By Patsy Kelly
Someone has died, and you want in the very worst way to make me feel better. You have had a similar loss. You might even have had the very same type of situation. You think you have a shared experience with me … “I know just how you feel.”
“NO! You don’t.” You may be surprised or offended by that response. You might think, “But we have something to share. I have lost someone just as you have. Don’t push me away just when you need comfort the most.”
It’s so easy to personalize a negative response from a person who is grieving. It’s likely that we are angry not only because we have lost someone close to us, but also now because you have assumed a similarity that does not exist.
Grief is singular and unique. We might have each lost a mate, a partner, a friend, a parent or a child. It might have happened in the same way, by the same illness, in the same setting. It is still a unique and dissimilar death.
Too often because friends and family feel the need, even the urgency to make their hurting friend or loved one feel better, they do errant things, say things that cannot be taken back. One of the worst is to say, “I know just how you feel.”
Feelings are as unique as the person who feels them. You might know me very well, know my background and family. You might know the person I lost. But my feelings are mine. They are deep inside me. They are like a songbird who cannot sing, trapped inside my ribcage. It tries to express itself. It tries to free itself. It tries to find the key. It is a forlorn, trapped and singular bird, longing for someone to listen, when it cannot express what it must.
Peculiar as that sounds, that is what grief is — remote even to the person who is grieving. So, when someone else says, “I know just how you feel,” it is an outrage, a sort of insult. How can you know how I feel when I haven’t even discovered what it is I feel myself yet? How dare you?
That might sound raw and unfeeling, when you mean no harm. In fact, you are trying your very best to be compassionate and caring in a very difficult time. Do you really want to be helpful and compassionate? Then, here are a few suggestions:
- If you can’t think of something to say, don’t say anything. It’s okay to be silent, and just sit with your hurting friend/loved one.
- When you don’t have any idea how it feels, be honest — “I have no idea what this must be like for you, but I can listen, if you want to talk.”
- Be honest, if brief — “Wow! This must be rough for you. I can’t imagine.”
- Offer yourself, now or later — “I want to be here for you, if I can be of help.”
For information about The Grief Group, send your email to griefgroupjax@gmail.com.
