The Best We Can Do

You would think that after months of dealing with grief I would know how to help someone else deal with theirs – I don’t.  I’m the awkward person I’ve always been, maybe even more so.  If I’ve learned anything about grieving by grieving it’s that I know nothing about how anyone else feels – grief is as personal as love.

One of my favorite people is taking her first steps into a journey she doesn’t want to make. The path she is embarking on looks remarkably familiar and yet I have nothing to offer her in the way of direction, she will have to navigate it on her own.  Everyone’s journey is different, every traveler unique – this is what makes grief such a lonely road.  You may notice other travelers but you are alone on the path – the only one walking in your shoes. 

I am an experienced griever but I am not yet seasoned – I’m still too new to the process to have any words of wisdom.  What I’d like to do is take some of her pain – help her carry the load, bear some of the weight – but that is impossible. I can see her but I can’t help – her grief is hers. 

Right now she is in that place of shock, she is numb. I’ve been there, I’ve been a machine that only moves and functions with the needs of someone else, a machine that doesn’t cry and barely feels.  The machine has focus and little emotion. In retrospect I think  the machine is a gift – there is too much to do, to cope with, to come to terms with to have to deal with emotion at the same time.  The machine deals with facts, it keeps the human inside in check – the human would be a mess on its own and a mess only adds to the confusion. 

There are hundreds of books dealing with loss and grief, they speak in generalities – stages, checklists, predictions – and they are helpful, sort of.  Nobody really knows what you’re feeling – it’s impossible to measure heartache, it’s impossible to describe and sometimes it’s impossible to bear, but you do – you bear it because you have to. 

I remember facing facts and clinging to hope in spite of them. I remember wishing – I think I even prayed, I bargained. I put in impossible days and longer nights – I couldn’t sleep – I could hardly breathe. All the books in the world couldn’t have propped me up, strength came from somewhere else, somewhere inside.

I don’t know how long I could have kept up those days and nights but I kept up for as long as I had to.  And when the mission changed I kept up those days and nights as well. I’m not sure I learned anything of worth to pass along but I sure learned a lot about me. I learned I am stronger than I thought, more determined and stubborn. A person can’t pass those lessons along but they can acknowledge the person who is learning their own.  The best we can do is say “I see you – and I care.”