SORROWS SHARED
Tim Madigan and I have been close friends for many years, but ours had never been a friendship of the golf course or hunting trips or sports talk. Instead, in regular visits at lunch or over coffee, we are more likely to discuss the joys and challenges of manhood, parenting, marriage, and relationships. We’ve spoken often of our shared love of the mountains and nature, of spirituality, and, yes, of sorrow and loss. It was more than a decade ago that Tim and I first started talking about the possibility of a book about my new way of thinking about grief. He was the one who convinced me that the story of our loss of Ryan should be central to it.
But our kinship runs even deeper to our shared love and mutual admiration for Henri Nouwen and Fred Rogers, whose names have been referenced in this book several times already. It’s not an exaggeration to say that those two men, with their wisdom, compassion, and invitation to human authenticity, are the spiritual godfathers of this book. Henri and Fred, perhaps not surprisingly, were also very close friends themselves.
I was not a close personal friend of Henri’s, but on several occasions, I had the privilege to be part of a group that shared time with him during his visits to my city. On one of those occasions, Henri was a guest in our home. As I mentioned earlier, I was very much looking forward to being part of a small group to join Henri for a short retreat in Canada, but his death came a month before it was to take place.
The relationship of Tim and Fred was much closer, a rare and beautiful friendship that lasted from the fall of 1995 until Fred’s death from stomach cancer in 2003. To a significant extent, their bond began and was deepened through the pain of loss and sorrows shared.
On an autumn day in 1995, my coauthor sat down with Fred in his Pittsburgh office to interview the children’s television icon for a newspaper profile. They discussed Fred’s career and the philosophy behind Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. But then the conversation took an unexpected turn. Mister Rogers began to share his own story of grief.
A few weeks before, one of his oldest and most important friends, a man named Jim Stumbaugh, had died of cancer. Fred described the origins of their friendship when he was a pudgy, shy freshman in high school and Stumbaugh was the star athlete, honor student, and president of his class. They had not known each other well until Stumbaugh suffered a football injury that required him to be hospitalized, and Fred volunteered to bring the other boy his schoolwork. It was the beginning of a “life-altering friendship,” Fred said.
Now, in the wake of his friend’s death, Fred remembered Stumbaugh as being “in love with life and with learning.”
“You hate to lose such a spirit,” Fred told Tim.
Fred spent a half-hour remembering his old friend. Finally, he said, “You’re ministering to me, Tim. By listening, you minister to me.”
Tim has always felt that their friendship began in that moment. The two stayed in frequent contact over the next eight years and shared deeply with each other until Fred’s death in 2003. Tim eventually disclosed to Fred his long struggle with depression and a complicated relationship with his father. The two men spoke often about the illness and death of Tim’s brother, Steve. The relationship was remarkable because of its fearlessness, the willingness of Tim and Fred to speak openly of hard things.
It was a sunny Saturday morning — September 21, 1996. Tim had just settled in with a cup of coffee and the sports page in his Texas home when the telephone rang. He was surprised to hear Fred’s voice at the other end. Within a few seconds, Tim could tell that his friend was weeping. Fred said he had just learned of Henri Nouwen’s death from a heart attack.
“I had to talk to someone who understands how I feel,” he said.
After their brief conversation, Tim immediately sat down at his computer and wrote his grieving friend this letter.
Dearest Fred,
The mystery of life deepens. It has only been a few minutes since you called with the terribly sad news about Henri, and thoughts and feelings are swirling about as they do at a time like this.
I don’t know about this business of life and death, Fred. I guess the older I get, the more I realize I’m not meant to know. Goodness is no guarantee of a long, abundant life, and in my limited human comprehension, that seems so unfair.
But then, this morning, I am blessed to share in the grief and pain of a dear friend like you, knowing that the life and work of Henri is so much alive in the relationship of you and me. And I come to realize that love and goodness are indestructible, utterly indestructible, cannot be reduced by time or death, or any other barriers we humans attempt to impose on those sacred things.
Yes, this life is fragile and, at times, terribly hard. One of the things that most drew me to Henri’s writings was his willingness to be vulnerable with his readers, to share not only his joy, but his pain and human brokenness. As you know, I, too, struggle with that on a daily basis.
But life is good. Shortly after we hung up this morning, as I was sitting in a chair contemplating the news about Henri, I heard the song of a bird, very loud through our open windows on a beautiful sunny morning. That bird has probably been singing outside my window for eternity, but it took such a reminder of life’s fragility for me to finally listen. Not long after hearing the bird, my son Patrick came bounding into the room to share the joy he felt with a toy he bought yesterday with his own money. I asked him for a hug, and he complied with all the vigor a five-year-old can muster. Fragility, mystery, unspeakable beauty.
I’m glad I was home this morning to share your pain. Thank you for calling. In one of your letters, you put it better than I ever could: “Real friendships work both ways. Your trust confirms my trustworthiness; your love, my loving.” Hence, this is a bittersweet day for me — the day the world lost Henri Nouwen in the flesh, and the day I heard a bird sing outside my window on a spectacular autumn morning, the day a true friendship deepened even more.
I close with something that will be familiar to you [from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Friendship.”]
“The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis, vanish — all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of loving persons. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone a thousand years.”
God bless you and yours.
All my love,
Tim1
A movement is afoot, and this book is part of it. Only as we come to appreciate that all humans experience shame, sorrow, self-doubt, anger, fear, confusion, and of course, grief, can we let down our defenses and find true connection to one another. Both Henri and Fred believed that those are actually the things we have most in common. “What is most personal is most universal,” Henri famously said.2
Yet, for most of our shared existence on this planet, we have endeavored so mightily to conceal those things from each other. To again quote Shakespeare:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.3
That’s what’s changing. More and more of us now realize that our masks do not always serve us well, particularly when we are grieving. We recognize that when we are at our most vulnerable, we need to be around other people who are just as authentic, who have found the courage to step out from behind theirs.
Since Tim’s book was first published in 2006, he has traveled the nation with the message of his friendship with Mister Rogers. He often ends his lectures in the following fashion: “I have a confession to make. I’m a mess. But guess what? You’re a mess, too. There is another word for me, and that is human. The good news is that we don’t have to be messes alone.”
I think there is also a growing appreciation for the art of good listening. One inspiring example are two men in Pennsylvania, Michael Gingerich and Thomas Kaden, who started a nonprofit business called Someone to Tell It To. Since 2012, the two men, both ordained ministers, gave up church work to make themselves available — in person, on the telephone, and via text, email, or Skype — to anyone around the world who needed to be listened to. “We all want and need to be heard, to know that others listen and care. We crave intimacy. We are in a constant search for validation and for our voices to find resonance with the lives of others,” they wrote in their book Someone to Tell It To.4 They continued:
We have seen this need again and again during our years — visiting people who have been homebound or in hospital rooms, or as we’ve sat with someone grieving the death of a loved one, or comforted those in distress, pain, loneliness, or uncertainty. We have also experienced this need firsthand as we have grappled with our own families’ challenges with cancer, financial pressures, career directions, and disability. We have learned how all of us at times vitally need to be heard. We need someone to listen so our struggles and questions become shared and not ours alone to bear.5
Remember those words as you move forward with your narrative of grief. And remember that although they might not show it, most other people are grieving, too.
As we’ve noted, more private, introverted people might prefer to hold their stories in their own mind and hearts or in journals and notebooks that only they will read. That is perfectly fine. But Tim’s experience with Fred bears witness to the beauty and comfort that so often occur when a grief narrative is shared. We want to be loved, nurtured, supported, and acknowledged — but in the right ways. We do not want to feel isolated and alone. And we know intuitively that by sharing our grief, we open ourselves to the possibility of profoundly nourishing experiences with others. By asking someone to listen to your story of loss, you are actually paying the other person a great compliment. As Fred Rogers told Tim: “Your trust confirms my trustworthiness.”
Let me suggest another inventory of sorts. Think of the people in your life with whom you’ve felt most psychologically safe, the people who really listen, those with whom you felt you could take off your mask and speak the truth of your heart, no matter what it happened to be. Most of us have a Mister Rogers in our own lives — a friend, pastor, coach, teacher, sibling, or grandfather who will listen to us and love us no matter what. In your loss, it’s very likely that these people have been a great comfort already.
Now comes the hard part. Tell them about your journey with this book. Ask them to read it. Then ask if they would listen to your story, if they would be your grief companion. Tell them they do not need to try to take away your suffering. Pure listening is all you’re asking for. Maybe it’s weekly meetings on a park bench or over coffee in a place conducive to expressing emotion. Your options are limitless.
Yes, there is a risk. There is no guarantee it will not backfire, that your words will not land in the lap of a person incapable of bearing them. If you ask and the person declines due to schedule, emotional discomfort, or fear of what your pain might bring up in them, don’t take it personally. Thank them for their honesty. Agreeing to be your companion in your grief is a serious decision, requiring a courageous emotional investment.
But most people will be honored that you asked. I’m betting that, in most cases, it will be a profound human experience for you both. You introverts especially might find confidence in the knowledge that people might actually be longing for an affirmation of their trustworthiness. Sharing your grief will not be a burden; it will be a gift.
Finally, I’d like to suggest support groups as a place for you to tell your story or to find a grief companion. These groups are not hard to find. A quick Internet search with your specific need will give you the resources you need. (For more direction on finding a grief support group, see appendix I. I also hope the study guide included in this book serves as a helpful roadmap for those seeking to find or create a supportive community.)
I have spoken to many support groups over the years, and I am always touched and inspired to be with people who are suffering but also committed to helping others. It is a sacred and hopeful thing to watch a person who was once bent over from pain move into a leadership role in one of these groups. That healing generosity speaks to who we really are as humans.
Support groups offer a beautiful balance between the uniqueness of the individual’s grief narrative and the universal experience of loss that joins individual stories into one, the story of humanity. In a support group, all of the usual demographics are checked at the door. Your financial status, gender, ethnicity, and profession are irrelevant. Your pain and a need to be understood are the only requirements for membership.
Grief support groups are organized in several ways. Some meet around the calendar, while others meet in consecutive six-week sessions that often coincide with particularly painful times of year, such as the holidays. Groups can be open to those who have suffered any manner of loss or organized around specific types of death, such as suicide or the death of a child or a spouse.
Meetings are typically limited to an hour or ninety minutes and can be organized around specific topics, a speaker, open sharing, or shared readings. Members are encouraged to share but are not forced to do so. Some sit in support group meetings for weeks and months without saying a word; they simply find safety and comfort in the presence of those who have traveled a similar road. Some groups are moderated by a professional, such as a chaplain or social worker. In many, the group members share the leadership.
It takes courage to go to a support group for the first time, and it takes even more courage to share. I understand how daunting it can be. But just try it once. My hope is that this book will help you find emotional safety and intimacy with another. I have heard many say that they experienced more intimacy in a support group of relative strangers than they did among friends and family. Unlike the world of friends and family, support groups often offer a structure, rules, and an intentionality about listening and safety. They are models for the creation of intimacy for the rest of the community.
Support group members I know generally look forward to their meetings, both to share their latest feelings and experiences in chapter three of their grief story and to support the stories of others. Long and wonderful friendships often result.
My long relationship with one group, The WARM Place, was among my life’s greatest privileges. For nineteen years, I trained volunteer facilitators at the nonprofit organization that was created to serve grieving children (more than 35,000 since The WARM Place opened in 1989). The group offers a beautiful opportunity to sit with other kids and trained volunteers where feelings of loss can be listened to and affirmed. The members will carry that experience with them for the rest of their lives. I can only begin to imagine the benefit to our community’s mental health.