My job isn't to go around judging people. Priests are meant to teach love and forgiveness. That to me is the essence of being a Christian. And trying to find that love and forgiveness in ourselves and others every day should be a challenge that we want to achieve.

Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are.

Usually time alters and affects everything, but when someone you love dies time cannot change that, no amount of time will ever change that, so time stops having any meaning.

Grief is love turned into an eternal missing

When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequieted love. However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels.

But grief is the ultimate unrequited love. However hard and long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels.

But my lazy lack of faith, my in-vogue atheism, has taken away the safety net hanging beneath our children's lives.