Our Grief Unites Us

My Super Power

September 1987. I had done a good job of suppressing everything that had happened, or so I thought. It had always been one of my superpowers to pretend everything was fine when it wasn’t. I had fine-tuned this skill over 13 years of an unhappy marriage. However, it seems that when difficult things pile up, the dam can break, no matter how good someone is at stuffing things down.

What was the pile-up? I was leaving my husband of 13 years. My children, ages 7 and 10, and I were moving in with my parents until I found an apartment. My beloved grandmother, Susanna, my mother’s mom, who had always lived with us and whom I regarded as my second mom, was dying. Then there was the challenge of finding a new place to live and moving again. It was hot. The neighbors were surprised as I carried yet another bundle of clothes to stuff into my already full red Toyota.

“Need any help, Susanna?”

“No, I’ve got it, thanks,” I told him with a smile. I’ve got it. Yes, I thought I did.

My mom called me from the hospital. She and my dad had moved from Connecticut to Maine, and Grandma Susanna, of course, came along, too.

“The nurse says she could go soon, so you should come.” Tired and sweaty, the kids were with their father while I moved stuff out of the family home. I drove up to the hospital. My grandmother was on her side, in the fetal position, but still conscious. (Yes, it was 38 years ago, and I still feel the tears behind my eyes.) 

I lean in to hug her and give her a kiss. She is very weak, but I hear her say, “Hol van a kis angyal?” She was always more comfortable with her native Hungarian than with English. She and my mother spoke Hungarian at home. I learned a few words, and I knew these. “Kis angyal” means little angel. She was asking about my daughter, who was 6 years old at the time. “Where is the little angel?”

We hadn’t wanted to burden her final days with my life events so I gave her an excuse for Laurel’s absence. I gave her another kiss and told her I loved her. I embraced my mother tightly. Unlike me, her tears flowed freely. Then, I did some major stuffing and returned home and to my moving. I didn’t want anyone to see me crying.

But there was one more thing I had to get through. I’m surprised I had held it together for this one, thus far. I did sob in the vet’s office, though. Our 13-year-old Belgian Shepherd couldn’t come with us to the apartment I had found. She was covered in hot spots, too. I think, as animals do, she had empathetically taken on my unexpressed emotions. I had to have her put to sleep. (Don’t hate me for this, dear reader.) The vet was very kind. My heart bled on that table, mixed with my tears. I loved that dear dog.

But, once again, I put on my “it’s okay” face and left and went home, thinking that was that. Ha, silly me.

I've found that work can be a big help in times of grief. If there are many difficulties and complications at work, as was the case for me, it’s even better—if one’s aim is to be distracted, which was certainly my aim. I wanted to move on and not address the huge boulder that had taken up residence in my chest. "Keep going, you’ll outrun this," I told myself.

By September, the kids were in school. We lived in a very nice apartment. My grandmother had a beautiful funeral at her Hungarian church in Connecticut. My mother was okay. We all knew my grandmother wanted to go. She was ready. And I felt that I had balanced all the blocks on my inner Jenga tower quite well. 

But then a surprise invitation arrived. My friend Barb invited me to a fall gathering billed as a healing arts festival. She said it would be good for me, and I agreed. I knew I needed a break. The children were with their dad that Labor Day weekend. Why not? We would stay in a little rustic cabin and sleep in bunk beds. It sounded like an adventure and, even better, quite distracting. I was in.

The Tower of Suppression Collapses

There were many workshops to choose from, and I selected “Learning about hands-on healing” as my first. I crowded into a large tent with everyone to watch a woman demonstrate what she did with a volunteer from the audience. Then she suggested we all go outside and try what she had done. She asked for another volunteer and explained, as he got onto the table, that we’d all stand around him and place our hands on him. He was tall, almost too big for the table. She positioned herself at his head and began to say words for his healing. I can’t remember what his malady was—or if she actually referred to it as a prayer—but our task was to visualize him being healed. My hands were on his left knee.

Who would have guessed that I, instead of the tall guy, would receive the healing? As I stood there earnestly trying to help, my inner tower of carefully suppressed emotions began to wobble, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it from crashing down. The sobs came from deep within and were unstoppable. I was embarrassed and helpless to control what was happening. The entire workshop came to a halt so the leader could attend to me. She put her arm around me, and we went off to sit on the grass. I remember sharing my story in between loud sobs and being overcome by the weight of my grief for my deeply-loved dog and grandmother.

My storyteller friend, Phyllis, writes this in her book My Storied Life about her husband of twenty years leaving her: “I was stunned. I was heartbroken. I had a pain that traveled from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, then sank down to my heart and stayed there for months and months.”

I knew she knew that same weight I felt.

My writer friend, Alex, who just joined me as a podcast guest, talks about the grief she experienced from losing her father and husband  in her Substack essay, Finding the Gold Within Grief, The Goodness of Grief (August, 2022).

She cautions and advises, “What I do want to shed light on is, first, how unresolved grief will echo through one’s life, begging to be heard.

And secondly, how important it is to simply be present with grief, whether you are the grieving one, or the well-intentioned friend of such.”

She is so right, and my experience has taught me I couldn’t stuff any longer, particularly grief. No more putting on my “everything is fine” face.

We all share these feelings at one time or another – all of us.

The Commonality of Grief

Grief brings us together. We have all experienced it. We can remember, all too well, the profound sadness and sense of loss that comes with grief.

Mediators look for areas in people’s lives where they can emphasize commonality. They aim to bring individuals together. As a former mediator, I’ve reflected on this a lot lately. We live in a hurting world, and we all encounter that hurt in one way or another. There is so much to be sad about. If I were mediating in a meeting room today with a group of people in conflict, I would suggest that, while they may disagree on many issues, there is one thing they can agree on: their feelings of loss and grief. It’s common ground.

We are not as different as we believe. We share the emotions that arise from our experiences.

The poet, David Whyte, like my podcast guest, Alex, who is also a poet, points to the experience of grief as a gift – like finding gold coins.

The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
    the still surface on the well of grief,

turning down through its black water
    to the place we cannot breathe,

will never know the source from which we drink,
    the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering,
    the small round coins,
          thrown by those who wished for something else.

 

As I discovered, there are many lessons to be learned while in the depths of despair. I had to allow myself to go there.