It's really hard to know what to do for people who're grieving. I mean, no matter what you say, no matter what you or that person believe, there's the fact of this huge hole in their life. Someone is gone and won't be coming back. Whether you believe in an afterlife (I don't), reincarnation (ditto), that the people we've lost reside always in God's memory (closer), or that it's just ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the fact of absence is unchanged. What is there to say to that?
It's hard to know what to say when everyone reacts so differently to each loss, and it's harder still for everyone to be able to offer everything everybody needs. This is why it's great to have lots of friends—and when I say "friends," I mean relatives who are friends too. In other words, family, those people who are really there when you need them.
In my mind, at least, there's a big distinction between family and relatives. Relatives you're just stuck with because you share DNA. Family is something else, the ur relationship, a subset of which is friends. I've been thinking about what constitutes family for quite a while, but especially since my boss, bless her heart, sat me down the other day to see how I was doing. "Remember, we're your family," she said, taking my hand. I thought at the time it must be true, because I didn't have any say in the matter, apparently, and it made me want to run from the room. "No, you're not," I wanted to say. "You're my boss. They're people I work with and happen to like and occasionally hang out with. That's all." It's not that I'm not grateful to them for letting me take the time I've had to to take care of business, but I would have taken it whether they liked it or not. I'm lucky enough to work at a pretty compassionate corporation, but its main business is still making money, not coddling its employees. I have no illusions about that.
Nobody can force their way into the category of family. In the sense that all human beings share something like 99.9% of DNA, we're all related, but that doesn't make us family. You can marry into the circle of relatives, or hover on the periphery of the circle of friends as an interested acquaintance, but unless you're picked for the team, you ain't family. Blood, in my experience, is not thicker than water. Instead, to fall back on another cliche, I've found that friends are God's way of compensating us for our relatives. That is, the friends who become family.
And the friends who become family, along with the relatives who really are family, are the folks who are there when you need them and do what they can. Not everybody can offer the same things, especially when it comes to getting through hard times. In a sense, real friendship is a perfect communism: From each according to their ability to each according to their needs. Everybody performs a little differently, depending on the crisis. It's not better or worse, it's just what we can do. Here's an example:
I suck at hospital visits. They are, somehow, utterly terrifying to me. If we're friends, I'll visit you at home, cook for you, change your dressing, help you bathe, wipe your butt, wash your clothes, do your housework, clean up your puke, run errands, bring you chocolate and flowers. I will even take you to the hospital and sit with your loved ones. Visit you in the hospital later? Sit with you there? A cold day in hell. I cannot do it.
When Mom had her last stroke and Dad and I drove down to the hospital for the first time to see her, there sat a woman from her congregation that I had never met, peacefully reading a book in a chair at the foot of her bed. I can't begin to say how intensely grateful I was for her presence, because, like me, Dad sucked at hospital visits too, and somebody needed to be there. In fact, most of Mom's congregation took turns staying with her when Dad and I weren't there. If you've got enough friends, they fill in those gaps of ability for each other, to get you through whatever it is you're going through. It's like a potluck of skills. Everybody brings something and soon you have a 7-course banquet of love and compassion. Dessert, obviously, is my specialty, but I can do a hearty main course if necessary. As long as it doesn't involve a hospital visit.
Sometimes, just the offer is enough, if it's sincere—and believe me, the bullshit detector is on high when you're in a position to need your friends. When my cousin David in Alaska said "I'll get on a plane and come down if you need me," I believed him. If I'd said, "please come," he'd have been there ready to do whatever. Sometimes, people want to do for you and can't because of their own circumstances, like Mel, who has enough on her plate with two households and a family business to run, a mom with Parkinson's, a husband, a dog, and multiple musical obligations. But Mel's a foundation stone in my life and sometimes that's all you need too, to know that your bedrock is still solid. When you know that, even the little things they can do for you are enough.
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