Good friends of mine just came back from a funeral in eastern Pennsylvania. A 14-year-old girl, despondent over the suicide death of her best friend two weeks earlier, took her own life. The young girl leaves behind a mother, father, and older brother and sister grief stricken beyond words.

"What do you say to a mother who loses a child so tragically?" asked my friend, as she told me of the experience. "I didn't know what to say; all I could do was hold her."

Just over 21 years ago, my sister gave birth to Michael, who had a severe heart defect known as transposition of the great vessels. Michael underwent numerous medical procedures and several surgeries, only to die when he was six months old.

My sister, ever hopeful despite Michael's medical condition, was devastated. At the funeral, friends and family gathered around to offer support. Several months later, though, she experienced a different kind of sadness.

"People seem to avoid you because they don't know what to say," I remember her telling me. "I'm sure they're uncomfortable and probably don't want to remind me of Michael."

But my sister wanted to be reminded of Michael, and any mention of his name helped keep his memory alive. In some ways, she fought against returning to her "normal life," she said, as it would cause her to feel less connected to the child she had loved and lost.

Several articles in today's Butler Eagle center around the loss of a loved one. In one story, the writer shares her experience of losing an 11-year-old son as well as that of a Chicora man who lost his wife of 12 years to cancer.

In the other, the author takes a closer look at the grieving process, as explained by a VNA Hospice bereavement coordinator and a family who lost a daughter in an automobile accident.

In all of these deaths, there was a coming together of people, a strong sense of community, as evidenced by the sympathy cards and flowers, the cooked meals and phone calls, and, most strikingly, by one town's effort to help pay for the funeral of a woman who died without life insurance.

Yet despite these supports, the grieving often experience a feeling of separation, as felt by my sister several months after Michael's death. We are a "death denying, death defying society," the bereavement counselor tells us, adding that death "forces us to face the reality that it could have been our loss, which makes us feel painfully vulnerable and uncomfortable."

As I reflect on the counselor's words, I can't help but remember the English poet John Donne, who almost 400 years ago wrote: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. … Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."