Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash
My friend’s 17-year-old son hanged himself last winter. He would be dead right now if she hadn’t heard gasping sounds coming from his bedroom only to find him hanging in the doorway. She got underneath him and lifted his full body weight to release the pressure from the noose. His 13 year old brother helped her get him down.
Another friend’s son was born prematurely at 4 lbs 10 oz. I visited him in the NICU and watched as he writhed around, his body too tiny even for the preemie diaper. She called me a week later to tell me that he was blind.
My colleague at work is the primary caregiver for her mother. Her mom suffered a brain injury and aphasia as a result of multiple strokes. Her mom doesn’t understand why she lives in an assisted living facility with old people when she is only in her early sixties. She phones her multiple times a day with complaints, demands, and questions that have no answers. To make it even more crushing, her own mother calls her mom. “Mom! I haven’t seen you. When are you going to come and visit me?”
Life can bring you to your knees, and somehow you still get up. There have been beautiful moments in the aftermath of these tragedies, yet it still doesn’t erase any of the grief.
It’s possible that I may not be reporting all of these correctly. When your friends share this kind of pain, it thrusts you underwater into another dimension. You can barely hear them speaking to you because of the throbbing and dissonance in your head. If it was at all helpful and appropriate, upon hearing this kind of news, you would claw at your hair and stumble around so maybe you could unhear the truth. But since this helps no one, you remain composed and say things like, “I’m so sorry” and “What can I do?” and “Thank you for telling me”.
How is it possible that some of the best people in the world suffer the worst kinds of tragedies?
What is the point of even trying if this is what might await us in the future?
We may be tempted to ask why these things happen to good people, but as Anne Lamott writes, “this happens to people, and she is a human” (p. 183).
So, we show up, we listen, and we bring pastries. We drink coffee together, and offer to take their dog for a walk. We send texts, and sometimes even pizza. We try to stitch our friends back together, so they can maybe get out of bed each morning, and put one foot in front of the other.
These are the small gestures that help us get back up.
We don’t do them because one day we hope someone will do this for us. We do this because it is what makes us human. And in the doing, we heal ourselves as well.
Previously published on Medium under the pen name, Allyson Finch, 12/26/2019.
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