Failure

A couple of people responded to last week's post, in effect saying, I don't know how to be or what to do and I'm sorry that I've failed. It made me feel kind of bad, really, because I've been on the other side of it, too. Every time I've reached out to a person in grief, I have fucked it up.

I knew a girl in graduate school whose father was an English professor at Williams, where I went to college. I didn't know either of them very well, but the girl's writing was all about a father dying of cancer and when I checked with a friend who worked at the college, she confirmed that the man was, in fact, dying. I was twenty-four and pretty emotionally clueless but I had been told, or had read, or had somehow picked up that when a loved one dies, you have to say something to the person right away. You can't just pretend that nothing has happened; it's the worst thing you can do. So when I saw her in Dodge Hall a few days after her father's death, I walked up to her and said, "I'm really sorry about your dad."

I don't know how I expected her to respond, but she immediately burst into tears, said, "I can't handle this," and fled the building.

That's not the part I feel regret about. I am sorry that in our society it's not OK to burst into tears in public. I wish we had a socially sanctioned way to publicly mourn. The thing I feel badly about is that after that I avoided her. I felt awkward and uncomfortable and I had the suspicion that despite the best of intentions I had made things worse for her. As if I was important enough to make things worse! I wish I had approached her at a later date and made it clear that her response was completely understandable, that my feelings weren't hurt, that I was available if she needed me for anything. But I didn't.

When my best friend from Louisville's husband died suddenly of a stroke, leaving her a thirty-seven year-old widow with an eleven month-old, I dropped everything and flew across the country. I told my parents I was coming and I grabbed two and a half year-old Jasper and I left the next day. I went to the visitation and the funeral. But then I went back to Portland. Then what? Did I call her? Did I send her cards or leave her messages? Did I think, having made the gesture, that it was over? I don't remember, but I suspect that I didn't do nearly enough. Just recently she told me a story about a co-worker, someone she liked but wasn't even particularly close to, who had called her every few days for a year after Pete died. She left simple messages, "I'm thinking about you, you don't have to call me back, just wanted you to know." Lisa never called her back, but she ran into the woman not long ago and told her how much those messages had meant to her. Why wasn't it me who did that?

When Tanja's baby died, I went to her house a couple of times. Once I went with a mutual friend and brought food. Once my husband and I stopped by unannounced. Jonathan went to the shed, where Jed was building his son a coffin. Tanja was in the dining room with a friend from work. They were going for a drive, did I want to come? They were very polite but obviously wanted to be alone, and I was horrified at the idea that I might be intruding. No, I said, I'll just find something useful to do here. So I cleaned out the refrigerator. I wasn't sure if it was helpful. Was I using the wrong cleanser, was I discarding things they still wanted? It was all I could think of to do. It was the thing I would least want to do, under any circumstances. After that though, we didn't go back. We weren't sure how many times it was OK to show up at someone's house, someone we really really liked but didn't know intimately, without an invitation. We didn't want to be pushy. Was it good that we went to their house, or was it intrusive? Was it wrong that we stayed away after that, or was it respectful? They are too kind to ever tell me of my mistakes. 

My current theory is that  everyone fucks up in the face of grief. Everyone. Everyone says the wrong thing, and does the wrong thing. There is no way to do it right because there is nothing right about it. I think all you can do is try, with an open heart. The well-meaning gaffes are easy to overlook. Ignoring what happened, out of fear of making a mistake, really does hurt more.

Now I just found out that someone I know a little and like very much has cancer. Will I handle it well? I doubt it. I'll try, and I'll fuck it up, and just hope that's OK.