I have been involved in the Walking Group Program at Victoria Hospice since 1988, and in all of that time, I have heard nothing but appreciation from the more than four- teen hundred bereaved folks that I have met. For some time, I have been at a loss to explain why this program has been so successful. How is it that perfect strangers can meet in a walking group and become friends for life within a very short time-frame? How can we explain the collective bonding that occurs, time after time?

I believe that John Ralston Saul's concept of shared knowledge might explain this phenomenon. Bereaved people, all of whom are launched unwillingly upon a risky and prolonged journey for which they have no real preparation, have a profound ability to help perfect strangers who have in common with them nothing but the loss of a loved one.

Why should it be difficult to accept the possibility that the concept of shared knowledge that enables a butterfly to do something in a non-analytic and essentially inexplicable way might similarly enable human beings?

Time and time again, I have observed how bereaved people are best helped by other bereaved people. Perhaps the key is that, in the extremity of the bereavement experience, people unconsciously dip into a well of shared knowledge, the existence of which most people are blissfully unaware. It may simply be that this well of shared knowledge, or common sense, becomes accessible to people only when they are launched on their own bereavement journeys.

After all, human beings have been around for quite some time, but the truth is that individual time is unbelievably brief. Just as in the case of the Monarch butterfly, none of us has ever made the round trip.

I have no doubt that some kind of shared knowledge enables the bereaved to understand and to relate to the experiences of others in similar circumstances. Consistently, people who have not experienced the trauma of loss demonstrate that it is a challenge for them to empathize with the bereft. If this were not so, bereaved people would not be subjected to the constant stream of ill-advised, ill-informed, trite, and insensitive feedback that they are so accustomed to receiving.