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When my sister lost her baby at five months pregnant, our entire family fell apart into a helpless, awkward silence. Nobody knew what to say. After she came home from the hospital, she refused to leave her bedroom or speak to anyone. My mother kept trying to force her to talk about her feelings, while my dad tried to distract her by suggesting home renovation projects. Both approaches only made her withdraw further. One afternoon, our neighbor—an 80-year-old woman who usually complained about our dog barking—walked up our driveway holding a faded pink knit blanket. She didn't knock on the front door. She just sat down on the porch steps next to where I was sitting, placed the blanket on her lap, and started knitting a new row onto a completely different sweater. She didn't ask how my sister was doing. She didn't offer any words of comfort. An hour later, my sister finally opened the front door to get the mail. She saw the old woman sitting there. The old woman looked up, handed her the faded pink blanket, and said, "1972. His name was Bobby. I kept his blanket in my cedar chest for fifty years because everyone told me to move on and forget about it. You don't have to forget." My sister didn't say a word. She just sat down on the concrete step next to the old woman, wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, and wept for two hours while the old woman quietly kept knitting. My parents and I had been trying to fix her grief with words. The old woman fixed it by simply showing her that the weight she was carrying could be borne for a lifetime.

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