Sometimes you have to watch from around the corner while
people endure the most heart wrenching pain imaginable. And, you are helpless to do anything that can
make a difference at all....and so....you watch, you pray, you cry, you do
whatever little things you can to help...and you learn.
You learn that during an inexplicable tragedy like the sudden
loss of multiple lives, there is really nothing else on earth that really matters. Petty issues, problems, dysfunction, spats,
quarrels, hurt feelings and unkind and unthinking words pretty much pale in
comparison. You relearn that any issues
you have with anyone had better be taken care of today....right.now. because
that chance could be ripped away from you with no warning and you will be left
with a whole lot of "things I wish I'd dones" and "things I wish
I'd saids."
You also learn than no one owns the corner at the
intersection of Heartbreak and Grief. We
all get to travel through there at varying degrees. Some of us are merely riding through in
someone else's vehicle trying to help, while others of us are driving our own
car....and often, we feel incredibly alone even when we are not.
I think it is telling of us as humans how we handle the
situations where we are unbelievably raw.
Do we take the time to understand that everyone grieves, suffers, and
experiences pain in different ways? Or
do we expect everyone to respond exactly like we do?
It is my belief that we could avoid some of the pitfalls of
dealing with grief if we could come to grips with whether our own responses
stem from sympathy/compassion or empathy, even though those qualities are
related. While they are related they are
also different. Empathetic people have
the ability to take the perspective of and feel
the emotions of another person.
Compassion/sympathy takes those feelings and thoughts and works them
into the desire to help. So does this
mean that these two qualities are two sides of the same coin? I think in most cases it does. We have to be careful not to get stuck in our
empathy and not progress on to how we can best help to improve a
situation. Narcissistic people cannot
recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others and in my
experience some of those people are rabid empaths. They feel the emotions at the center of the
issue but they assume them as their own and it becomes more about them than
anyone else. They are stuck in their own
place, never moving forward or helping in any tangible way.
Feelings of grief are like fireflies. Even when the night has passed where they
have burned the brightest, they sometimes flicker at the most inopportune
moments in the light of day. Some of us
need to release those feelings in very vocal ways while others of us
internalize, and then one day, we are taken to our knees from the overwhelming
weight of what we feel.
You see things everyday on television where people say
things like "well she/he never even cried." Maybe not.
Maybe they never did....maybe they simply just died inside. Speaking personally, I have a bit of a
tendency to under-react the closer and bigger things are to me. When my mom passed away...I was pretty
stoic...I was sad, incredibly tired, and more than a little confused. But probably my behavior wasn't as overtly
grief stricken as some might deem appropriate.
Then a month later, a little dog I cared about was killed and I went
absolutely to pieces. It was about the
dog....somewhat. But, it was more about
the fact I had squashed down all that agony over mom and once I allowed it
oxygen to breathe it roared into a fire I had difficulty dealing with.
I once had to try to explain to someone why they needed to try to realize that while the death of someone was painful to them, they needed to
understand their own place inside the pattern.
In this case it was the mother of their friend. She had treated them incredibly well and they
had spent a lot of time around her and they were suffering, and I knew
that. But I explained to them that to
allow their feelings to overtake them when there were others closer to the epicenter
of the issue would not be very helpful. That event
firstly happened to the woman, then her husband, children, parents and
grandparents if they were still living, and siblings, then extended family members - aunts, uncles,
cousins and then friends and acquaintances.
I had to gently remind my own suffering child that while he loved her a
lot, he needed to try to stand strong for his friend who had just
lost his
mother. In that moment, he needed to
express sympathy and compassion and find a way to help, even though I knew that
he absolutely "felt" that pain.
It was not intended to diminish his own feelings but to try to help move
him to a place of positive contribution as opposed to rushing into a burning
building carrying a can of gasoline.
In the long run, it is my hope that every instance of grief
can serve as a catalyst to repairing relationships, healing hurt feelings, and
learning to live life a little better day by day. To come more and more often from a place of
kindness and love. To look more and more
to the creator of us all as our ultimate destination on this journey called
life which unfortunately is filled with many rest stops called grief.
No comments:
Post a Comment