DEATH: A SOURCE OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION
When a person experiences a death of a loved one, death can be a place of deep and profound connection to others, or disconnection. In my experience, few understood how to “be” with me in the midst of my loss. I was saturated in grief with the loss of my parents six weeks apart from each other and my brother in law’s impending death that would come a year later. Our family was also holding a sister whose husband was actively dying and watching her just trying to breathe was crushing. We did not know if how we were reaching out was ok. Grief is open territory for misunderstandings and taking things way too personal.
In the midst of my grief, I had gone to dinner with some “friends.” Dinner was marginally enjoyable. Often in grief, not much feels “enjoyable”. Engagement feels awkward but we attempt to “socialize” anyways. A week or two after our dinner, one of the ladies left me a 2mintue 34 second voicemail. The gist of her message was about how she felt that I was judging her. She off-loaded her projections and narratives onto me by dissecting and analyzing every move I made at dinner: from moving my chair to my indirect eye contact. For instance, she said, “You moved your chair away from me and that showed me that you were judging me, etc… I listened, but I wanted to say, “Not everything is about you. If someone moves a chair, maybe it’s just moving a chair. It doesn’t mean anything.” We had a discussion on the phone and I shared some things that were very important to me, only to learn that those things I shared were not kept safe. She divulged our conversation to the other ladies. They distanced from me. Essentially, I had learned a big lesson on trust and friendship. Our friendship was counterfeit.
It is not that we cannot discuss or clear our misperceptions. It’s not that we don’t wrestle with our own assumptions or narratives or that we are not allowed to have assumptions …we have them all the time. It is how we move forward with doing that. I welcome any chance to clear any confusion. It can be scary to find out you’ve been wrong about something. But we can’t be afraid to change our minds, to accept that things are different. We have to be willing to give up what we used to believe. Be in the arena with me. But if you are going to hurl or dump accusations towards me without being accountable and owning your story, then gossiping about mine, I am not interested in your input or feedback.
Our family just cremated two people. Those people were my loving parents. My bandwidth to be the “normal” friend in the same way I had usually shown up went out the door. Often, people who lose loved ones are not going to be functioning in their or your version of “normal”. Misunderstanding of the person in grief is common. Greif –it’s a great escape route for many friendships. Friends often disappear or bail because grief is not understood nor convenient. I felt somehow, I had to become this Superwoman. Be sad but not too sad, just be the same. Just don’t do messy or awkward.
What I was looking for was acceptance in all of the messy, not judgement. I was seeking acceptance that I was “ok” in the messiness of my grief, even if it looks confusing or feels uncomfortable. Give me time to recover. Be sacred with me. Be pissed with me. If my flame is burning out, don’t be ok with that. It is hard to rejoin life in grief, in deaths sorrow. Grief hollows out a deeper place in your heart. I am not broken nor some psychodrama, and my awkwardness and messiness are not some pathology you can pat yourself on the back for having diagnosed and gossip about. I am not ashamed of how I have moved through grief. I am standing in the arena. We are given moments with loved ones. Moments. That’s what we have. At the end of the day, the people that are still with us are the ones worth keeping and sometimes close can be too close. And sometimes that closeness that invades us is exactly what we may need.
