Last week I attended the funeral of a beautiful 30 year old girl who died suddenly in her sleep. As I sat in church watching her friends, family, and neighbors quietly filter through the doors, I looked around at her sorrowful faces and was overwhelmed by a powerful feeling of unity in the crowd. Although there were hundreds of dark-robed people on the benches, hardly a word was spoken. People smiled kindly at each other, touched each other’s arms or backs, and waited patiently as they settled into their seats. No one expressed impatience at having to wait. Nobody complained. No one raised their eyebrows or voice. Grief had brought them together and they were all kind to strangers.
Mothers and fathers tightly held the hands of their daughters and sons while looking at them tenderly. You could almost hear them thinking “Could have been you”. Couples sat together and older people hugged. There is nothing like tragedy to bring out the best in people and I felt my heart warm as tenderness flowed through the church, embracing everyone with its tender touch.
It reminded me of many times when I had felt this way. September 11 – when the world came together to embrace this country and offer love and condolences for the tragedy. Hurricane Katrina, where people came together to give what they could to strangers who had lost everything. And, for me, my own personal tragedies when I lost my sister 17 years ago and my husband almost ten years ago and I, too, felt the soft touch of shared grief. When bad things happen, everyone wants to help. Each one offers what he can give. But people are often uncomfortable with death and confused about the right thing to do. While the intention is good and supportive, there are also ways that people react that don’t work and only serve to create a more difficult situation.
Based on my own experiences, my main advice is to act with finesse and consideration. Do not offer advice or make suggestions about what to do. The worst advice I’ve ever heard is to “keep busy” or “keep your mind busy.” When you’ve lost someone you love, it’s constantly on your mind, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep at night, and everyone has their own way of dealing with the pain. My therapy consisted of immersing myself in my grievance: writing, reading, walking, driving, crying, remembering. The feelings are always there and even if you “keep busy” they come out at a later time. For me, it was much better to deal with my feelings in the moment than to postpone the inevitable. Also, I felt that I was honoring my loved one by thinking of him and making him sad at that moment.
After my sister died, my mother told me how she ran into people on the street who wouldn’t even recognize him for fear of “reminding” them. As she told me, it was not possible for her to forget for a moment and it would have been impossible to “remind” her of something that was part of her being. Much better, she advised her, to express a word of regret or even say “I don’t know what to say” than to ignore him completely. One of the moments that will always live in my heart is when I drove to a friend’s house after learning about my sister’s death. Val opened her arms and hugged me and cried with me. There were no words. And her gesture meant more to me than anything she could have said.
And, after my husband died, the people who said “It’s so unfair” and “How can this be?” it meant much more than those who said “God works in mysterious ways” or “He is in a better place.” Even a minister at a church I had frequented said, “What a roller coaster you’ve been on,” which I felt was terribly inappropriate and never went back to his church.
Having experienced death multiple times, as well as being around people who have lost loved ones, I’d like to share some of my own suggestions on how to deal with it when it happens around you.
• Talk about the person who has died. When someone dies, the family usually prefers to talk about their loved one rather than ignore it. Ask about your daughter/mother/husband. Share stories about them if you have them. Refer to them in conversations.
• Don’t talk about trivial things unless they do it first. When my husband died, I just wanted to talk about the important things: life after death, service arrangements, memories of his life… When a friend and his wife flew into town and insisted on taking me to lunch and Taking a walk through the stores, I remember being numb and amazed at his numbness to want to do any activity.
• Do little things to help. Offer to pick up the family at the airport if they are flying in for a service, go to their house and arrange sympathy flowers, put gas in their car, arrange flowers, leave meals, offer your spare room to guests, provide a shoulder when needed.
• Do not tell them about your circumstances or the circumstances of those around you. Comments like “I remember when my aunt died” or “I know how you feel” are not comforting. Make it comfortable for them to talk and cry.
• Be kind and considerate. At a recent funeral for a girl, one of the family friends commented: “At least they still have the other children.” It’s not an appropriate comment and it’s certainly not designed to comfort.
• Get in touch. Make a phone call, send a card, deliver flowers. Every little thing counts and is remembered forever.
• Never start a sentence with “At least…”…”At least she lived a long life”…”At least she went fast”…”At least they are at peace now.” None of this matters. You just want your loved one back, no matter the circumstances.
• Do not offer religious advice. Even a devout person may turn against religion when he loses someone he loves and it may not be comforting to tell him that he is “in a better place.” Follow his example. Likewise, don’t ignore anything he may be feeling or seeing during this time. I found great comfort in reading books on the afterlife and even started to write a book and interviewed leaders of various religions to hear their thoughts on the afterlife.
• Don’t watch them as if they are about to fall apart. Our friends who lost their daughter said they constantly felt like people were looking at them as if something visible was happening in front of their eyes, instead of seeing them as the same people they had always been.
• Include them on your invitations. Contact them and they will get back to you when they are ready. Too often, when tragedy or death occurs, people feel it is best to “leave them alone” and refuse to invite them as they have in the past. Life goes on and it is better to keep spreading and being rejected than to forget them and leave them to grieve alone.
And above all, remember that there is no deadline for filing complaints. It could take a month, a year or a lifetime to heal and it’s important to keep getting there and being there.
