THE EXPECTATIONS OF OTHERS
A mother who lost her baby son to SIDS just a few days before is told by a woman at the visitation, “Aren’t we lucky we had him as long as we did?”
“I’m feeling anything but lucky,” the mother responds.
A man who has just lost his father to a sudden heart attack is approached the next day by an old friend who says, “How you doing, Carl? Good?”
Carl hesitates before answering.
“Well, things are kind of tough right now,” he says.
A client who just buried his teenage son after a car accident is told by a man, who recently lost an uncle, “I know exactly what you’re going through.” My client was speechless.
Another client turns down a dinner invitation from a friend because it coincides with the six-month anniversary of her husband’s death.
“You’re still feeling bad?” the friend says. “Don’t you think it’s time you got out and started doing things again?”
In our culture, unfortunately, most people don’t understand that loss and grief are things to be incorporated into our lives, not things we get past or get over. As chapter 2 explored in depth, our cultural expectations around grief can be unrealistic and harmful. Within days of your loss, you must reengage with society and pretend to feel better than you actually do so that others don’t feel awkward. People you thought you could count on to support you suddenly disappear. And day after day, you must endure the misguided comments from well-meaning people who just don’t have a clue.
Many clients seek me out because they have felt hurt or abandoned by their community. With family, friends, coworkers, and clergy members — however you choose to define your community — the griever will encounter people who fall into a few categories. There are those who say just the right thing; others who are well meaning but stumble because they don’t know better; and others who say or do things that are deeply hurtful. This is all part of your story. It’s unrealistic to expect that some social part of your grief would not be challenging or hurtful.
We’re all imperfect human beings. In this area, it’s important that we offer other people and ourselves some grace. Some are fortunate to possess “grief literacy.” They’ve studied mourning and have learned how to support the bereaved in the most helpful and meaningful ways. Often they have experienced loss themselves. But in our culture, these people tend to be in the minority.
Most of the world — especially younger people — have not experienced wrenching loss. When they encounter those who mourn, they don’t know what to say, so they fall back on the culture of positivity or what they’ve heard other places. If you’ve heard someone say, “He’s in a better place,” you’re likely to repeat it. You wouldn’t naturally understand that being with a grieving person is more important and helpful than trying to make a grieving person feel better. The point is to be with them in their sadness.
There is often a profound difference between those who have suffered a loss and those who haven’t. If you are thirty-five years old and your grandparents are still alive, no wonder you are anxious and tongue-tied around a friend who has just lost a child. But someday you will know what the sorrow of loss feels like. Many clients tell me that they support other grieving friends much differently after having grieved themselves.
“I listen better.”
“I don’t speak in clichés. I didn’t know what that felt like until I was on the receiving end of them.”
“I’m totally okay when people need to cry.”
We need to do better as a culture. The lack of grief fluency and understanding, in addition to harmful theories, drives grievers underground and into isolation with their feelings, creating added layers of self-doubt and shame.
Most grieving people are surrounded by others with varying degrees of “grief literacy.” Some have suffered a loss themselves and know what it’s like to mourn. Or they are naturally compassionate, intuitive people who are not afraid to get close to human suffering and can do so without feeling like they need to fix it. They instinctively know what to say.
Then there are the others who, for any number of reasons (including those I just mentioned), assume they know what you’re feeling, promote the idea of closure, or fall back on platitudes like “be strong” or “count your blessings” or remind you that “time heals all wounds” or that “God doesn’t give us any more than we can handle.” Supporters think they are helping a mourning person by trying to make him or her feel better, to “cheer them up.” Or they may be uncomfortable around anguish and fall back on clichés to manage their own fear and awkwardness.
Whatever the reasons, at a time when the bereaved need to be supported wherever they are, they instead must listen to comments that are irrelevant and often contradictory to how they feel or what they need. They may get irritated and angry but typically try not to show it. Or they may slough it off, knowing that the hurt wasn’t intentional. Or, most problematically, the insensitive comments cause them to doubt their feelings and experience.
So I urge you: Do not let what you hear or the opinions of others dictate your own inner reality. Be aware of situations when the words of supporters do not attune with your feelings or thinking. Don’t change your story. Be unyielding about that. Try to remind yourself that some people are well meaning but are not fluent in grief, have no experiences with loss themselves, or are just plain scared. Try not to invest much energy in those interactions.
You also always have choices about how to respond. One is to be gracious and merely say, “Thank you for your support.” You are also entitled to tell the truth: “I know you mean well, but I don’t really feel like counting my blessings right now. I’m in too much pain,” or “With all due respect, I don’t think you know what I’m going through.”
The situation is more easily managed at the visitation and funeral, with people you might never see again. But what if the offending person is the next-door neighbor or your mother-in-law who continues to try to steer you to the bright side? You may have to assert yourself. “I know you want me to see the silver lining, but that’s not where I am right now. What I need is for you to accept me where I am and stop judging my feelings.”
The mother-in-law either gets it, or she doesn’t. If she is offended (“I was only trying to help”), there is nothing you can do. Try not to take it personally. She is likely insensitive with most people. Continue to seek out those with whom you feel emotionally safe.
It’s very important to understand that the experience of loss in a faith community may be unquestioningly supportive or surprisingly disappointing. We might hold higher expectations for support from those in our faith community. But, in truth, the same spectrum of support — or lack of it — is typically found in religious groups. At the wake, we might expect some insensitivity from a coworker or casual acquaintance, while expecting much more from a person who has been part of our Bible study class for a decade. And yet, there is no reason to assume that everyone in our religious community will get it right. But when they don’t, it seems that the potential for hurt and disappointment is magnified.1
When members of a faith community get it wrong, it can strike a deeper chord because of the implication that you are not living up to your faith or that grieving is somehow contrary to faith. This situation creates a dilemma: either you must push back and defend your feelings, or you must agree with the community and begin to doubt your own faith and yourself. And even if you do believe that God had a purpose for taking your baby, that does not mean you don’t get to be sad.
Many people in a religious community are everything a grieving person could hope for, providing nonjudgmental companionship over the long haul. But even these people in the faith community may drop away from the griever as quickly as people in the secular world. There are all variations in between.
Religious clichés are particularly common and are rarely helpful. In the case of death — in particular, sudden death — doubt is normal. “Why did this happen? I am so angry at God! If there is a God, how could he allow this?” The best response would be, “I get it. Of course you’re doubting right now. Anyone would be.” That’s very different from, “We can’t question God’s will,” or “Everything happens for a reason,” or “God called him home.” Faithful people have doubts after loss, but the lack of support within their faith community adds another layer of shame.
My client Vickie and her brother, Perry, were both grateful that their conversion to Christianity in their adolescent years had delivered them from the horrors of an alcoholic home. As an adult, Vickie attended Bible studies, taught Sunday school, and volunteered for overseas mission trips. When Perry was diagnosed with cancer, both he and his sister believed God would save him again, but it wasn’t to be. Vickie’s faith was shattered when Perry died, and she made the mistake of saying so at a Bible study.
“I said that I couldn’t help wondering if there really was a God,” she told me. “At first there was silence. Then they all started reciting scripture, telling me Perry’s death was part of a divine plan and that he was in a better place. I felt ashamed for doubting.”
Vickie found a support group outside of church, where members had experienced similar doubts and freely shared them. Her crisis of faith eventually passed. In our last session, she told me that she had begun to volunteer as a lay visitor to the bereaved in their congregation.
“When people are hurting, they don’t need theology,” she said. “They just need to be heard.”
Joanne had just lost her baby to SIDS when she heard this from an aunt, a person of spiritual authority in her life: “God must have needed your baby more than you did. God called your baby home.”
Joanne, a deeply religious person herself, didn’t know how to respond.
“I guess so,” she said meekly. But she was devastated.
“Did God need my baby more than I did?” she asked me in our first session. “Did I do something wrong? Was I a bad mother?”
I could assure her that she was not, that the problem was with the insensitive words of her aunt. Joanne tried to avoid her aunt from then on.
If what you hear after a loss does not match your internal experience, no matter how steeped the words might be in religious authority, trust your internal experience. I know how difficult that will be for many. When your emotional experience does not line up with what you believe or what you are told you should believe, this becomes part of your grief story, too.
It’s important to understand why you’re confused. Anyone in the same situation would be. Don’t run from this feeling. Share your true feelings and doubts with a faithful person who you know from experience you can trust. This will take discernment. Avoid people who you don’t feel safe with when discussing faith questions.
Just remember: your feelings are never wrong, and your sadness is not negotiable. In my mind, nothing in the authentic experience of grief, sadness, anger, or doubt is incompatible with faith.
The culture of positivity can also lead people to say insensitive, unhelpful things to the bereaved. It took me many weeks to convince Martha, whose best friend had been killed in a traffic accident, that her profound sorrow did not mean she was weak or wallowing or being negative, despite what her family was telling her.
Martha was a product of her upbringing. Her grandfather built a business empire by channeling positive thoughts into profitable action. The family’s feel-good platitudes continued, even after Martha’s terrible loss.
“At least she didn’t have to suffer,” one family member told her.
“It’s lucky she didn’t have children,” said another.
Our first session was taken up by Martha’s shame. In her second visit, she started back in with the self-recrimination.
“Could we take a few minutes so you can tell me about your friend?” I asked. “How did you meet?”
Martha seemed surprised. Then she started telling me about her first day at college. Her roommate had been unpacking when Martha got to her dorm room.
“The first thing she did was share this huge bag of peanut M&Ms,” Martha said. “It was like we had known each other all our lives. We communicated with each other at least once a week since we graduated. I even started to call her the other day.”
She began to weep. I reassured her that her tears were about love, not negativity. Martha came to understand that feelings are just feelings and that sadness was just as valuable as joy.
In our next sessions, I encouraged Martha to continue telling her story of love for her friend. I told her that she could choose to avoid her well-meaning but unhelpful family and instead find friends who allowed her to express her grief. She could also choose to assert herself more with her family.
Martha did begin to push back against her family, which is something we discussed at length in our sessions. She felt like she had no choice but to do so. Once she learned the truth about grief and feelings, she could no longer tolerate an environment in which everything was spun toward the positive. She needed to set boundaries with that behavior and remain true to herself.
“I’m not feeling grateful that she didn’t suffer,” she would tell her family. “I’m feeling sad that I lost her.”
A family member would challenge her by saying, “Why do you look so sad? It’s a beautiful day.” Martha would reply, “It is a beautiful day, and my sadness doesn’t change that one bit. I’m sad. That’s not negative.”
It was frustrating to her family and some relationships suffered, but it was more important to Martha that she remain true to herself and honor her dead friend by grieving fully. This experience helped her be a more authentic human being, and she defended that authenticity in her family, though it wasn’t always pleasant. Once again, you’re sad because you’re attached, not because you’re negative.
As I said at the beginning of this chapter, grieving people must be great actors by necessity. They are forced into an exhausting charade within a few days of a loss. As they reengage with society, the bereaved don’t want to be the source of awkwardness in social, work, and family situations, so they act better than they feel. I refer to this as social splitting.
Linda, a supervisor in the aerospace industry, came to me after losing her mother to Alzheimer’s disease. She appreciated the cards and flowers and expressions of concern from coworkers, but the condolences stopped within days, and Linda expected nothing less. She and her coworkers had important work to do.
But she noticed that her mind kept wandering in meetings. She hoped her coworkers didn’t notice the redness in her eyes after crying jags in a restroom stall. She came to me because of the fear that her distraction might actually be jeopardizing her career.
“How much of your day do you spend acting better than you feel?” I asked.
She thought and then responded, “The only time I can stop pretending is after my husband goes to bed.”
For Linda, that turned out not to be enough. At my suggestion, every evening after her husband retired for the day, she took time to sit with her grief. She would go through old photographs, journal, call up an old friend to share memories of her mother, or just sit with her feelings in a quiet house. It became sacred time for her each day. At work, when she felt overwhelmed by the heaviness, she could say to herself, “Tonight I will have my time with Mom.”
The bereaved also must contend with personal disappointment when people they expected to lean on suddenly disappear. My client Brad was one of them.
Brad’s teenage son was killed in a hunting accident. One of Brad’s first calls was to Chris, his best friend from college and best man at his wedding. Their sons had been born within a year of each other, and when the boys were older, the four of them took regular ski trips.
After the tragedy, Chris attended the funeral but never called afterward.
“I thought about calling him, but that seemed backward,” Brad told me. “I mean, I was the one who lost a son. It got to the point where I wondered whether something had happened to Chris.”
Another fraternity brother eventually explained Chris’s silence.
“Chris started to cry on the phone when this other guy brought up my name,” Brad said. “Chris told him, ‘I don’t do death. And I can’t stop thinking that it could have been my son who was killed.’”
Brad was devastated.
“If it had been his son, I would have sucked it up and been there for him, no matter what,” he said.
But how would he approach his relationship with Chris moving forward? I recommended that he think through his choices and decide whether he would invest any more energy in the friendship. Brad decided he would not attempt to contact Chris and was comfortable with the possibility of never speaking to him again.
“What happens if he comes back around in a year and acts as if nothing had happened?” I asked him. “Are you willing to pick up with the friendship?”
“No way,” Brad said. “I would feel like I betrayed myself and my son.”
“If we’re going to be friends, we need to talk about this,” Brad said. “He would need to know how I felt when he disappeared. And I would have to hear from him that he was sorry for how he acted.”
Very few of my clients in similar situations have said they could later act as if nothing had happened. Therefore, I would recommend the same course of action to you when close friends or relatives let you down in your time of need. You don’t have to be belligerent or aggressive. However, if a relationship is to continue, it’s important to convey the depth of your confusion, disappointment, and sadness at the behavior of another who clearly failed you.
Friendships can end because of this. I’ll often hear people say, “I’ll keep her as a friend, but I won’t open up to her like I used to. I’m not going to talk to her about my loss.”
Painful circumstances are often revelatory, showing you a side of people you had not seen before. You don’t have to understand why people do what they do, but you do have to trust what your intuition and experience are telling you.
Vickie decided to stay in her church but changed her behavior there. Joanne tried to keep distance from her aunt. Brad decided to end his friendship with Chris and said he would insist on honesty if the friend resurfaced. It was not easy for any of these three people, but each of them remained true to themselves. The alternative would have been much worse.
Finally, there are those who are tirelessly helpful and supportive but for all the wrong reasons. And motives matter. A bereaved person will eventually be able to tell whether a person is there to support them or to fulfill their own deep need to be needed. These kinds of folks can be more difficult for the bereaved than an overtly clueless person.
Tad and Maria came to see me after their daughter was killed in a car accident. I was surprised when an early session was taken up by discussion of Maria’s friend, Betty.
Betty had been at the family home within minutes of learning of the tragedy and was at Maria’s side throughout the visitation and funeral. But Maria began to notice that she was more tense and weary when Betty was around. When she wanted to lie down for a nap, she couldn’t because Betty was hovering. Betty seemed oblivious to the couple’s need for space. She was offended when the couple didn’t acknowledge her efforts organizing meals or when Maria didn’t thank her for running an errand.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done,” Maria said finally. “But frankly, making sure you feel appreciated just isn’t a priority right now. We need some privacy and don’t feel like talking. It doesn’t seem like you understand what we need.”
Betty gathered up her things. “Some thanks,” she said.
Tad and Maria felt bad about hurting her feelings, but both were glad to see her go. This was confusing to them, and they felt they had done something wrong. I explained that although Betty was masquerading as the ideal helper, she really wasn’t. Her support was not about what the grieving couple needed; it was about her own need to be recognized. That was the dominant factor.
This is an important scenario that I rarely see discussed. A person who is more overtly insensitive is much easier to identify than a self-centered person pretending to be a helper. Here are some ways to tell one from the other.
A true helper is humble, doesn’t ask for anything, and doesn’t need to be recognized for what they do. They ask what your needs are and don’t assume to know. Again, trust what your intuition is telling you. If you recognize that you’re spending energy to make a helper feel good about the help they give, there is a problem. People like that can be a real energy drain at a time when energy is at a premium. Ask yourself whether a person gives you energy by their help or saps it.
Setting boundaries with these folks can be awkward, but you may have to be assertive and speak up when someone has overstepped. Don’t accept offers of help just so others will feel better about themselves.
If you are grieving now, it is likely that you have endured people who, perhaps unintentionally, have said or done insensitive things that have been hurtful, irritating, or exhausting. That experience with others, both the good and the bad, and how you felt about it are important parts of your third chapter of grief. Although you might not have been able to openly express your hurt with that person, you can in your story. Go to your journal and be honest there. Your feelings deserve to be acknowledged.
Journaling allows us to sort through all the feelings that come up when someone says something insensitive to us. It also affords us the opportunity to express on the page the things we felt we couldn’t say in person or just couldn’t find words to express at the time. As one example of a journal entry, write a letter to that person that you will never send. This can often help you come to terms with the loss within the loss.
Finally, you have every right to avoid people who have said misguided or cruel words to you. Even if you are fully aware that they mean well, and even if you understand that they are operating under unhelpful expectations when it comes to grief, you still are entitled to grieve in your own way and to feel what you feel without enduring others’ judgments and platitudes. In the face of loss, your only obligation is to take care of your own heart — not the feelings, beliefs, or egos of others.