Hedwig lived in the 1100s into the 1200s in Silesia (an area that covers parts of present-day Poland, Germany, and Czechia). She was married off by her family when only 12 years old, and, as it turns out, she ended up with a kind husband and influential duke named Henry. After giving him six children, she requested (and he agreed) that their plan for birth control was never to have sex again and simply present publicly as husband and wife, as duke and duchess.

Hedwig thereafter devoted herself to the poor, to the suffering, to the sick. She endowed convents and monasteries and used her wealth and position to help and aid the poor. She never felt called to take the veil–though invited to do so, as a woman able to take the vow of chastity–but Hedwig maintained close relationships with many nuns and frequently dwelt among and with them.

Meanwhile, Henry decided that if he and Hedwig were not going to have sex any longer, then he would never shave again! It is unclear why (had she previously insisted he shave? was he passive-aggressively making a point? was tending his beard an alternative to sex for him? was he signaling his availability?). History has dubbed him, not surprisingly, “Henry the Bearded.”

Now, Henry the Bearded was a good man, a good duke, a good husband-provider, and a well-loved and respected benefactor of charitable causes. When he died “happily in 1238,” the nuns with whom Hedwig dwelt shed many tears, expressed tremendous grief, and offered Hedwig their presence and support. Butler reports:

Hedwiges (alternative form of her name) was the only person who could think of the deceased prince with dry eyes, and comforting the rest, said, “Would you oppose the will of God? Our lives are his. We ought to find our comfort in whatever he is pleased to ordain, whether to as our own death, or as to that of our friends.”

Now, setting God aside for the moment, I can well imagine that a girl forced to marry and bed an adult male when she was only age 12 might not mourn the death of said male, no matter how “kindly” he was through the years. Dry-eyed upon the news of Henry the Bearded’s death? I can see that.

But what about the theology Hedwig put forward here? Is the death of each and every person the will of God? Is grieving somehow a (perhaps minor) spiritual offense to God? Should we see each death as ordained by God and meet it “with dry eyes”?!

In my experience (as a pastor, as a friend, and as a bereaved person), people either reject Hedwig’s perspective as horrifying or else they find astounding comfort in it. For the first group, it is horrific to think that God actually wanted or planned or ordained the death of another (especially when the decedent is young or a significant partner or a close and beloved friend…or if the death is inexcusably gruesome, premature, painful, cruel, homicidal, suicidal, or genocidal). The second group find that if they can believe that God “has got the whole wide world in His hands” and that there is some transcendent meaning or purpose in another’s death–even if that purpose is unclear or, even, utterly incomprehensible to the bereaved–then this helps make their own grieving process easier.

What I can assert, based upon my own experience: there is a world of difference between telling others what has been of help to me in terms of my beliefs and what has helped get me through a loss–and telling others what they should think or believe in order for them to get through their own loss. The worst of all is when someone chides or even blames another for how she or he experiences or expresses grief.

Your thoughts/experiences?