On understanding
There has been much discussion at the grief group of the ability of your regular group of friends to support you adequately in your grief, and how most people aren’t really up to the task. They’re done “being there for you” just about the time when the stark loneliness of your new reality is really only starting to sink in. Sadly, some are done immediately.
I have one friend who has “supported” me by sending me random links to things he thinks might cheer me up. When he asks how I am, and I tell him, he doesn’t write back, or writes back with another link and no reference to whatever I expressed in the previous mail. I finally called him on both, and said, “You know, I’m feeling lonely, really lonely, and a real e-mail would be really nice. It would mean the world to me.” And after yet another non-response to the guts I’d spilled to him, someone I thought was my friend, I said “So, uncomfortable with my grief much?” He said “No, not at all.” He tells me he’s a more of a “hold close and comfort” kind of guy; but he lives out of town, and that’s not really what I want from him; we don’t have that kind of friendship. And the links keep coming. He can’t handle it. He isn’t trying. And the bitch of it is, I have been there for this guy, over and over again, crisis after crisis. I want to find a real, personal letter my e-mail box that is now far too empty since A isn’t writing to me 10 times a day, something this friend could easily do. Is that really too much to ask? It’s a concrete and fairly easily executed answer to the ubiquitous “If there’s anything I can do, just ask.” Except that when you do, it doesn’t get you far.
He isn’t the only one; he’s just probably the most extreme case. But everyone has already run out of patience for my talking about it, even E. I was talking to him (or at him, as it turned out) about some thoughts I had about A, dealing with his family, and the fact that the two remembrances I’ve asked for, both small and meaningless to anyone but me, haven’t made their way to me yet, and another item I wondered if I should even bother asking about. He didn’t answer, and seemed to get busy cleaning the kitchen, so I asked him outright if he was bothered about my talking about it; he said, “No, I just don’t have anything to contribute.”
Nothing to contribute. That seems to be the issue for everyone; and so they stop trying, and they wish you’d stop being such a downer. Your unwillingness to feel better so THEY can feel better is just so very gauche. Mourning is poor form, apparently. Heaven knows, I’d be glad to not be here myself, but this is my reality; I wasn’t consulted before my love was suddenly and without warning ripped from my life. Sorry to be the cloud in your otherwise sunny day. Carry on, don’t mind me.
I find myself resenting their avoidance, even if I understand it. Maybe that’s selfish; I don’t get to avoid it, so why should they? But honestly, I really don’t think that’s my motivation. I just want help, support, love. And I want them to try harder to give it to me than they are apparently capable of. In the absence of that effort, I just turn inward. My soul has suffered enough harm since A died; I’m not going to put it out into the cold again and again, a lost and shivering child it’s abundantly clear no one will pick up, comfort, and take in to a warm home.
I think that’s the paradox of support among your regular friends. On the one hand, unless they’ve been through it, they couldn’t possibly understand; and yet in my heart of hearts, I wouldn’t wish that understanding on anyone. It comes to enough of us, most of us, unbidden and unwanted anyway. So what’s a person to do?
I felt very deeply the loss of my grandmother when I was 13, but it was so different than this. Mostly, I was in a panic I’d lose my parents, too, and cried myself to insomnia each night for months on end. I was a child, and she was in her 70s; I find I’ve had a new batch of wistful mourning as an adult now that I really understand what was lost. But at the same time, grandmas die. We expect that to a certain extent, even though it’s horrible.
But losing a man I love…a whole different kettle of fish. So even though I had lost a loved one through death, even I didn’t understand or expect what this loss would do to me. I knew it would be horrible, of course. Given our age difference, I also knew it was probably inevitable, but every time I thought of it, it made me cry, so I tried not to think of it and assumed we’d have at least 15-20 years. I didn’t have any real conception of what "horrible" would mean, though. I’m still trying to understand it, but in the middle of it, I’m not sure of anything. All I know is that I’ve never experienced anything as bad as this; I didn’t know that pain like I’ve experienced and the ceaseless ache I constantly feel as a result of losing him even existed. I had no idea.
I am a widow in my heart, if not on paper, and there’s no one in my age group who understands what that means. My friends are having children, not funerals. 34-year-olds don’t lose their lovers. Nor do 50-year-olds, for that matter. Death is for the old; we know what life expectancy is, and we kind of expect that’s what we’ll get. The loss of a loved one is never anything but difficult; an untimely death adds a whole other level of pain and bewilderment to the situation. I think that’s what scares people the most; if it can happen unexpectedly to you, it can happen to them, too. And as my friends turn away, one by one, I just feel like I’m losing everything when I thought I hardly had anything left to lose after losing him.
In A Grief Observed, a book I’ve read and reread since A passed, C.S. Lewis (who lost his wife), describes this discomfort others feel in the presence of the grieving:
“An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ’say something about it’ or not." I hate it if they do, and if they don’t.
"To some, I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair, I can feel them both thinking, ‘One or other of us must some day be as he is now.’"
I’m trying not to be angry at those who just can’t sit with me and my grief, who can’t understand, who don’t know what to say. I don’t know how successful I am, but I try. They cannot know. I’d like to think I’d do better were the roles reversed, but I cannot know. Now, sure. Now I understand. But prior to this, I might have been just as lame, and probably have been, more than once.
There are some things that can only be understood by experiencing them. I think most understandings worth having must be experienced, even these sad and difficult understandings. Once you’ve gained them, (whether you wanted to or not), you have joined a new club, and while membership seems inevitable for all of us in the case of understanding what it means to lose someone you really loved, until you cross that threshold, there’s no way anyone can explain it to you. You cannot explain music to the deaf from birth. True love is beyond total articulation. And to try to explain the whole mind, body, and soul pain of a particular bereavement to the uninitiated is to explain lovemaking to a ficus: no frame of reference, no understanding possible.
Some schools of thought and philosophy would have us understand that these trials are put upon us for soul growth, and that some day, in the next life, we will understand. On an intellectual level, I can buy that, because unless you are fortunate to be possessed of the rare friend who can withstand the gales and freak storms of grief and never let go of your hand, most of us will ultimately find we must turn inward for any solace we are to have day-to-day. And as we turn inward, as we pay attention to ourselves, tend to ourselves, and learn exactly what we are made of and watch the illusions, masks, and unworthy priorities fall away as so much ash in this fire we’re walking through, we may indeed experience soul growth. These are the so-called “gifts” of darkness that we may receive upon arrival at the other side of hell.
But you know, I’d really rather have a puppy. And I’d give my right arm, and more, to have him, and my ignorant bliss, back.