Many of my readers have repeatedly said that they didn't know what to say to someone experiencing grief. My own situation has caused me to look at this in a different way and far deeper than I ever imagined I'd want or need. As I've become able to function more normally, I've found myself fascinated by a paradox.
A vast majority of people across all cultures believe that death takes that person to a better place. This is supposed to give comfort to those left behind. Honestly, it doesn't much. But if they've gone to a better place, it does leave the survivors alone in a hell not of their making. Those not affected by it simply stand on the edges, watching the struggle. The grief-stricken are left alone to claw their way back to the land of the living. For truly, a part of you has died and left to your own devices, you may very well die, too. I can tell you, I felt as if I were being pulled into the grave with Jerry. And nine months later, there are days I still do.
If the bereaved is not to blame for the death of the person, why does the rest of the world spend so much time making them feel they've done something wrong? People won't talk to you or listen to you. They barely speak when you approach them. They don't call or come around. Yet, if you stopped them and asked them, they'd automatically put it back on you, the bereaved with "Why didn't you tell me?" or "You should have called me."
There are things you need to know about these Survivors of death. The bereaved can barely walk for months. They don't see things right in front of them. I've run numerous traffic lights in the last seven months. I've probably run three in my entire 53 years, until now. I absolutely didn't see them. Ask Mike. He's been with me twice.
The bereaved can't remember what day it is. They don't remember if they paid the light bill. They don't remember if they went to the store, despite finding the milk in the laundry room. They forget to take medications. But they are expected to remember they need solace and call for it as if they were ordering pizza?
Rest assured, they have trouble remembering their address at this point. They won't remember your phone number or even your name at times. Particularly if you never bothered much anyway. I have a basket of small notes with phone numbers on them taken from the answering machine over months. Some don't have names on them. I knew who they were when I wrote it down....
I remember nothing but bits and pieces of the the first three months after Jerry died. Most of those have to do with times I fell apart and couldn't get up out of the floor. Or they were the trips I took out of town to be with people who could look after me for a while and pick me up out of the floor. Or they could make me not think about what was happening to my life. I remember trying to get ready for work one morning and suddenly, doubling over and screaming over and over, unable stand or to breath. I was only able to sob uncontrollably.
For two months after his death I was afraid to go to sleep at night. I was afraid I'd die in my sleep. It was horrible to even lie down and think about letting go so I could sleep. As a Christian, this is a terrible feeling. We aren't supposed to fear death! I don't know if it is normal. If other people feel that way, they don't tell it.
On top of that, the darkness is the best movie screen ever designed. Every scene is played back for you in living color. If you witnessed the death, as I did, you see it again, and again, and again. You hear the sounds they made in those last minutes. You see the empty eyes. Simple sounds take on new meanings. You see that last day over and over and wonder what you could have done differently that MIGHT had altered the course. Change one thing and everything changes.
Survivors, wondering if they had steered a bit more south they'd have missed the iceberg. Survivors, just like those committees who go over wreckage with a fine toothed comb, go over every detail of our lives and the death to discover what happened and if we could have stopped, slowed, reversed, prevented it all.
Most of us are left wondering, clinging to the wreckage, holding a shirt with the scent of a memory. We are Survivors and we're left with only questions.
I don't feel that way.