I’m beginning to hate this time of year
I don’t get a lot of phone calls, so when my phone rang at 9:15 this morning as I was driving to work from the chiropractor’s office (to send an e-mail and tell them I was going home to get cozy with my ice pack), it surprised me. When I saw who it was, I knew something was wrong. My friend B is supposed to be on a cruise a thousand miles away and completely incommunicado, NOT calling me on a Wednesday morning.
I am never wrong when I want to be, and it was B calling me from port to tell me that her father had passed. While B lives in the Midwest, her parents live not far from me. We’ve had dinner together, and they’re lovely people, the nicest 80-somethings you’d ever want to meet: engaged and engaging, ready and willing to discuss anything and everything at dinner. But now her mom is widowed, and 3 girls have lost their father. I don’t know what’s that like, but I know it is terrible.
I remember when my paternal grandfather died; I was 13 years old or so. We were at my dad’s family home, doing the post-funeral gathering, and I noticed my dad smoking. He’d quit years before, due in part to my mother’s insistence, and I knew he wasn’t supposed to be smoking. I ratted him out to my mom, and she told me, “Leave him alone, his dad died!” Of course, I was 13 years old, and had no conception of what a loss like that would do to someone. My only experiences of death up to that point were the loss of a great-uncle whose funeral we children didn’t go to, an aunt I never liked, and my puppy who was hit by a school bus. The first two didn’t really register for me nearly as much as my puppy did. I had little-to-no relationship with my grandfather, and when he did speak to us, it was at us, usually yelling about screen doors and our blocking of his view of the TV. I wasn’t aware of my father being close to his dad, either, so in the typically self-centered manner of a teenager, it didn’t really affect me, I didn’t understand why it would affect him, and so I went through the motions, without the emotions. I didn’t know then that when people are important in your life, for better and worse, grief can be massive and complicated. Funny how we receive lessons in loss and grief all our lives, but it sometimes takes us decades to understand those lessons in full.
B’s mom doesn’t know that I’ve been widowed, and while I understand to some extent her loss, I really don’t know what it is to lose someone you’ve lived with for the last 50-60 years. If I have one fear, it’s that I will find out one day. I have said to others, when I tried to explain what it was like to lose A, that the only loss in my life that could ever compare is to lose E. E has been put on notice that he may not depart this world before me; given the longevity of his family, I might be safe from living through this twice. But I don’t count on it; I don’t count on much these days.
I am frustrated with my inability to know what to do here. I told B that I would call her mom and ask her if she needed someone to shuttle folks in from the airport, but I didn’t get ahold of her this morning when I tried. I’ll make a lasagna and bring it over at some point so they don’t have to cook, and I’m planning to invite her for dinners down the road, after the crowd has left. B asked if I’d be willing to be on-call for her mom, since we’re here and her mom is now alone, and I said of course. But it doesn’t seem enough. I would treat her family as my own, but I’m closer to B than to her folks, and I’ve never met her sisters, so I worry that my efforts could seem intrusive. And then there’s B herself, my beloved friend. She won’t be here right away, at her mother’s insistence, but my friend has lost her dad, and was obviously in shock when we spoke. What can I do for her, when I can’t even give her a hug? I’ve been through a loss, and recently. Shouldn’t I know what to do?
I ponder what I wanted and needed when I lost A, to see if that would guide me. The problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted early in my loss, or if I did, it was often contradictory and it changed by the minute. I wanted sympathy and acknowledgement while simultaneously wanting to be left alone. I wanted to laugh or feel something other than the pain, but needed to cry until my chest hurt. I wanted people to take care of me, and I resented the fact that they thought they knew better than I did what I needed. So if I was that filled with mixed feelings and antithetical needs, and I know that everyone grieves differently, where do I start for someone else?
This is why people pull back from survivors when someone dies; they are paralyzed, even those of us who have been through the fire and feel like we should know better. And yet, I am committed to NOT being one of those who disappear; I want to help. But I don’t want to get in anyone’s way, either. I suppose this is what rituals are for; to give people the things to do so we don’t have to think about it.
I need to call again and express my condolences myself, instead of just on the answering machine. I need to ask about the funeral. I need to offer my services as chauffeur or phone caller or…what else? I don’t want to tell them, “Call if you need anything.” I want to be ready to offer to do specific tasks that need doing, and it seems to me someone largely removed from the emotion of the loss might be better able to help handle the practical realities thereof, taking some of the burden off the family. Anybody out there, what do you wish someone had stepped up to do for you and your family at a time like this? I know I can’t make this any easier for their family, but maybe I can make it slightly less hard.