heal during the grieving process.

“When we go through grief, we often feel as if God has abandoned us, and often the person turns away from God,” she says. “But that's exactly the time when we need to dig in even deeper — go to Mass more, read Scripture more, pray more, go to confession. Receive the grace that is available to us in the sacraments”

In his encyclical The Christian Meaning on Suffering, Pope John Paul II discusses the human tendency to ask, “Why?” But there is often no answer, Miller says.

“The Pope recognizes the human condition and that it is so normal for us to wonder why,” she says. “He talks about uniting our sufferings with Christ on the cross. There is nothing that is missing from Christ's suffering, but we can enter into that.”

Father Innocenti echoes those same feelings. “When we can't make sense of suffering, we need to look to Jesus on the cross,” he says. “There is no explanation for why a perfectly righteous person was crucified. We can also look to his sorrowful mother holding Jesus after he was taken down from the cross. Our Blessed Mother knows our pain and we can go to her for consolation with the loss of a loved one, especially a child. She suffered it in a real and powerful way.”

Guilt and Grief

Miller says the stages of grief are common, but there's something “unnatural” about losing a child. Many parents will be angry with God or have a sense of guilt for not being able to prevent the death. Others might wish God had taken their own life instead of the child's.

But everyone experiences grief in his or her own way, and spouses need to be patient with one another. One might be feeling better while the other is not. It's also difficult to continue parenting other children because a parent is going through his or her own process. A faith community is very important during this time because it can offer prayers, comfort and practical support.

“When you're grieving, even the simple task of making a meal can be difficult,” Miller says. “It's important to take care of yourself and let other people help you. Get into a grief group so you can share your story and also listen to other people's stories about how they dealt with it. You need to be able to cry in front of each other and show your pain. It also gives the other children permission to grieve.”

The Westfalls say they read many books on losing a child, but the psychological answers did not help as much as those that offered spiritual guidance.

“What was helpful to me was to get as close to God as I could, and to me that was the Mass and prayerful people,” Sally says. “That's where I go to find comfort.”

Miller says people eventually do accept that the loved one's death was supposed to be — but that is the end of the journey, not the beginning.

Barb Ernster writes fromFridley, Minnesota.