Use Your Special Abilities To Help the Grieving

 

Remembering is easy, but missing is heartbreaking, wrote a friend who lost her mother.

 

One thing that helps right away is the various faiths that sustain us as we gather to celebrate the life of the deceased at the visitation and service.

 

It is hard to go back to life and work when your attention span is measured in seconds. Time freezes. Restlessness and anxiety are constant companions. Rainy days are more dreary. Sunny days are an outrage. Laughing people are out of place in your world. Loss is ghastly, engulfing and shakes your day. You may be enveloped in grief, maybe feeling like a blob. Other words are gutted, disrupted, foggy, tortured, “suffocated” and having an aching emptiness.

 

You are always in grief's presence. Your “absence” still “walks through the door” every single day. But you can strive to become an intentional survivor and not a hapless victim. Seek help, reach out to others, set a goal, lament without shame, live your loss. Take it slowly. Take one more step. Take another step, said Tim Russert’s book about his father. Death is like mud; it’s dirty, messy and incredibly tough to walk through, but surprisingly, it holds vital ingredients to life, and when seeds are planted, it can help sprout new life. The Lord giveth and taketh. Dead leaves fall; new leaves grow.

 

Elizabeth Bernstein in the Wall Street Journal used the words shattered, unequipped and worthlessness for her grief. She suggested sticking to a routine or go the bearable moments route—an hour, half hour, five minutes, one minute. Give yourself permission to heal with prompts on sticky notes. Think of your quality time left—future--rather than the past. Read memoirs about grief, talk to friends who lost a parent or cuddle with a dog. Be the person you were taught to be: kind. You have to learn to comingle your pain with births and weddings you will attend. Loss has to integrate with living.

 

It seems the sorry window is never closed. Know that grief is unexpressed love. Erasure would be the outcome. Grief is: embracing or exclusion.

 

Do not suppress difficult emotions; they’ll only pop back up. Remaining silent is not an option. You don’t have to be “heroic.” Sometimes all grief stages blend together. You could get one stage one day and one the next. It is rough, but what a difference a day can make as you also have secondary losses such as income, family structure, lifestyle, past memories, support, future plans that were to be shared, identity and security.

 

Yell into your phone if you have to. Do a body scan while driving. Focus on your hands and how they feel on the wheel and how the air feels on your face. Quit doomscrolling. Instead, paint, scrapbook, knit, garden, cook, sing, decorate, organize, make something. Take a blank space and start writing.

 

One project is to draw a ring around a doodled person. Draw a larger ring around one close to them and so on. The one in the small ring can whine, complain, moan and say anything to the others. Speak only to larger rings. The goal is to help the small ring.

 

Boosting your optimism in a Wall Street Journal article says to create a positive mental TV channel that replays memories of pleasant episodes in your life. Call up your channel when you need a boost. Did something frustrate you? Write down three things that can help you see it more positively. Miss your train? Perhaps you got some exercise running to catch it.

 

Don’t assume grieving people are OK if they only post happy pictures on social media. They are not going to show you meltdowns, anxiety attacks or their upset stomach. They are hoping people don’t bolt from their lives. They are like a broken statue that can’t be glued together again. You don’t need to give them a lot of words, nor do they to you unless they want to. They may have no one to talk to when they are having a bad day so if they do, listen. Your presence is important for your friends where words fall short.

 

In “Dear Dana,” a friend lost her son and the author learned to avoid assuming anything, listened attentively and was present. Her hashtag while praying for her friend was #constant. I liked the line that said our lives are like a symphony. Sometimes you need the violins while other times only a tuba will do.

 

The Team Chase Foundation honors their son who died in a car accident. He never left home without a basketball. It was unimaginable pain. The foundation carries out good deeds. It allows him to be remembered. They’ve given out scholarships, provided funds for athletic camps, gave away basketballs, paid tolls for drivers, dropped a gift basket to a random new mom and passed out coffee gift cards to people on the street. They have round plastic discs with a QR code that can be scanned to record good deeds online. They have come from around the world. In Singapore, a person gave up his bus seat. In Florida, someone paid for groceries.

 

In her autobiography, Gov. Kristi Noem felt her world was shattering when she tragically lost her father. She was eight months pregnant, sitting in the same hospital where she was supposed to have attended a childbirth class that very same evening, preparing for a new life to enter the world. Instead, she was two floors down in the emergency room grieving for a life she didn’t think could ever be lost. It was very difficult for her, but now she is a governor. One of her favorite books is “Wolfpack.” “You were never Little Red Riding Hood. You were always the wolf,” it says. It talks about women having each other’s backs. You don’t always have to stay on the path. Take the microphone. Get the respect you’ve earned and give it to the pack, too.

 

Two sweet children’s books may offer help. My mom always kept the “Velveteen Rabbit” around. If a child loves a toy enough, it will become real. When I reread it (it's 100 this year), I loved this part: When you are real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. “What we over-love, we often over-grieve,” said Bishop Fulton Sheen. Grief is proportional to the love shared.

 

I also read “Invisible String.” Here is the synopsis. As long as love is in your heart, the invisible string will always be there. We are all connected by it. It can help comfort separation anxiety, loneliness and loss and explore unbreakable connections. It can be used in bereavement, in the military, at camp, funeral homes, prisons, among the recently divorced and at going away parties. It transcends time and space.

 

Those we love are always connected by heartstrings into infinity, said Terry Guillemets.

 

At initial bad news, you feel your heart drop. Half of my heart is gone, said Andrew Pollack, whose daughter was a school shooting victim. Your heart may feel like it’s in a tug-of-war. On Facebook, I saw a post that said it is odd that his heart failed him; he didn’t have any loving flaws. He carved his name on hearts, and now it’s on a tombstone.

 

I loved you your whole life, said another post. I will miss you the rest of mine. It was about a dog. Likely your pet is saying thanks for everything/I had a wonderful time.

 

“A Year of Playing Catch” by Ethan Bryan was a book given to a man whose son died in an automobile accident. He played catch with a different person for 365 days. It was a vehicle to open up about his son. Some came from as far as Israel.  The son was a complete joy, effortless to raise. He watched out for others. He would recognize if a classmate was having an off day and make sure they were all right. He had time for everybody. Ethan’s first catch was with the survivor of the car wreck. They threw the ball until they couldn’t see it anymore. Inclement weather would lead to a gym. Now people come to him and they are able to shoulder some of each other’s pain. Even though he was hurting, he could help. He said he was on a journey with no clear end.

 

Even though Mike Tyson said he could have gotten his gun and gone crazy after the death of his daughter, he said he had to act dignified, not psycho because others also lose kids.

 

No one is immune from grief. In “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone,” it was said even assholes have people who grieve for them. To some it may seem odd, but President Thomas Jefferson wrapped the last piece of his wife’s Martha’s handwriting in her hair and hid it in his writing desk.

 

Calvin Coolidge Jr., 16, played tennis in shoes without wearing socks. It led to an infected blister on his toe. He spiked a fever and had severe blood poisoning. July 4, 1924, was President Coolidge’s 52nd birthday, but his son was in Walter Reed Medical Center. Many Americans thought of Coolidge as the taciturn, expressionless, unemotional caricature in political cartoons and newspaper gossip, but in the day’s after Calvin Jr.’s death, everyone was stunned by the open demonstration of the President’s grief. When he received the bill for Calvin Jr.’s funeral services, the President refused to pay for several months, as if he was unable to come to terms with the fact that his son was gone. The President “lost his zest for living.”

 

David Jeremiah told a story about Speaker Sam Rayburn learning that the teen daughter of a reporter friend had died in a tragic accident. Early the very next morning, he knocked on the door. Rayburn asked if there was anything he could do.  His friend, shocked and grieving replied, “I don’t think there is anything you can do. We’re making all the arrangements.” “Well, have you had your coffee this morning?” Rayburn asked. “No. We haven’t had time” replied his friend. “Well,” the Speaker of the House replied, “I can at least make the coffee.” The friend knew Rayburn was supposed to be having breakfast at the White House.  “Well, I was, but I called the President and told him I had a friend who was in trouble, and I couldn’t come.” Rayburn canceled breakfast with the President of the United States to make coffee for his grieving friend. Could you be such a friend?

 

When he was just 22 years old, Bob Saget suffered a burst appendix that ended up being gangrenous and was removed. Tragically, Bob Saget lost two sisters, both at young ages. In 1984, his sister Andi died from a brain aneurysm when she was 35 years old. His other sister, Gay, died nine years later at 44 from an autoimmune disease. Three uncles died from heart attacks before they were 40. The star explained that this caused him to become "obsessed with death" from an early age, saying that comedy was a lifesaver for him early on. It pushed him harder to make people laugh. It was a defense mechanism and it truly helped him survive. It helped keep him mentally alive rather than letting adversity destroy him. Days after his mother gave birth to twins Robert and Faith in 1954, the hospital suffered an outbreak of dysentery, which infected their two newborns and proved to be fatal. Bob was born two years to the day after the twins, sharing their birthday. His parents named him Robert, which Saget reported he regarded as an honor. Saget cited his family's dark, twisted sense of humor as the thing that helped them survive these losses, and that death was a regular topic in their household.

 

A detective on a true crime show was wondering what is the best way to say dead. He didn’t have to. A mother asked, “You found her, didn’t you? She’s dead, isn’t she?”  An extra bouquet was carried at another daughter’s wedding and one put on the grave.

 

The Wall Street Journal had a lengthy article about altered lives after shootings. Some survivors discover purpose in helping others. Others fall into depression, anxiety and addiction. One said they kept thinking that at some point a certain anniversary would make her OK. Some suffer prolonged grief disorder. To this day, one writes her name, date of birth and mother's cell on her thigh and shoulder with a Sharpie when she leaves home just in case she falls victim. One cried when she saw a similar pair of corduroy pants like the ones she wore during the shooting she was in. Columbine High School removed Chinese food from the cafeteria because that was what was served the day of the shooting. The principal has a book, “They Call Me Mr. De.” In the first 10 years after the shooting, he was in six car accidents, always in April, the anniversary month. He finished out 15 years to fulfill a pledge to continue until every student in area schools had graduated since the shooting date. The Rebels Project is a support group for those affected.

 

As a community, El Paso painted rocks and used messages that said Faith and El Paso Strong after the Walmart shooting.

 

“Gone Too Soon” by Chris Daughtry says today could have been the day that you blow out your candles. Make a wish as you close your eyes. Today could have been the day everybody was laughing. Instead I just sit here and cry. Who would you be? What would you look like?

 

Michael Jackson has the song, too.  Here one day, gone one night. Like the loss of sunlight on a cloudy afternoon, gone too soon. Like a castle built upon a sandy beach, gone too soon.

 

It’s hard when young people die, but I like the fact that while many nursing homes have the funeral home enter through the back door, some do an honor walk. The staff forms a line along the walls to the entrance. This is honoring a deceased resident. This is embracing death. This is sacred.

 

Remember the promise of eternal life. Our heavenly reunion will last for eternity. Your loved one is in better hands. Eulogistically, recall an accolade, commendation, homage or tribute. Recall the moments when time stood still and everything was right, good, whole and wonderful.

 

A medical journal article suggests some doctors may want to write clinical obituaries (drafting informal summaries of benefits gained in the doctor-patient relationship to celebrate the patient’s life). I read of one doctor who tracks loss in medicine. On average, he lost a patient every six weeks since May 2015. He said guilt can be toxic or negative or lead to growth. It can motivate learning more to benefit patients.

 

Some say grief never gets better; you just handle it. It does get better.  You will probably become more compassionate toward the grieving. People have no idea the compassion the daily mail can bring—send a card or note to someone grieving.  Get rid of If-Onlys and Should-Have-Dones. No guilt trips!

 

Something that brings some joy to me is a car passing me on the road with a BSV license plate—my father’s initials. I think my father has turned up in the right place at the right time. I read where someone heard a flutter in the middle of the night and knew an angel was looking down. You come to the realization that “they can see us.”

 

Someone saw ladybugs while climbing a mountain he and his late friend used to scale. A lady noticed heart shapes after her son, 7, died. In leaves, puddles, rocks and clouds. In sea wood on a beach, she found a plastic heart. It looked like one of his old toys used in learning shapes and it fit in the exact slot when she took it home.

 

I watched a video from Plymouth Hall Museum. There were death knell codes back in the day, rung twice three times for a woman or three times three for a man. Then, the bell would toll one stroke for each year of the deceased’s life. Those listening and counting had a good idea of who was gone. Newspapers and telephones eventually made the death knell obsolete. Now with technology, Caitlin Abrams shares stories from cemeteries on TikTok. There is a TikTok video of ashes that spell “I heart u” in water.

 

Bells don’t ring anymore, but pay attention to the obituaries now. It may be someone you know and can assist the family in some way. Death is always going to be a part of your life. Do something.

 

One teen girl did 89 random acts of kindness for 18 months for her late great-grandmother who died at 89. She launched her plan at a McDonald's drive-thru, where she paid the $5 bill of the customer behind her. Other random acts: donating items to the Humane Society, hanging out with orphaned puppies there and “being a happy presence,” handing out smiley face stickers, putting out pools for people to take to keep dogs cool and there was one who helped a father who lost his newborn Photoshop the tubes out of the picture. Do you have such ability for a special idea, especially after initial grief support drops off?