Helping Others Through Loss
Today is the day the world remembers the tragedy that happened on U.S. soil 6 years ago.
My heart goes out to those who lost a loved one in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. My heart goes out to all those who have lost their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers to the military efforts currently in progress. My heart goes out to anybody who has experienced any loss. My heart goes out.
I wrote a few weeks ago about Miles Levin , a young man who recently died of cancer. During his illness, he became an inspiration to a large audience as he posted his thoughts and feelings about life on his online journal. Since he passed, his mother continues to write daily. I appreciate her words, and can feel her grief. As a social worker, I am drawn to people in pain, and wish to understand how to help them heal. Today in particular, her comments particularly touched me and I would like to share them with you.
All of us at some time or another encounter grief and loss. Most of the time, we see it from a distance. A co-worker, neighbor or friend loses somebody and we don’t know how to help. What can you do when someone you know is going through this? Here is some insight from Miles’ mom:
So….the (obvious) question is: what IS a helpful response to someone who has just had the unthinkable happen? I don’t know the answer. I, like others who are in that situation, wish I did… I do have some thoughts on it, which I’m going to share here, but ultimately, it’s for each to find - out of authenticity - a genuine response.
First let me offer my thinking about why the “platitudes” don’t work. They don’t work because they are words, and no words, NO words, no matter what they are, regardless of the most heartfelt intention behind them, can come close to touch what Sarah Ban Breathnach calls, “as a parent … the wounding we fear most.” The words, for all involved, but especially the bereaved, feel and are so inadequate that they result in a paradoxical effect: more hurt. Which then hurts the one trying to comfort, feeling bewildered that what they thought was kindness was rejected. Now, both feel misunderstand, alienated, and at a loss. For many bereaved parents, that chasm is a burden and an additional loss.
Second, because the words can be said in a few seconds or even minutes and then the speaker is on to his or her life, while the bereaved is still left with this overpowering, neverending reality, a stark contrast of realities is apparent and registers with the bereaved. The juxtaposition lands on the heart of the bereaved with thud of hurt, anger, like, “easy for you to say”. This further reminds the bereaved of the aloneness and the difference in her life from most others, while she actually witnesses the speaker going right on…to the next topic, the next action, the next normal activity. The disparity reminds the bereaved of the truth which is unbearable to hold. To say, “I can’t imagine what you are feeling” reinforces that separation, and in fact, as Sarah Ban Breathnach says, we all CAN imagine it, and that’s what frightens us….”It is the nightmare you pray will never befall you, if you can even bring yourself to articulate that prayer. It is the phone call you pretend you will never receive. It is the unthinkable. But the unthinkable happens every day to some woman some where.”.
Another comment by Sarah Ban Breathnach was interesting to me, and provocative: “Women whose children have died often feel betrayed by other women; it seems as if we avoid them (sometimes we do) and even stop mentioning their dead child. We’re silenced by guilt and unnameable fear. If it can happen to you, (we think), a woman who is so good, kind, and loving, what can happen to me and mine?”
What I believe is this: the pain we all know - on some level - of this loss touches a place so deep, so frightening, that seeing it in another reminds us of it, so we detach from the pain. The detachment is subtle and not even known to the person doing it (who believes, in that moment, that he/she is present) but the disconnection is felt by the bereaved parent.
Like Miles, I don’t have answers for others. What I am offering, if others want to hear what would really help, is the willingness to jump into, even briefly, through true empathy (which means permitting the pain of the reality, even momentarily) and allowing whatever heartspeak emerges. When the space BETWEEN the comforter and the bereaved is open and true, actually no words are necessary: It might look like: yes, I am trying to imagine what is all of our worst fear and it hurts; an understanding brief touch; Or, I’m trying to get it. It scares me, too. In other words, it’s not YOUR loss that I feel, it is THEE loss, and that fear and pain is in me as well. Then, we’re joined.
There is nothing else we can give each other but our honest presence, but that is a lot.
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