My last post was funny and, of course, it always feels good to make people laugh. I’ve been stuck since then though because of a serious matter. I feel like I can’t get past it without saying something, but it’s been difficult to find the right words. I only write to acknowledge what I see as the larger picture here, which is actually quite wonderful…
*deep breath*
Our neighborhood recently lost someone to cancer, the ugliest of diseases. As I’ve mentioned before, our particular community is tight, and anytime someone dies in their 40s, it’s going to hit hard. It’s just not normal, and it goes against our supposed laws of nature. We call this “mid-life” for a reason – we should only be halfway to the end, right? Of course we know better, and tragedies happen all the time. And so we can all relate to the situation in some way – as parents, as spouses, as neighbors. It’s like someone took a giant hammer down on that house and you could just feel the pain reverberate outward, from the family, to their close friends, to their kids’ friends and families, to neighbors, and so on.
What I found so beautiful though, is in equal proportions to the pain and grief rolling outward, the comfort began rolling back inward. At the very outer edge of this circle are neighbors who don’t even know the family, but who were still offering to run errands or cook meals. From there, the offers moved to those closer, and closer still, until they reached the family itself. It’s a tangible feeling, like a blanket being rolled inward, attempting to surround the grieving with so much love and support.
In situations like this we all want to help, and there’s no shame in admitting it’s for our own good as well as the recipient. Doing something helps us to feel control in what is otherwise a wickedly out of control situation. Doing something gives us a purpose during a time we might otherwise feel lost. Doing something is often easier than saying something when we have no words.
In a close community, a newly single parent is not a single parent – not really, because there are mothers and fathers who will be quietly looking out for their kids like they would their own. Everyone will be supporting and guiding over the tough weeks and months ahead, and offering kind words, and listening, and putting on sunscreen, and giving them ice pops, and helping them make good choices for as long as it takes. Because that’s what a close community does.
I don’t think there have to be grand gestures. In fact, I don’t believe any gestures should be public at all. Outside of comparing notes to make sure we’ve got things covered, I think that to talk about how we are helping or how we’re grieving seems inappropriate. (Immediate family and friends excluded here…) It’s not about us as individuals – it’s about them as a family, and us as a community. A friend compared our community to a table with many legs, and how if one of the legs breaks, it doesn’t fall down, but it certainly tilts for a while until we get it back to normal. We’re just tilting right now, and likely will be for some time.
I say all of these things knowing full well that it takes years for any family who loses someone to feel normal again, whatever normal looks like. We all draw from this what we will to help us keep perspective in our own lives. Until then, we try to move forward together, all of us, with an irresistible momentum. The strong pulling the weak, step by step, day by day, year by year, until the grieving families are able to stand on their own again. Because that’s what we do.