LEWISTON – The Rev. Kate Braestrup believes the worst news can be delivered in a single sentence.

But for the people who must deliver the message – that a loved one has died – how they act and the caring they show is more important than the words, Braestrup said.

“People are broken open,” she said, as if all their emotional armor were ripped away. The first face they see can be a beacon of love, she said. “They will remember it forever.”

Braestrup knows.

The widow of a state trooper who died in a 1996 traffic accident, she still recalls the face of the police chief who told her what had happened.

His words escape her.

“To this day, I don’t know what he said,” Braestrup said Thursday. “But I remember the caring and love in his face.”

Her husband’s death and her new work – which includes informing people of the death of a family member – was at the heart of Braestrup’s 2007 memoir, a New York Times bestseller titled “Here If You Need Me.”

On Thursday, Braestrup shared stories of her experiences as chaplain of the Maine Warden Service with attendees of the Great Falls Forum at the Lewiston Public Library.

Braestrup began the state job while studying as a seminary student in Bangor in 2001. Two years after her husband, Trooper Drew Griffiths, died, she entered school to become a Unitarian minister, something Drew had planned to do when he retired from the police.

“I had no idea what the warden service chaplain would do,” she said. Soon, she learned. About twice a month, she is called to the scene of a drowning, a lost child or a missing snowmobiler.

“If I’m there, it almost always means that the outcome is bad,” she said.

She cares for family members, making sure they are informed as information becomes available. Too often, she is charged with making the death notification.

“The good news is we know how to do this,” said Braestrup, who teaches Maine officers how to do notifications. “We always use the word ‘dead.'” People who are upset don’t hear euphemisms very well.”

The rest of the notice is about showing you care, she said.

One example came minutes after her husband’s death, when a crying neighbor arrived on her doorstep with a fresh pan of brownies.

“Drew hadn’t been dead for 40 minutes,” she said. “How do you put together a pan of brownies in that time?”

The simple gesture had the impact of “a choir of angels,” she said. “It’s all about the quality of love people bring to you,” she said. “That’s a pretty amazing thing.”