How To Back Away From A Grieving Person

December 1, 2014

Dear People Who Are Thoroughly Freaked Out by The Presence of A Grieving Person,

I get it.

I totally do.

Grieving People can be really fun one minute ("Oh look! It's like the old her is back!") and burst out crying- like snot on the sleeve sobbing- the next ("What happened? Wait...but weren't you just fine? I'm so confused.") This must suck to be around. It really must.

Grieving People like to talk about things that make most people uncomfortable. In fact, I'd venture to say that they don't just LIKE to talk about these things, but they NEED to talk about these things in order to keep being alive.

They may talk about the actual circumstances of a death. They may do this in great detail, especially in the first few days after the death occurs, if the death is sudden. They may put images in your head that you wish were never there. They may unintentionally cause you to transfer those same images onto the lives of your loved one. What if it were your love-person falling from that window? What if it were your spouse who drowned in that water?

How can you keep yourself from imagining the pain of your own child taking her life when Grieving People are suddenly hit with the urge to talk about it? Being friends with a Grieving Person is like carrying around a jack-in-the-box, tense and tinny music always in the background, the jolting POP! threatening to happen at any time, anywhere. How fun is that? Not very.

Grieving People are a confusing lot. They like to present to you a problem to be solved (i.e. "I can't get out of bed." "I don't feel like exercising." "I'm worried about the upcoming holidays.") but when you offer solutions, it seems to make it worse. The normal rules of problem-solving don't to apply to Grieving People, and that's just baffling. In fact, if you offer up a list of "Why don't you"s or "Have you ever considered"s, Grieving People are apt to be more upset and accuse you of not "getting it." That sucks if you're just trying to help out. It sucks a lot.

Grieving People like it best if you just be with them in their grief. They want you to lie on your belly right next to them and toss pebbles down into that vast hole, listening for them to ricochet off the sides. Grieving People would rather you sit silently with them than say any of the things we're taught to say to someone who is sad. And that's not easy to do. Go laugh it up with a friend over coffee and see a movie, or sit with a Grieving Person who is telling you (for the 50th time, mind you) that they miss their love-person or that they're not sure how to keep doing this...Which sounds like a better way to spend your time? I know what I'd pick. Latte, please!

Even if you feel drawn to a Grieving Person in the first few hours, days, or even weeks of their intense pain, after a while, it's taxing on anyone. Everyone. And seriously, you've got stuff going on, too, right? Maybe your Grieving Person used to be a great sense of support to you, and now is good for zilch. Nothing. Nada. "Yoooo-hoooo! Over here! I've got shit going on, too!" Grieving People can't always remember that, and even if they can, they may be too tapped out to be there for you like they used to be. Grieving People are not always fair.

Grieving People can offer no time frame of when their grieving period will be over because it's never over. It morphs. It shifts. It sometimes softens. It often comes back looking like the early days right after a string of great days. If you're committed to being there for a Grieving Person, to really being there, you're signing up for a lot.

Grieving People pluck the strings of what could happen in the future, and even worse, what may already have happened to you in the past. The stone of any loss, any death, will often be turned over by the presence of a Grieving Person. And they don't even try to do this. It just comes naturally somehow.

That's a long list of holy cows. There's no convincing me that people are in line to befriend someone in deep grief. In fact, my own experience has shown that some people who were absolute cornerstones of my support system pre-sudden death of Gareth have dropped off the map, so to speak. A Grieving Person may experience a second layer of grief- one that comes from realizing wonderful, strong, compassionate people who were there in other times of need just can't be here now. A Grieving Person may take the unreturned calls, the refusals to be met at the airport, the emails stating that despite a desire to be there, there really isn't time at the moment- personally at first.

These things might knock a Grieving Person down for a bit. An hour. A day. A week.

But, if a Grieving Person is able to step back from it all, to watch everything from a bird's perspective, it will become clear that Grieving People are not everyone's cup of tea, and the Grieving Person will understand this. This will be understood as well as the fact that the Grieving Person cannot, for the missing of old connections, turn into the Non-Grieving Person, just for old time's sake. The Grieving Person will learn how to shift support, how to forgive herself for being in this place, and how to forgive others who can't be there with her for whatever reasons of their own.

I propose to you, Dear Ones Who May Need To Back Away From A Griever, the following ways to do it. You have full permission to read directly from this screen, when needing to communicate with your Grief Person.

1. "I love you. I really do. But being around your grief is bringing up too much stuff for me right now. I need some space from you at the moment. Please know this isn't about you."

2. "I don't know what to say when you're really down. And that makes me feel uncomfortable."

3. "I am so thoroughly freaked out by anything death-related. I just can't hear it. This is my shit."

4. "I want to be here for you- I do. But I find the specifics about how [--] died to be too hard to hear. Do you have someone else you can share that with?"

5. "I am not good with this whole grieving thing. But I like you as a friend. So, I'm just going to go over here for a bit...and maybe we can connect after some time has passed."

These. All acceptable. Most Grieving People will not only appreciate your honesty, but they will feel very loved and supported in the understanding that it's not about them. That they aren't doing something wrong.

Here are some things NOT to do:

1. fail to reply to an email or call because you don't know what to say

2. unfriend the Grieving Person on facebook without explaining why

3. pretend like the dead love-person never existed/never speak of them

4. put everything on the Grieving Person, "You're too negative/sad"

5. ask the Grieving Person things they cannot answer: "When will you get better?"

6. say any of the following:
-"What do you think you're getting out of all of this?"
-"[dead love-person] would want you to/not want you to..."
-"Just focus on the positive."
-"Isn't it time to let go?"
-"You talk about [love-person] too much."
-"You just need to [---]."
-"You're problem is [---]."

Here are some ways you can support from afar- if you need to back away but don't want to be totally gone:

1) Send a quick message that just says "I'm thinking of you." No need for much else.
2) Share a reminder: saw this (photo/article/place) and thought of you [and/or your love-person] today"
3) Lay it out there: "I know I can't really be there for you in the way that you're needing/wanting, but I just want to remind you that you mean a lot to me and I think about you."

These things are ok, too.

Even if you're bowing out of a friendship for good, I'd like to suggest there's a loving way to do it. If it's a temporary step back, there's a loving way to do that, too.

Doesn't Ram Dass remind us that "We're all just walking each other home"?


Love,

Bridget