The gentle touch of pain
Last week, I attended the funeral of a beautiful 30-year-old girl who died suddenly in her sleep. As she sat in church watching her friends, family, and neighbors silently filter through the doors, I looked around at their stricken faces and was overwhelmed by a powerful feeling of unity in the crowd. Although there were hundreds of darkly dressed people on the benches, hardly a word was spoken. People were smiling kindly at each other, touching arms or backs, and waiting patiently as they sat in their seats. No one expressed impatience at having to wait. Nobody complained. No one raised their eyebrows or voice. Sadness had brought them together and they were all kind to strangers.
Mothers and fathers tightly held the hands of their daughters and sons while looking at them tenderly. You could almost hear them thinking “It could have been you.” The couples sat close together and the elders were hugged. There is nothing like a tragedy to bring out the best in people and I felt my heart warm as tenderness flowed through the church, embracing everyone with its tender touch.
It reminded me many times when I had felt this way. September 11 – When the world came together to embrace this country and offer love and condolences for the tragedy. Hurricane Katrina, where people came together to give all they could to strangers who had lost everything. And, for me, my own personal tragedies when I lost my sister 17 years ago and my husband almost ten years ago and I, too, felt the soft touch of shared sadness. When bad things happen, everyone wants to help. They all offer what they can give. But people are often uncomfortable with death and confused about what to do. While the intention is good and caring, there are also ways that people react to what doesn’t work and they only serve to create a more difficult situation.
Based on my own experiences, my main advice is to act with kindness and consideration. Do not offer advice or suggestions on what to do. The worst advice I’ve ever heard is “keep busy” or “keep your mind busy.” When you’ve lost someone you love, it’s constantly on your mind, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep at night, and each has their own way of dealing with grief. My therapy consisted of immersing myself in my pain: writing, reading, walking, driving, crying, remembering. The feelings are always there and even if you “keep busy” they come to light at a later time. For me, it was much better to deal with my feelings in the moment than to postpone the inevitable. Also, I felt like I was honoring my loved one by thinking of them and grieving them at the time.
After my sister died, my mother told me how she would meet people on the street who would not even recognize her for fear of “reminding them.” As she told me, it was not possible for her to forget even for a moment and it would have been impossible to “remind” her of something that was part of her being. It is far better, he advised, to express a word of regret or even to say “I don’t know what to say” than to ignore it altogether. One of the moments that will always live in my heart is when I drove to a friend’s house after learning of my sister’s death. Val spread his arms, hugged me, and cried with me. There were no words. And his gesture meant more to me than anything he could have said.
And, after my husband died, the people who said “It’s so unfair” and “How can this be?” it meant worlds more than those that said “God works in mysterious ways” or “He is in a better place.” Even a minister at a church I had attended said, “What a roller coaster you’ve been on,” which I found horribly inappropriate and I never went back to his church.
Having experienced death multiple times, in addition to being with people who have lost loved ones, I would like to share some of my own suggestions on how to deal with the situation when it happens around you.
• Talk about the person who passed away. When someone dies, the family generally prefers to talk about their loved one rather than hide it under the table. Ask about your daughter / mother / husband. Share stories about them if you have them. Reference them in conversations.
• Don’t make small talk unless they do it first. When my husband died, I just wanted to talk about the important things: life after death, service arrangements, memories of his life … When a friend and his wife flew into town and insisted on taking me to lunch and Taking a walk through the shops, I remember being stunned and amazed at his insensitivity to wanting to do any activity.
• Do little things to help. Offer to pick up the family at the airport if they are going to fly in for a service, come to their house and arrange condolence flowers, put gas in their car, arrange flowers, drop off meals, offer their room vacant to guests, provide a shoulder when needed.
• Don’t tell them about your circumstances or the circumstances of others around you. Comments like “I remember when my aunt died” or “I know how you feel” are not comforting. Make talking and crying comfortable for them.
• Be kind and thoughtful. At a recent funeral for a young girl, one of her family friends commented, “At least they still have the other children.” It is not an appropriate comment and it is certainly not designed to comfort.
• Get in touch. Make a phone call, send a card, deliver flowers. Every little thing counts and is remembered forever.
• Never start a sentence with “At least …” …. “At least she lived a long life” … “At least she went fast” … “At least they are at peace now” .. Nothing of this matters. All you want is to get your loved one back, no matter the circumstances.
• Don’t offer religious advice. Even a devout person can turn against religion when he loses someone he loves and it may not be a comfort to tell him that he is “in a better place.” Follow their lead. Similarly, don’t ignore anything they may feel or see during this time. I found great comfort in reading books on life after death and even started writing a book and interviewed leaders of various religions to hear their thoughts on life after death.
• Don’t watch them like they’re about to fall apart. Our friends who lost their daughter said that they constantly felt as if people were looking at them as if something visible was happening in front of their eyes, rather than seeing them as the same people they had always been.
• Include them in your invitations. Contact them and they will respond when they are ready. Too often when tragedy or death occurs, people feel it is better to “leave them alone” and neglect to invite them, as they may have done in the past. Life goes on and it’s better to keep spreading and being rejected than to forget them and let them cry alone.
And most of all, remember that there is no time frame for grief. Healing could take a month, a year, or a lifetime and it’s important to keep getting close and being there.