“What do you do when you are sometimes overcome with grief years after a significant loss and people do say insensitive things to you?” a reader asks.
You try to learn about yourself, about others, from all that happens to you and all the things people say and ask. You try to grow from it. By growth I mean by doing your part to develop a deeper understanding of yourself and others. You challenge yourself to become kinder than you already are even towards insensitive people. You commit developing greater and authentic empathy for others who have also suffered loss and those who will suffer loss but seem not to know it.
How we, you and I, respond, react, and reply to what occurs to us and is said to us reveals what kind of person is living within the deepest recesses of our hearts, minds, souls. Our responses to the actions of others reveals and exposes who we really are. Awareness of what’s within us will hopefully lead you and me to a commitment to the beautiful journey of repeatedly unleashing the kindness and grace living within you and me (and all people) that we may enhance the lives of others in our individual spheres of influence.
Grief after a significant loss is seldom completed.
I believe this to be true for all whose lives are hit by loss, those who are most immediately impacted, and those who are in the wider circle of relatives and friends. Things don’t “go back to normal” and if they appear to, it’s no indication that the grieving period is over or complete. Such appearances can be as necessary as they are deceiving.
In the best of circumstances lives rearrange. Families re-calibrate. Relationships, close and distant, re-align.
Hearts – feelings and will to live – and minds – thinking and planning – can be strengthened. The capacity to re-think a future is possible but such transitions, often expressed as spurts of change and moments of apparent growth are unlikely to be the result of determined planning. They are more likely to occur as a result of desperation, a will to live, a need to survive.
Although it can sound harsh, even cruel, the outsiders’ push for people to “move on” or the repeated sentiment and falsehood that “time heals” are all part of a community’s ache to survive and part of the unwelcome journey of necessary re-calibration and necessary adjustments after significant loss.
Disney? Grand Canyon? Broadway? Statue of Liberty? Washington DC?
My dad loved all of the above on his several visits to the United States and recalled them each with great fondness.
But, dad’s real love of this nation was rather peculiar, and once he made me aware of it, it was easy and inexpensive to provide.
He loved the rural breakfast spots. He enjoyed these often-crowded establishments where the waitresses called him honey and sweetie-pie and yelled customer orders at the short-order cook who in turn yelled order up while cracking eggs and turning strips of bacon and shifting piles of hash browns on the crowded grill.
He enjoyed the back-chat between the waitresses and the regulars whose orders they remembered through sheer repetition and whose wives and families they knew.
Dad loved to sit at the counter rather than at a table so he could watch the action, admire the efficiency, and eavesdrop on the behind the counter banter among veteran waitstaff.
On our first visit to such an establishment, his bottomless cup of coffee filled for the third time, dad remarked, “Just like in the movies, bring me here again, this is the real America!”
“I never thought that at 68 years of age I would be writing to you for help with family matters. I guess there would be hundreds of people in the same boat as I am and at some stage must reach out.”
I was thrilled to get this letter, not because someone is experiencing family difficulties. I was thrilled because the writer has reached a point where he sees “reaching out” is possible, necessary, and healthy.
The writer is apparently also aware that family issues are common. He sees there is no age at which a person cannot reach out for help. The writer’s tone expresses that there is no benefit to attaching shame to experiencing family difficulties and he apparently sees that his family is like many other families around the world, a thought that many people want to resist.
But, “I never thought that at 68,” is the portion of the letter that caught my attention. It reveals a common childhood illusion that adults have got things worked out, that adults are on top of things, that there is an age at which everything about life comes together.
When conversations occur with strangers – a dwindling pronomen with humanity’s baptism into the Internet, cell-phones and obsessive scrolling – the “what do you do for a living?” question is often asked.
People offer a version of “all I want to be is happy.”
“What does that look like, what does that mean? How will you know when you are?” is met with confusion.
I get the impression I am supposed to know, that there is common knowledge of what it means to be happy.
I’d suggest happiness is the fruit of seeking and finding a meaningful place within a community. It is to “cut your coat according to your cloth.” It is a by-product of having several equal, respectful relationships, relationships where you are not in charge, calling the shots, determining everything but are playing your unique part in mutual endeavors.
It is to be wildly generous with possessions, resources, time.
Happiness is the result of an inward journey to shed aged resentments and petty grievances and to shed even those that are not so petty, even well-earned, and not so aged.
Without a conscious inward journey we will be trying to settle past scores, issues which will continue to disrupt the present and guide the future into emotional pothole after pothole of unresolved history where happiness will remain elusive and beyond reach.
This evening I will board a Delta flight and, yes, I’m going home. This time it’s to a small town in Indiana.
Sometimes people ask me about my small town in Indiana, “what’s it like”, and I say it’s like Mooi River in the 1960s but without the mooi and without the river and without a mountain or ocean within several hundred miles.
This said, it’s home.
My one son is there, the dogs will be excited to see me, and the mayor will wave and ask me where I’ve been as he stops at the four-way stop and sees me walking Maggie and Duke.
I know that I’ll see Rick from Rick’s Brakes and Tires (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) at church on Sunday and he’ll tell me it’s time, referring to an oil-change on my car.
A few interested friends will ask me about my trip home and I’ll tell them about the beauty of the Western Cape and how I loved buying my triplet great nephews and neice a late afternoon Wimpy lunch after a shopping spree for books at Exclusive Books in La Lucia.
My great niece, who recently turned 21, and my sister – the same great niece’s grandmother – are chatting within my hearing as they have done most of the day, as only my sister and any one of her many, many grandchildren can do.
Having covered most topics under the sun — updates on family around the world, the economy, vegan muffin recipes, snippets of friendships old and new, the benefits of infusion face-masks and an invitation for me to try one — the conversation transitions to recent flights.
Amy reports sitting on a plane next to an “old man” who was “so nice” and who told her all about his adult children and found her to be so interesting.
“He seemed like such a nice dad,” she reflects.
My sister listens attentively, as she is prone to do, and recalls one of her many flights where she was seated next to “some nice, very young man.”
I glance up from my computer and ask about the approximate ages of these two men, the one “old guy” and the other who is “very young.”
“In his forties,” my niece says, “he was already in his forties.”
Grandma thinks a little and predicts her “young guy” was at least in his mid-forties.
“It’s all about perspective,” I add, careful to hold my 68 year-old tongue.
I attended a celebration of life held in honor of a former colleague and treasured friend. Among several outstanding speakers, it was her son’s content and delivery which caught my attention. He wrapped his mourning in the sheer delight remembering his mother. With his permission here are a few nuggets from which I think all parents can learn:
“If I close my eyes and think of my mom, I’m usually met with the same image. She’s standing in an apron, while her white hair is littered with varying streaks of color because she has scratched her head with the wrong end of a paintbrush. She is laughing, always laughing, even though there’s probably a pot of rice burning in the background in the kitchen somewhere.”
“For my mom life was meant to be lived and lived well. That was easy for her because she knew Joy. I think she knew joy because at some stage before I was born she traded her sorrows for joy. She made a pact with joy, and no one could take it from her.”
“We were pushed to think big and be brave; we were never mollycoddled.”
“My mom lived without fear because at some point before I was born, she traded fear for the pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, and true understanding.”
Run interference for your child as much as possible and so reduce all possibilities that your child may learn that actions and inaction have natural consequences.
Get (aggressively) in the face of every teacher, coach, referee your child ever encounters (and do it as soon as possible) so your child and all officials know who is really in charge.
Give your child the impression that teachers, coaches, school authorities, even the police are all idiots so they will always feel above the rules and the law.
Ignore common civility so your child will learn to behave similarly.
Praise your child excessively – and suggest others do the same – especially where little or no skill, talent, or meeting a challenge is necessary so the pain of having to learn something new or difficult may be delayed, even avoided.
Blame the teacher or the school if your child doesn’t do homework. Belittle the way it’s assigned, its timing, the lack of access to resources and its relevance – but never, never suggest the child’s homework is the child’s responsibility.
Every time your child (starting when they’re babies) is unsettled or unhappy, put a screen in his or her way to settle things down.
When my sons reveal certain physical aptitudes, expose some odd humorous bent, display a uniquely characteristic nod of the head, tilt of the jaw, it crosses my mind that I may be “seeing” their biological dads, glimpsing some semblance of the men who fathered them.
I do think about these two men — especially on Father’s Day — and hope they thriving wherever they are. In ways that my sons may also ponder, although I have not asked them, I wonder who these men are. I consider if each even knows about the baby he fathered or, if he does, thinks about, grieves about what he has sacrificed, missed, or lost.
I would jump at the opportunity of meeting my sons’ biological fathers. I’d go to such an event alone and find an opportunity to express my thanks for their vast contribution to our lives. I’d try to suss out how they’re each doing in hopes of suggesting an opportunity for them to meet our sons. I’d offer my sons the opportunity to choose his path toward connection with his biological father and hope that each would embrace such a connection and enjoy the long term potential and benefits from such an opportunity.
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