A grieving woman became upset enough to contact us and protest our description of grief as a journey in the title of our DVD program. She said, "If you think grief is just a walk in the park, you are badly mistaken." We were shocked that someone would interpret those words to mean that and would be so deeply offended by them. We should not have been shocked at all. One of the things I have learned from my years of writing and speaking is that while I know exactly what I am saying, I have no way of knowing what the audience is hearing. The twain may never meet.
The woman's response does give us insight into a very important issue as we face our grief. No words fit. There is no analogy that can actually describe what grief is, what it does, how it feels, nor how we should respond. There are no words that can even come close. We are trying to describe feelings and emotional responses and all we have to work with are words and analogies which are inadequate for the task. Any statement can be taken wrong. Every analogy can prove warm and healing to some and maddening to others. There is no way to describe the way grief feels.
A dear friend of mine wrote a book about the grief of a suicide. Her daughter died of suicide and she spent years talking to other families with the same experiences to research for her book. One thing she kept insisting throughout the book and in personal conversations was that no one could understand this kind of grief unless they had experienced a suicide in their family. She liked to say that unless you have walked in those shoes you just can't know. Of course she is right, but we spent a day together in preparation for making a video of her experience and asked her to describe the grief following suicide to us. I know she felt grilled when the day was over, because we probed and pushed in an honest effort to grasp any differences we could find. It was a frustrating day. She described grief in the same terms as any other person we had ever talked to. Same language exactly. No different insight at all. The difference is in her feelings and no one can put them into words.
Grief is as unique as a finger print. No two people respond alike, so no two people can really understand how the other one feels. I know two women who became friends though their involvement with Compassionate Friends. Their sixteen year old sons died of suicide one day apart. Both died of gun shots. Both did so after a normal day at school. You could not find two deaths more alike. They have been a great support to each other, but neither of them really understands how the other one feels. Their responses and reactions to the deaths have differed widely. The things that have helped one have not had the same effect on the other. There are no words they can say to each other that can bridge the gap between how they feel nor describe those feelings with clarity.
The problem is, we want our grief understood. Understanding is one of my favorite words as you will learn if you read enough of these blogs. If we can be understood we can begin to move on. If we cannot find someone to understand, we tend to park and keep looking, sometimes for the rest of our lives. At the same time, we do not want to hear, "I know exactly how you feel," because we know they don't know how we feel.
Maybe we need a new word. Maybe what we are looking for is someone who will just accept how we feel without fully understanding us. Maybe we need someone who will give us the freedom to feel whatever we feel whether or not it is rational, whether or not it seems healthy. Someone who will simply allow and accept wherever we are. That is as close to understanding as anyone can ever get. Not perfect understanding but it still feels wonderful and is healing for broken hearts.