This is another piece that I stumbled upon over at Thought Cloud and had to share here. It’s a great reminder for all of us that while we continue to grieve, we must continue to live, love, and be willing to accept the help of others–even when at times we’d prefer them to leave us alone.
Perhaps the hardest part for myself, and I believe for many of you here, is that Mom/Vicki was the person we went to. She was our rock, our ear to listen, our shoulder to cry on, and our always available friend to share news with whether it was good or bad. She was there with a consoling tone, a comforting touch, and a big heart that allowed you to feel as though she was hugging you even if it was through an email or the phone.
So, when she was all that and more–how do you cope with things, when your go to person is the one that’s now gone? You remember that your ‘person’ shared her love with many ‘people’ and gave each and every one of us the tools we need to not only let ‘people’ in to help us, but become that go to person for others.
I think Krystie Yandoli says it very well in speaking of loss in her own life (which appropriately enough, includes a shout out to one of mom’s favorite people/artists, Barbra Streisand):
There isn’t a proper way to grieve death, especially the unexpected loss of such a young and beautiful life. You don’t get over it, but you can get through it with lots of help from others. Barbra Streisand’s right: people who need people are really some of the luckiest people. And I count myself as one of the lucky ones.
Here is the opening to Krystie’s piece… I highly encourage you to click on at the end and continue reading over at Thought Catalog to see just a few of the many many ways People need People…
Something happens when someone you care about dies — someone whose heart, mind, and spirit left Earth far too long before they were supposed to, someone you expected to know until he turned into a gray, old man who would still crack jokes and make you laugh, someone you never imagined having a final conversation with or who you would have to attend memorials for, someone whose smile could — and did — light up a whole room, someone you never thought you’d have to see in a casket, let alone as a 22-year-old.
Something happens to your heart: it hurts so much that you convince yourself that you don’t need anyone else, and for the time being you’d rather be isolated.
You stay away from anything and everything that reminds you of him because you think it’ll be less painful that way. You don’t drive by places that you went to together. You don’t say his name or talk about him and the memories you shared. You don’t want to forget but you don’t really want to remember, either.
You’d prefer to skip your birthday when it comes around because you don’t understand why you get to celebrate another year of life when he no longer has that luxury. You don’t reach out for help and keep most of your thoughts, feelings, and tears to yourself.
You don’t want to say, “I love you” to people because you think they’ll either die or break your heart or both. You don’t want to let new people in because they’ll just die someday, too. What if you let someone else in and they can’t be there for you the way you need them to be, or worse, what if you can’t be there for them? You think it’ll be easier to just keep to yourself and sustain surface level relationships with acquaintances than get emotionally involved to the point of heartbreak.
In a way, it makes sense that you want to shut down. You want to protect your heart from ever feeling this kind of sorrow again. The closer you get (and stay) to the people in your life, the more likely it is this can happen all over again.
So that’s what you do — rather, what you think you’re doing. You think you’re shutting people out, distancing yourself from others, and intentionally failing at communicating. You think you’re grieving all on your own.
But then something else happens: along the way, you realize you haven’t successfully closed yourself off from people or shut down from the rest of the world. As it turns out, the rest of the world has been sustaining you all along — the very people you tried to reject are actually the ones getting you through the pain.