When someone dies, the first week often brings an outpouring of care. Meals arrive, friends call and people gather to remember a life. Those gestures matter. But I wonder whether we pay enough attention to what happens after the visitors go home.

Grief has no obligation to end when the casseroles stop. A person may still be learning how to eat supper alone or face a familiar holiday without the voice they expected to hear. The ordinary days can be the most difficult.

One moment in the Gospel of John has stayed with me: Jesus weeping with people who were grieving. He did not treat their sorrow as a problem to be hurried through. My Christian faith asks me to take that example seriously.

We can act on it in ways that respect another person's wishes. Remember an anniversary. Offer a simple invitation with no pressure to accept. Ask whether a practical errand would help. And when someone wants to speak about the person they lost, make room for that memory.

I am not suggesting that a neighbor can fix bereavement. Nobody can. But we can resist the impulse to disappear as soon as a crisis stops being visible.

Perhaps the truest measure of community is not how many people show up for the first difficult day, but how many remember the second week—and the weeks that follow.

Douglas B. Vandergraph of Fort Collins, Colorado creates Christ-centered Christian teaching, encouragement, testimony, and long-form Bible-study resources designed to help people move from brief inspiration toward sustained engagement with Jesus Christ and Scripture.